"Are you sure you're alright?" Uncle Tom asked for the seventeenth time. I sighed in reply. It was only nine p.m., but I was exhausted. Apparently, playing a soccer match with a bunch of highly energized kids and trying to watch a movie with them afterwards really drains your stamina.
"I am," I reassured him. "It's just one night. And besides, we got inside the building almost an hour before all the crazy shit started."
"There are rumors that a few people have died," Uncle Tom said heavily. "Anyway, I should go. All the employees are stuck at the diner with me. We're trying to see if stuffing lettuce into Ziploc bags will make them passable pillows."
"Damn, that's creative."
"Goodnight, hun."
"Goodnight. And..."
"And what?"
"Thank you."
"What for?"
I tried to keep my voice from wobbling. "For taking me in after...you know. Staying here and spending time with these kids...even the simplest of gestures make them so happy! I just couldn't help but wonder what I would be like if...if you..."
"Meg Riley, are you crying?"
"No," I replied, swallowing the lump in my throat.
"Good. It was my responsibility to look after you. And I'm proud of who you've become. Although, maybe with a little less cursing and a little more positive thoughts."
I laughed a little, before noticing Alex slink into the room, probably finished with a call from his father. "Ok, bye then."
"Bye," Uncle Tom said gently before hanging up. I mustered a "everything's fine" look before turning to Alex.
"The way they treat you, it's like you're seven. I swear they keep asking me the same questions over and over."
"Tell me about it," I snorted. "Although sometimes, even I think you're seven."
"Unfortunately, no one cares."
"Of course they don't. God forbid anybody mistake Sir High-Strong Alex the Valiant to be immature."
"That was a great name," he said defensively, "better than that name you came up with for the magician in your story. Wai-foo? Really? He sounds like one of your horse-sneezes."
I didn't get the chance to do anything more than narrow my eyes at him before Claire showed up. "We've fixed up a room for you! Come on," she gestured at us before heading out into the corridor and towards the stairs.
"I hope you guys find it comfortable. We don't have many extra rooms, or any extra beds. One of you will have to sleep on the couch," she added as we reached the third floor landing, and she pushed open the door. The room was small but cozy, with a single bed against one wall, a small table in the middle with a pitcher of water and a few glasses, and a couch next to the other wall.
"I'm sorry if it's inconvenient," Claire's voice had a hint of worry in it.
"It's fine. Thanks for everything, Claire, really." I said earnestly. Claire beamed before hugging both of us. She then bade us goodnight and walked off towards her own room across the hall.
"Dibs on the bed!" Alex and I exclaimed at the same moment.
"I'm the girl. I should get the bed."
"Yeah, you're a girl who's more than capable of toughening things out. So take the couch."
"I saw the bed first."
"I thought of it first."
"I will RIP YOUR THROAT OUT."
"No need. We'll settle this in a mature, civilized way." Alex said before taking his hand out of his pocket. "Rock, Paper, Scissors".
Five minutes later, Alex was sitting gleefully on the bed while I headed over to the tiny bathroom in a bad mood, having lost to the little dipshit.
"Thank God they had toothbrushes to spare." I muttered.
"How'd you know they're not used?" Alex hollered from the bed.
"Shut up or the used toothbrush will be jammed up your ass."
*
*
*
"Good night, Meg," Alex called out from the other side of the room as I tried to get comfy in the couch. "Try not to traumatize me with your horse-snores."
"I don't snore, Alex. Good night. Oh, and don't suffocate me with your stupid overnight, 'kay?" I said in a fake sweet voice before switching off the lights.
"Meg? Can I ask you something?" Alex's deep voice floated over.
"Sure," I said, suddenly nervous at his serious tone.
"You don't have to answer if you don't want to, but...why the orphanage? I mean, you know, because of...um..."
I leaned back against the pillow and stared up at the dark ceiling. "What makes you think I'm an orphan?"
"I...I just assumed, I guess. I mean, you told me about your dad and I just thought maybe your mom was a touchy subject for you."
"She is a touchy subject for me."
Alex fell silent, but I continued. "My mom's not dead."
"She's...not?" Alex sounded bewildered.
"No," I tried to keep all the bitterness out of my voice, "She's just too unstable to take care of herself, let alone me."
There was a pregnant pause, followed by a sudden shuffling noise, a loud thump, and a muffled "Fudge!" I scrambled to turn the lights back on, and the faint yellowish light illuminated a shirtless Alex lying on the floor; he seemed to have gotten tangled in the covers and fallen off.
When did he take his shirt off? WHY did he take his shirt off? How come he could take his shirt off, but I had to keep my bra on?
Turns out I was right about his finely toned muscles though. Just saying.
"What...are you doing?" was the question I decided to ask.
"I wanted to come over and sit next to you, but I fell," Alex said before narrowing his eyes at the covers. "Anyway, scoot over."
I pulled myself into a sitting position while Alex sat down opposite me. He seemed quite oblivious to the fact that he was missing a shirt.
"Go on," he said gently. "I think you need to talk about this."
Once he said that, all the feelings I'd been repressing for the day flooded the pit of my stomach. And for some strange reason, I realized I needed to talk about it, too.
"My parents met when my father was a senior at college and my mom was a freshman. Pretty cliché story: they fell in love, got married, and had me. We were a happy family, you could say, until I turned thirteen. That's when I started to realize that my parents weren't as happy as I'd thought they were. Dad had to spend many late nights at work, and Mom was getting quite paranoid about it."
At this point I stopped to take a breath. Alex was staring at me with his stomach-flipping intense gaze, but I focused my eyes on a spot on the couch before continuing.
"One night, Dad got home really late. Mom had been drinking, she'd been doing that increasingly for weeks. They had a fight. A really ugly one. I didn't hear the details, just a lot of shouting before I saw my mom stomp out of the house. Dad called up Uncle Tom to look after me before running off to find Mom, who didn't even have her phone with her. Later, Uncle Tom told me that my dad had gone to find Mom because she had been borderline suicidal, and she had once tried to take her own life, way back before they had met.
The rest of the story was a narrative from both my mom and the police. He had walked almost from one end of town to the other before going up to the highway. Back then, there weren't many lights in that place. But apparently, my dad could see my mother sitting on the other side of the wide road. He had probably been overjoyed at finding her, or maybe he had somehow guessed that she was holding a Swiss Army knife in her palms. Either way, when he ran across the road, he didn't notice the bus hurtling at him at eighty miles per hour. The bus driver didn't notice him either."
Alex's toes brushed against mine, sending a slight shiver through me, but I plowed on.
"Mom was barely sane for about a week. The police found her next to Dad's body. They literally had to drag her away just to get him into an ambulance. Anyway, she told us the story in this emotionless voice. She would see things without really looking, hear things without listening, breathe without meaning to live. Once she lost control completely, they locked her up in the Mental Health ward at Jacksonville General."
"Lost control?" Alex asked tentatively.
"Started talking nonsense. Wandering around. Mistook me for her dead sister. Thought Uncle Tom was her grandfather. She...she acted like Dad was alive, and she'd just married him. She still acts like that, apparently."
"Apparently?"
"The last time I visited her was three years ago. I don't want to see her. Thanks to her, I'm almost as good as an orphan. If it weren't for Uncle Tom...that's why I wanted to come here. I wanted to see the real orphans, to see the life I had luckily been saved from." I hadn't realized I was crying until I felt Alex's thumb softly brushing at the tear tracks on my cheek. I braved meeting his eyes.
"I had no idea," he whispered, "That's just...so..."
"So very fucked up?"
"Yeah. Very fudged up."
I sighed, before attempting a joke. "So go on, now you tell me about some traumatizing event of your past."
He removed the hand that had been cupping my face slowly (He'd been cupping my face?!) before turning away from me to rest against the back of the couch.
"Alex?" I asked apprehensively, my voice wobbling a little from the after effects of crying.
"I used to have a sister. She was brutally murdered by the mafia." I couldn't stop the gasp that escaped my lips. Alex slowly turned towards me, and in a split second, the expression on his face changed from sorrow to extreme delight before he burst out laughing.
"You should see your face, Meg!" he managed to get out between his guffaws.
"That wasn't funny."
Alex must've noticed the tears pooling in my eyes again, because a moment later he had pulled me in a hug, without so much of a warning.
"I was just trying to cheer you up," he whispered into my hair.
"I know," I sighed. I was acutely aware of his arms wrapped around me, the slight vibrations I could feel against his chest, and his breath fanning across the top of my head. For the first time in my life, I didn't feel awkward in someone else's arms.
"I'm sorry for being such a pain in the butt for you, Meg."
"Don't apologize for who you are, Alex," I mumbled before smirking. He poked me in the side in reply.
"Ow," I complained before gently removing myself from his embrace. "Don't poke me."
He poked me again.
"Okay, thanks for the hug. And for listening. But now you have to stop poking me and go back to your bed."
"Uh..." I noticed the little blush of his creep up his neck. "You take the bed."
Now, under normal circumstances, I would have taken two jumps and landed on the bed. But now...the guy had just patiently listened to me sob and sniffle over my dead and demented parents, and then he had given me the best hug I've ever gotten from anyone. I couldn't make him sleep on a lumpy couch, could I?
"Nope," I replied. "I'm sleeping here."
"No you're not. Not after..."
"My parents were dead and crazy when you won Rock, Paper, Scissors. No sympathy then, no sympathy now."
"But..."
Before he could finish, I pushed him off the couch. "Goodnight, Alex," I told him, before switching off the lights.
A few moments after I heard the bed creak as Alex lied down, I drifted off to sleep.
*
*
*
"Wake up, biscuit. They say breakfast's ready."
The deep and oddly hot voice sounded from somewhere above my head. I shifted along the soft mattress before reaching my hand out to swat at the source of the noise. My hands connected with something rough and bony.
"Stop slapping me, woman!"
Alex. That was Alex's cheek I was hitting. I was at the orphanage, lying in the comfortable bed, slapping Alex Richards.
Wait. In the bed?
I sat up slowly before groping around the pillow for my glasses. Once I found them, I jammed them on before glaring at Alex. He grinned back at me sheepishly.
"What am I doing on the bed?" I asked him. I noticed he was sitting on the couch, still not wearing a shirt.
"Don't get mad," he started, "but once you fell asleep I transferred you to the bed."
"What do you mean by transfer?"
"As in...I may have carried you? I couldn't sleep, especially while you were lying on this thing."
He carried me. While I was asleep. I probably drooled onto his chest. Oh fuck.
But it was kind of sweet.
"You're not really Sir High-Strong Alex the Valiant, you know. So you can cut the chivalrous shit."
"This isn't chivalry. This is..." his voice trailed off. Then he abruptly changed the topic. "You should visit your mother."
"Seriously Alex? Are you gonna start nagging me about this now?"
"No, but I think you should. No matter what happened, she's still your mother." He paused for a moment before adding, "I could come with you, if you wanted. I mean, to keep you company."
"You mean to annoy the shit out of me?" I asked drily. He smiled his face-changing smile, making me say, "Alright, I'll think about it."
As I climbed out of the bed, I suggested that he put his shirt back on.
"Why?" his smirk was back. "Is it bothering you? I could do a few stretches for you, if you insist."
Once he saw the expression on my face, though, he hastily started to look for his shirt. "I just can't sleep with the darn thing on, that's all," he muttered. "Please don't kill me."
"I won't," I told him. "Not today, at least."
A/n
So all that drama happened. Either y'all will be super happy or super pissed.
Lurv chu for reading, voting, and/or commenting ^.^