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( CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO !)
( LET HIM IN OR SHUT HIM OUT )
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"My hand won't magically slip away from yours, stop squeezing it," his brother said with too much sarcasm for Colin' taste, there was even an additional eyeroll as a cherry on top.
Turns out, a lot could happen over summer. Take Cory, for example, he was enjoying his first few months as a teenager, and to Colin, he was still the most tolerable twelve-year ever but to be honest, it was way easier to handle him pre-middle school.
The summer still felt like a dream, nothing much had happened, yet, it was one of the weirdest few months of his life to date. They had actually spent most of their summer with their sister, Cassie had taken them into her house in Boston, they had met her boyfriend- soon-to-be-fiance, and after such a long time Colin had felt like a kid again.
There were other people in the house that did their laundry. He occasionally cooked because he liked it, but on Sundays, Jacob would make them pancakes. No one got angry when burned the toast and Cassie scolded him when he smoked, to the point he had kinda stopped smoking all together.
"I quit biting my nails off so you wouldn't start doing it you know," Cassie said to him one night while he was smoking by the window, the gentle breeze was not enough to ease the unbarable hotness of a night in July. Colin had looked at his hand then, his case was not that severe, he only picked on to the flesh of his thumb when he ws nervous, but he still did it a little. "I'm sorry. I will never stop being sorry for leaving."
It was not their first conversation on the topic not it would be their last. Many fights and accusations and apologies happened before and after that night, and nothing was forgotten or completely forgiven but Colin understood her sister more and more. She left to have a life of her own, it sucked to be the one to be left behind yet she was only a year older than him when she left, she had been so young. She was still young and learning, maybe they would learn together.
The next morning, his threw his cigarettes away, he didn't smoke that much anyway, and he'd hate to think that on day Cory might start smoking because of him.
"I'm just... I missed home," Colin stated, which was not entirely true and the slight uneasiness grew inside of him as they stood out of their houses. "I missed my friends," he added quickly, which was completely true.
Their father would flip a table if he knew they had been with Cassie over the summer but thankfully he thought they had spent the summer with their aunt. Colin had been very unsure of what Casey Archer would say to a request to spend the summer away but he had looked kind of relieved at the idea and was eager to send them off to their aunt.
