01. 𝒄𝒉𝒐𝒓𝒆𝒔, 𝒄𝒐𝒇𝒇𝒆𝒆, 𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝒄𝒉𝒂𝒐𝒔
"RILEY!"
Shit.
It's bright as day out, yet the teenager pays no mind to it. She's been happily sleeping in her bed, which surrounds her with a warm and fuzzy blanket.
She wants to stay there, instead of having to get up and do her chores.
It's Saturday, a designated chores day. Well, at least until later that evening for dinner.
She hates it, even though it's not too much. She's just got to dust the apartment, switch and change all the laundry, clean and organize her bathroom, put away the dishes, and vaccum her room, which is carpeted.
She knows it's only going to take less than an hour, if she is quick with it anyways, but she still doesn't want to get out of bed. I mean, she's got to actually get up and out of bed and do things, when she could really just be laying in bed and relaxing all day.
"Riley, you up yet?" Her mother calls from the living room, making her child groan.
Ok, now she has to get up. The last thing Riley would want is an irritated Hanna for the rest of the day. She sits up in bed, her hair tangled and sticking out everywhere, rubbing her eyes to try and wipe the sleep away.
She leans over, her hand wildly reaching for her water bottle on her night stand, her throat practically parched. She takes a few gulps of the fresh water, and then sighs.
"Yeah, I'm up," Riley shouts roughly, her voice low and groggy. She hears her Mom's laughter from down the hall at her tone.
"You want some coffee or something? You sound like Godzilla there," Riley rolls her eyes at this comment, already irritated that she has to get up and not sleep in on a Saturday.
"No. I fucking hate coffee," the teen mumbles, forcing herself to roll out of bed. She stands and stretches, feeling immediately better - physically - afterwards.
"What was that?" Hanna yells playfully, and Riley throws her arms up in the air.
How can she hear that, but not my multiple yells when I call her from a singular room away? Riley thinks to herself, her irritation already turning into its normal angry nature.
"I didn't say anything Mom," Riley shouts back, just trying to shake off her bad mood, trying to make her day a little bit easier for herself.
She stumbles over to her saucer shaped chair, and grabs her clothes she put out last night on it. She gets dressed in just some sweatpants, a grey "I-Love-Dog's-It's-Human's-That-Annoy-Me" t-shirt (one of her personal favorites), and a blue flannel.
Oh, and her slippers.
And then she heads out of her room for chores galore, not giving a damn about her hair.
"Oh look at that, you got all ready. Actually, that's really good. Grab what you need and we're going to a coffee house," Hanna, Riley's mother, says, which confuses her daughter.
"Huh?" Riley's still groggy.
"Get some shoes on and grab your phone and lets go, we're going to a coffee house," Hanna seemed genuinely excited about it, which did bring a small smile and some excitement to Riley's face.
"Okay then," Riley's mood increased greatly over the past few seconds.
Yes, she did just curse coffee off the face of the Earth seconds earlier, but that was before she knew she would be getting to skip her chores.
Her mother walks away into her own room, and Riley doesn't know whether to be anxious or suspicious.
Her mother, well she seemed overly excited about coffee. Or, Riley could be overthinking it, and believe her mother when she gets excited about coffee.
So, sighing, she trudges back to her room. Her brain can barely put together a sentence, so everything takes her a bit longer.
Maybe some fucking coffee will help, she jokes.
Just shaking her head, the teen puts on some socks from the floor -which don't match but who cares - and high top converses', which she had thrown against the wall the previous night before. Her slippers unfortunately had to come off.
Hearing her mom's footsteps down the hall, she leads herself back out into the living room, following and closing the door behind her mom, after taming her hair slightly.
But by tame I mean she just pulled her fingers through it, and shoved it into a low ponytail, not really giving a shit.
She gets that from her father, the not giving a shit part. He really fell apart after the divorce, as Riley noticed but never spoke a word. It rubbed off on her -- no, he rubbed off on her. Hanna seemed overjoyed at his falling, but kept that private, to protect her daughter's feelings. Riley pretended to not notice that too.
It's a common theme with the Johnson-Brock family. Pretending everything is fine for someone, and when they leave and you go back to the piece of shit life you dug up.
Real healthy, obviously.
☢︎︎☢︎︎☢︎︎
EDDIE was panicking. He'd called Hanna and Riley each a couple of times, and neither were answering (hence, Riley forgot her phone at the apartment and Hanna's is on silent... and, maybe she just doesn't want to answer her ex-husband). But he wasn't panicking about them, no. He was panicking about something else.
Someone else.
It was Saturday, which was the switching day for him. For Riley, it was just chores day. For Hanna, it was the most dreaded day.
Every summer, one week after school ends for Riley, the Johnson-Brock crew gets together and has dinner at some restaurant in San Francisco.
It's customary that after dinner, Riley goes home with Eddie and stays with him for the summer, while her mother goes back to Queens. Then, when school starts up again, her mother flies all the way back to San Fran, grabs Riley, and brings her to Queens for the school year.
Yes, it might seem extremely weird or unsafe to some, but even with their mutual hatred for one another, both Eddie and Hanna have their best interests towards Riley. And they will keep her safe just as any other parents would. This system is just what works for them, and they both understand that. And they trust one another enough to keep her safe and healthy, and that's all they need to know.
Also, the world saw robotic aliens come from space, a robot try to take over the world, and a bunch of super soldiers, magical beings, and technologically advanced people save the world from absolute death, so no one can really say shit.
Today, though, that restaurant was the Fog Harbor Fish House. Even with their current situation, the family always did like a good view; especially if it was the Golden Gate Bridge.
And now, Eddie Brock was freaking out about someone, as I said before.
But it wasn't about a gooey substance, not yet anyways.
It was about his reservation that he booked, that was supposed to be at seven pm. Now, he had just got a call from them saying that they had to cancel his reservation.
Yes, that irritated him, but it wasn't that much of a big deal to him. It wasn't that aspect that made him panic-- it was the fact that Hanna would not in fact like that at all.
And Hanna sometimes scared the living shit out of him, if he was being honest. The woman liked everything to be nice and tidy, everything to have a spot and to stay there, unless you were using it. But that also meant you had to put it back the way you found it.
And I'm not saying that Hanna threw a hairdryer at Eddie's head once, but I'm also saying that Hanna threw a hairdryer at Eddie's head once. He was fine, as it missed him entirely, but it definitely made him slightly fear the woman ever since. Not even his own anger from that day could beat the small part of him that feared not only his ex-wife, but any hairdryer he saw nowadays.
Luckily, Riley knew about none of such situation, probably for the best.
But now he might have to deal with an angry Hanna, which is the last thing he wanted. It seems to run in the family today; wanting Hanna to be pleased rather than angered. Again, probably for the best.
Yet his second dilemma that the girls weren't answering his calls definitely set him on edge more, but he knew he had to do something.
So he decided, after calling each girl twice, that he would just send a final text to Hanna and explain to her what happened, and hope and pray to God that she wouldn't murder him.
Meanwhile, the ladies themselves were already out of the coffee shop, having gotten their drinks.
Hanna, a coffee, sugar but no cream inside.
Riley, a chocolate mocha.
They had just gotten into the grey Jeep Grand Cherokee that Hanna drove, when her phone buzzed once again. Riley had noticed from the second it had started this morning, but never said anything.
But now it was annoying and she knew exactly who was texting her so much. There was not one person who Hanna deliberately ignored as much as Eddie, which made Riley roll her eyes, setting her coffee in a cup holder between the driver and passenger seat.
"Mom."
"What?" Hanna says, fishing through her purse for her keys. Riley keeps a glare on her mother, her eyes filled with exasperation. Hanna recognizes this and stops, sighing back into the seat. "Riley..."
"Mom, why can't you two just, like, get along? It's just that it's hard, man, like, to see you ignore someone so... awesome."
"Oh so now he's awesome?! What am I, chopped liver?"
"Mom." Riley deadpans, not in the mood for redirective sarcasm.
"Riley."
"Could you just answer it? He could be dead or something, or he could really need something," Riley watched as her mother rolls her eyes, in the same manor Riley did.
"I'm sure he's fine, we've got plans for tonight all set up so I see no reason to answer- hey!" Hanna tried to stop her daughter, but it was too late. She had already grabbed the phone and started to look. Riley frowned, opening her dad's texts.
Hanna throws her hands in the air, landing them hard on her lap. She knows she can't beat her daughter in this; there's no point, she's already got her phone.
Riley's eyes widen, suddenly reading the text about the change of plans. Uh-oh, she thinks, crap, mom is gonna freak.
She immediately decides to just say it now rather than let it build at her all day long, "uh, mom? Dad kinda said that the plans are cancelled."
"What?!" Hanna's whole body snaps up, her head whipping to her daughter like a windmill.
"Here..." Riley quickly fumbles to hand off the phone, inhaling sharply as her mother stares at it, eyebrows leaning deeper into the bridge above her nose.
She knows best to just stay quiet and agree with her mother in these times, so she swallows and wracks her brain of something to say to help her mother feel better.
The exact opposite of what she should do. But thankfully nothing comes, saving her from probable death.
Hanna grunts, shoving her phone back into her bag, and forcefully starts the car. She makes her way out of the parking space and onto the streets of San Francisco.
It's a tense, preferably quiet car ride, with the music from the radio just barely breaching Riley's ears. But it's not too long of a wait, fortunately, when her mother's tone is flat, expressing her pissed off demeanor.
"We're going to see your father earlier than expected."
HELLO LOVLIES - the first chapter of this book! eek, i'm excited, and i hope you are too. this book has become a reality in favor of the new venom movie that came out yesterday, which i just saw, and i absolutely loved it! sorry, no spoilers! either way, i will tie this all into that movie, but i have something to say beforehand. it takes a lot of effort and work to plan, create, write, edit, and perfect these chapters, so please vote and comment, as it brings a smile to my face, alongside probably a lot of other authors on here. anyways, that's all for now, and i'll talk to you all later :) happy reading !