Reminiscence

Chapter .25.

I throw my phone aside, signifying that we were done with the little cunt.
Yes, that's what I'm going to call the number from now. Little Cunt.
Has a ring to it, right?

I look up at Aiden and smile. "Dinner?"

"Sure." He says, still looking at the phone.

I sigh and walk over to him. "Listen, lets forget about that for now and just..relax. Sound good?" I ask, turning his face gently to face me.

His hurricane eyes look even stormier, if that's a word.

"Okay. What do you want help with?" He asks, finally snapping out of it.

"Lasagna sound good?"
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Three there's-dough-in-my-fucking-hairs, Two was-that-salt-or-sugars, and One fuck-I-nearly-blew-the-oven-up later,

"Renesse you better have an extinguisher at home if we're gonna try this shit out again," Aiden warns from his flour-covered, miserable state on the kitchen floor. He must be reconsidering staying with me after what I'd put the poor kid through.

I groan in response and just slump further on the counter.

"How about we quit trying to be those cool 11 year old kids on MasterChef and just order something?" I ask, inching toward my phone.

Aiden lifts his head up. "Thought you'd never ask."
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One perfectly safe delivery later,

"Damn I'm stuffed." I say from the couch.

Let's just say we gave up on the idea of homemade lasagna and just stuck to ordering pizza. Smart, aren't we?

Aiden gets up and discards the pizza box and walks back to me. He looks at me lying cross on the couch, with sauce all over my poor black shirt, and extends his uninjured hand.

I grip it and pull myself up.

"Do you have a room I can sleep in?" He asks, leading me forward.

"Well there's Kelly's room but she has the nose of a dog. She'd know if someone was there so that's a no, we have a guest bedroom but I haven't unlocked it in years I don't know the condition of it and then there's my room." I say, more to myself.

I decide to get rid of the saucy shirt first and head over to Kelly's room to borrow one of her loose shirts. I throw my shirt over my head and open the cupboard door.

Poor Aiden, who thought I was leading him to the guest room, gasped and smacked his hand over his eyes.

"I'm not naked, you know. Plus the girls don't look that bad." I say flatly. I was wearing an undershirt anyway.

He cautiously removes his fingers from his eyes and laughs nervously. "I know I was just- uh, I mean- yeah they must look real nice but-you know what let me just wait in the hallway." He gives up and shuffles down the hallway.

I shake my head and smile and throw on an old 5SOS hoodie and take off my pants because I hate sleeping in pants and put on pajama bottoms instead.

I walk out the door to find Aiden looking at something I painted. As I come close, he looks at me. "Did you do this?" He asks, and his eyes turn stormy.

I look at the painting. It was of a girl and a boy, of about 13, laying in the middle of a sunflower field. The sunflowers are bright and vibrant, reflecting the rays of the sunset, but the girl and the boy lay still, their faces so serene and peaceful that you'd think they were just sleeping. But no. They were dead. I remember when I painted this, on sleepless nights when nightmares would wake me up so I just decided to paint instead.

"Yeah, yeah I did. Why?" I look back at him.

"They're dead." He says it like it's not possible for them to be dead. That in paintings like this, with the sunflowers being so full of life, they shouldn't die in a place where it's so happy. Their graves should be cold and barren, like them.

"Yeah. If you don't like that, you can just think they're sleeping instead. It's a painting you know, Art depends not on how it is made, but how you choose to look at it."

"Teach me your ways of sounding so deep so I can use it as a caption, my guru," He bows his head in mock respect.

"Teach me how you ruin all the deep moments with a corny joke so I can use them to annoy the fuck out of people, my sensei," I bow my head right back at him.

We both look at each other and burst out laughing. Then we laugh again. And then once more.