Teenage Troubles (Prequel for Teenage Baby)

Chapter 5 | Leo

She stood; gave Leo a piteous look and Jayden a covertly disgusted one. Then, she trudged across the old worn planks out of the basement without a single word. Like always. Who was she to deny?

  Jayden waited until he could hear the door close behind her. He dove his hand in his pocket then brought out something relatively small and square. A picture. A picture of golden locks and glassy blue eyes, smiling pink lips and porcelain fair skin. If he held the picture further away from his face, aligning it right by Leo's shoulder, the stark resemblance between Eliza and Leo's facial structures and features couldn't be more noticeable. An impossibility. Clear and visible like the sun shining midst a cloudless clear sky, you'd see it with eyes closed.

"You look so much like her." Jayden tilted his head, the tip of his thumb trailing along the picture. His voice carried along a tremor that screamed heartache. He looked up at Leo. The cause. "Why? Why do you have to look like her? Do you like to remind me?" His steps forwards were slow but determined. When he stood right by Leo's knees, he crouched down until his eyes leveled with his son's.

  Looking into Leo's eyes was like looking into Eliza's. An illusion perhaps, a mind-trick contrived just to spite him. It took Jayden back in time, back to when he could stare into the original pair of blues, not those counterfeits. They looked so similar but so far off. Because eyes of a killer were bound to differ from the victim's. Ones smothered with cruelty and the others cradling beauty. "You have the same eyes."

  Leo flinched slightly when he felt Jayden's cold knuckles skim up his delicate cheekbone. His fist relaxed until his fingers flattened against Leo's cheek, his thumb tracing the soft skin right beneath his eye.

"But they look much better on Eliza. So much more beautiful on her." Jayden withdrew his hand and returned his focus to the picture. Her face blurred, familiar eyes suddenly unrecognizable and lips twisting in a fit of fog and mist. The picture itself couldn't have transformed and he realized it was his own vision at fault. She would never change but his eyes could bleed oceans for her.

  Leo watched Jayden stumble a step back as he pressed his lips to the picture. First, minor quivers caught his shoulders but then they turned to earthquakes that shook his entire frame along. Damn that man escalated fast. Leo heard words, fragmented and hard to connect, something along the lines of: Eliza, I miss you so much.

  It was this peeking curiosity and oblivious innocence in Leo that gauged his next movements. He started by straightening his spine against the wall behind him, his brows falling in an unsure frown, then he leant forwards, slow and cautious, before finally trying to steal a glance at the picture. A mistake more then anything because Jayden flinched, withdrawing it like he didn't want him to see.

Leo's shoulders slouched slightly. "Wanna see." His bottom lip protruded in a sulky pout. "What're you looking at, dad?"

Jayden snorted through the tears like it was the most obvious thing in the world. "I'm looking at your mom, stupid."

Mom. Leo was just five but the word dug a hole in his ribcage. One second the growing cavity there made him feel hollow and the other it made his chest tighten. He'd never seen her, didn't even know what she looked like. All he knew was that she brought him to the world. "Want t'see. Can I see her?"

"No."

"Why?"

"'Cause you're bad. Bad people like you don't deserve to see her."