Babysitting the Bad Boy's Brother

I think if you got me a mood ring it'd be a fucking rainbow at this point

"Why are you even here?" Connor snarls.

I roll my eyes and pretend to examine my nails like a snobby movie star. "To make sure you don't die while your mom's gone.. duh."

"You haven't came in weeks." I almost snicker because I'm that immature, but I regain composure.

"Bro, it was thanksgiving break. I had shi-stuff to do okay?"

"whatever." He crosses his arm over his chest.

"What? Were you excited over the prospect of me not coming back?"

"I dont know what prospect means."

"The idea, the possibility."

"Oh. I wasn't excited." He scowls and looks away. I'm almost touched.

"so..." I saw, trying to make conversation. "Where's your brother?" You stupid fucking idiot  Claire. Stop thinking about him.

"He's never home any more. I dont think he likes my mom very much." Connor seems unbothered by this as he sits on the ground and starts playing with his hot wheels car. Damn this kid is more mopey than I am.

"Don't think like that, Connor. im sure its not true." Why am I comforting the little devil? "Hey," I continue, "we should organize your hot wheels by color."

"Why would we do that?"

"It'll be fun. Go get them all. It'll be satisfying when we're done."

"Alright." He shrugs and takes off for upstairs.

I wait patiently before he comes down with a huge 10 gallon bucket of hot wheels. "Oh no." I say, "I have severely underestimated. This is bad I don't want to do it anymore."

He stomps his foot on the ground. "You promised!"

"I-" I cross my arms, "wait a minute, I did not promise anything."

"I want to color sort them now!"

"Ugh, you're such a pest."

He sticks his tongue out at me. I reciprocate. We get to work.

Thirty minutes later and we're like 3/4ths of the way done. I low-key want to jump out of a window.

However, this is very satisfying, so maybe I don't mind it too much.

After we're all done, I make Connor pick up the cars and put them back in the bucket by himself (my revenge). Connor hides my phone (his revenge) but I thankfully use my apple watch to ping it- my way of sticking it to the man. Connor seems to hate me a lot- like, a lot, but slightly less than the first time we met. I call that progress.

He's seemed sadder than normal. Maybe all he's doing is lashing out. If that were the case though, I don't know why he'd bother putting on this facade of the angel boy in front of his mom.

After Connor's mom returns, I leave and head down the alley to my backyard. I'm halfway between my house and Alec's house when I notice a shadow- someone crouched down besides my fence.

My knees lock. I'm paralyzed as my heart pounds in my ears. I can't breathe. My hand instinctively goes over my chest. I think about running. I see the ring of a cigarette or a joint briefly as the man sucks in. The rational part of my brain brings to my attention that it's probably Alec.

"A-Alec?" I call out? He throws his cigarette or whatever to the sidewalk and stands up.

"Hey." He slurs. Oh, great. Today's my lucky day- Alec is probably drunk. I take a step forward but can barely feel my legs. Thankfully I have enough spatial orientation to make it over to him without falling on my ass. My heart is still pounding. It drowns out almost all noise.