"That'll be a ten."
I nodded and reached into my pocket to pay the cashier.
"Ten? What'll be a ten?" Tyler yelled into the phone and startled me.
The money I had taken out from my pocket slipped and fell down, the cashier frowned - there was a huge line behind me.
Smiling at him and holding up a finger, I squatted down and picked up the money on the ground.
"Em, you better tell me what 'ten' we're talking about."
"We're not talking." The cashier raised his eyebrows at me. I shook my head and tried to point at the phone in my other hand.
The money fell again. I cursed, bending down to pick it up.
"Em, you better tell me what you're doing." Tyler said.
"Would you shut up a minute?" I said into my phone, clutching the money with my hand for dear life.
The cashier started looking agitated, his face turned red.
"Ma'am are you going to keep holding up the line?"
"Ah. That's it, isn't it? You're in a grocery store, buying food." Tyler yelled.
"Yes, what's it to you if I do?"
The cashier narrowed his eyes, someone behind me said something about me being a 'little bitch'.
It took me a moment to realize what just happened.
"I'm so sorry, I didn't mean that." I apologized to the cashier.
"Just pay and go, or step out of the line." He said.
I nodded and dropped my money on the counter. I had so many coins in my fist that it made a clattering noise, probably annoying the hell out of the twenty middle-aged moms behind me.
"You said sorry? You actually said sorry? Since when do you apologize for being mean to me?" Tyler demanded.
"Hey! Do you mind hurrying up? We're trying to get our shopping done here." Someone shouted.
"Shut up will? I'm trying to count." I said to Tyler before I mentally slapping myself.
"Bitch." The person loudly proclaimed.
I cursed again.
"Hey man, watch your tongue." Someone in the crowd actually stood up for me.
"Em, you should really watch your mouth. It isn't good for a young lady like yourself to use such foul language." Tyler teased, this probably would've gotten a laugh from any other day, but I was too flustered with counting my coins to pay for the coke and the bag of barbecue chips.
"I'll say whatever the fuck I want." I hissed into the phone.
The cashier continued turning red by the second.
"BITCH." The same person proclaimed again, this time, no one supported me.
I huffed and pushed the last coin into the cashier's hand.
"You almost got me murdered." I told Tyler, watching the now slightly calmer cashier count the money.
He just laughed.
"Asshole." I muttered, making him laugh even more.
The cashier turned glare at me. I mouthed a 'sorry' and pointed to the phone.
He nodded and threw my purchases into a bag and handed it to me.
I nodded a thanks and walked out as fast as possible.
When Tyler called me, I had reached a junction in the road, I could either take left and go home directly or take a right and visit the grocery store. I chose the most obvious route for a bad day. Talking to Tyler while shopping for food hadn't been a smart choice, I almost told the store's janitor to go and fuck himself in the closer - it was for Tyler, but the poor janitor was standing in front of me.
Yeah, it was an eventful visit. I sighed in relief once I was out of the store and on my way home, already stuffing the food into my bag to sneak it past the dragon at home.
"Em, are you even listening to me?" Tyler shouted, making me jump and almost drop my bag.
"Yeah." I said.
"What was I talking about, then?"
I frowned as I considered it, what would he be talking about?
"You were talking about the bad effects of junk food?" I guessed.
"Nice guess." He said grudgingly.
I smirked. "So, I was right?"
"Yeah, yeah, but you and I both know that it was just a lucky guess.
"But I was right." I laughed.
"Yeah." He sighed. "So what's up? What're you upset about."
"What makes you think I'm upset?"
"You're buying junk and sneaking it home, probably risking your mom's wrath. You never do that."
"Actually, this is not the first time I've bought a bag of chips, so it doesn't mean I'm upset."
"Yes, but you only do it when there's no one home and there's no chance of getting caught, at this time, your mom's going to be home and you're taking a big risk." He concluded.
I sighed, Tyler knew me a little too well. "Fine, I'm upset."
"And?" He probed.
"I hurt someone today."
He snickered. "Who? The janitor?"
I laughed. "Nah, someone else, it was pretty bad. I was such a bitch to him."
"Ooh, it's a boy is it? Someone special?"
"Yeah." Well he was special in a way, without him, my article would have no authenticity. "Not the way you think though, I don't like him or anything."
"I thought you were done being nice to people. And what do you mean you were a bitch to him? You're always a bitch."
I ignored his jab at me, calling each other names was normal for us. "Yeah, I'm done pleasing people and stuff, but I was really mean to him."
"Who's this guy?"
"You don't know him." And I wasn't going to tell him either, I wanted to keep writing a secret.
"So, a stranger." He guessed.
I smiled in amusement - in a way, he was right about Ethan being a stranger, Tyler knew everything about me and if there was someone in my life he didn't know, they were as much strangers to me as they were to him. "Yeah."
"So, basically, you're eating shit and screwing up your health because you hurt a stranger you've never met before. Correct?"
"Yeah." Well, he was partly right.
"I don't see why you're so upset about being a bitch to some stranger, you're always a bitch to me."
Anyone else would've taken offense to that, but Tyler and I had our own language, calling me a bitch twice today wasn't even slightly disturbing. "I'm not upset about hurting him, I'm just really disappointed with myself."
"Why?"
"I told you, I judged a guy badly without knowing him."
He finally caught on to my tone and decided to console me. "Look, shit happens and you're human, something you have to be reminded on daily basis, everyone makes mistakes, and it's okay to make mistakes." Then he screwed up the good feeling I got after his speech by adding : "Just like your mother made you."
"Asshole." That was the hundredth time I'd called him that today.
He laughed and I joined him in his laughter.
Tyler and I had a special connection, we agreed on almost everything and shared most beliefs, but both of us led completely different lives, he was one of the smartest guys in his college, and the most hardworking - doing majors in chemistry and physics , while I was possible the laziest teenager with so many dreams that sometimes I got headaches just because of my thoughts.
We were different, but same, if that made any sense. But the one thing about us was the conversation, which never stopped, we could talk to each other forever and not get bored.
We had talked for more than an hour after I reached home when I heard mom call for while trying to demolish the door by banging on it:
"Em, come down for dinner, your dad's here."
Needless to say, she didn't know I was on phone and not preparing for the finals like she thought I was since I'd locked myself in my room.
"I'll talk to you later, bye." I said into the phone and ended the call. Dad barely got time to spend with us, so whenever he did, we made the best of what we could.
"I'm coming, I'm coming." The loud crashing noise stopped and I jumped off the bed and opened the door before she could come back up and knock the door down. Mom had pretty strong arms.
Today, for the first time in a week, our kitchen was in full use and the dinner table was loaded with a lot of food which didn't include salads, making me regret eating that huge bag of chips, and dad was home.
Getting mom and dad together on the same day in the same place for a meal was very hard; they were so busy with their jobs that they barely met, except in mornings when they got ready and went for work, they even had their own cars. So whenever their timetables allowed us to eat a meal together as a family, mom usually relaxed on the crazy health drive.
Dad was on the couch with Ed, talking about something with a lot of obvious emotion, with his arms swinging around wildly. Mom was sitting on a chair a few feet away, watching them with a smile on her lips.
"You know what the best part is? In the end, even the worst people get a happy ending, J.K. Rowling shows us that everyone deserves a happy ending, even if they're not the best people, as long as you repent for your mistakes." Dad finished his monologue with a flourish.
I bit my lip and forced down a laugh; trust dad to deeply analyse a fictional book like Harry Potter at the age of forty eight.
He wasn't even done explaining his philosophy. "Look at Draco Malfoy, he was one of the worst people in the book, but in the end, he realizes his mistakes and probably lives a happy life."
"You don't know that dad, the book never says that." Ed tried to argue.
"Yes, but it has to be assumed because he has kids in the end."
"How does having kids make you happy?" Ed asked, his face filled with confusion as he tried to figure out the connection between kids and happiness.
"You'll know when you have yours." Dad informed him seriously, then reached forward and pulled Ed into a hug.
Ed made a disgusted face. "I don't want kids." My brother was so much like me that I was starting to freak out.
"You'll say that now, but you'll realize how right I am when you're old enough, kids are like blessings." This was pretty normal in our household, so instead of feeling all awkward and saying stuff like 'I love you dad' I rolled my eyes while Ed turned green with embarrassment and said. "Hey dad."
Ed sent me a relieved look for turning dad's attention away from him and releasing him from the hug, Ed didn't do well with a physical show of affection, I just grinned and winked at him, telling him it was okay.
"Speaking of blessings, I don't think you're one." Dad glared at me, with a frown on his rough face; to someone who didn't know him well, he probably would've looked like a very evil step-father who abused his daughter, but to me, he just looked like a kid trying to lie his way out of stealing a cookie by acting all righteous and angry about his honesty.
"I'm not the one who chose to be born into this god forsaken home, remember?"
"Neither did I."
"That doesn't even make sense, you live here."
"I got the short stick on my first kid." He joked. That was so random that I didn't even bother saying anything to that.
Then he laughed and pulled me into a tight hug, crushing my bones - I could actually hear them crack, no wonder Ed wanted to get out of it.
"Dad, you're squeezing me." I muttered, trying to get out of his hold.
"I missed you kid." He replied, still not letting me go.
"What do you mean you missed me? We see each other everyday, remember?" Practically speaking, we did see each other everyday, at five thirty in the morning before I left for training and only for a few moments, but it was more than what Ed saw of him.
"What? In the morning?" He asked, like he'd read my mind. "I wouldn't call that meeting you, more like watching you run out of the house with your hair and clothes falling apart everywhere, while you curse out your coach for calling you so early."
"That doesn't happen everyday, it only happens when I'm late." I argued, although he was completely right about my appearance when I went out in the morning, more than half the time I did my hair while walking to school.
"But you're late everyday." He said, again speaking the truth, I was inevitably late every single day, I just didn't like admitting it.
So I changed the topic to something more interesting than my incapability to follow timetables. "I'm hungry, let's eat."
The best part of my family was our equal and genuine love for food, food could literally change any conversation, if there was an awkward or serious moment, all we had to do was mention how hungry we were, and our focus would go to food from the issue at hand. We were the ultimate foodies.
And like the foodies we were, the moment I said the key word, we started walking to the dinner table.
The only person who didn't get affected by food was mom; for some reason, she didn't think food was more important than life, I even asked her fifty times to confirm it.
I never understood how she and dad got together.
In a way, dad was the epitome of childishness, with his love for teaching us morals using the fictional world as an example, while mom was serious and strict about everything under the sun. That didn't mean she was completely joyless or anything, she was just very practical, she acted according to the real world situation - if there was an occasion for being childish, she was as childish as she could get, but she was always the cool-headed one in the house, with the occasional loss of temper at the state of my room.
They were literally opposites
The one thing they had in common was their love for me and my brother, they cared a lot about us and did a lot more for us than most other parents did for their kids. That was probably the reason I wanted them to be proud of me, I never did bad things or hid anything big from them because I knew how much it would hurt them.
------------------------
My eyes focused on and off the tiny words printed on the cheap paper, the words were blurring and mushing in together, making me blink continuously.
'The Classical Theory Of Income And Employment states that-' I blinked. 'Theory Of Income And Employment states that-' I blinked again, missing the sentence. Narrowing my eyes, I forced myself to focus more.
'Employment states that.....states that-'
"Goddammit"
Unable to take the pain of blinking anymore, I dropped the textbook and leaned back on my cushioned chair, studying the tiny hearts lining the manager's counter, I'd never noticed it before, but they were kind of cute. They were alternatively coloured in red and pink, arranged in a straight line on the white counter to make it as colourful as the rest of the cafe.
It was called Little Hearts for a good reason, there were tiny hearts covering the entire cafe, making me wonder if they came up with the name after screwing up the decoration of the room, maybe the owner wanted to name it Big Hearts, but the decoration had hearts which were too small to be big, and he had to improvise. The only place that wasn't fitted with the heart-shaped objects was the transparent glass-door, through which I was hoping Ethan would walk in.
I checked my phone impatiently for the time, my arms and legs were sticky with sweat and sore from practice, my hair clung to the back of my neck, my head felt woozy from six hours of school, my back hurt from carrying two bags, my stomach was grumbling with hunger, I was itching everywhere because of the dried sweat and Ethan wasn't even here yet. My phone said that it was 7pm, and I had seven missed calls from mom. Perfect.
After slapping Ethan (figuratively speaking) yesterday, I didn't expect him to hang around here and wait for me today, so I didn't bother taking a shower after practice and hurried to get here. Now I felt like shit, physically and mentally. I'd been waiting for what seemed like forever, and he still hadn't turned up, he wasn't even there in the park, I'd kept a good watch on it just in case.
I leaned back on my chair and groaned as my neck gave a creak, there were a couple of bloody cuts on my fists which hurt like a bitch and needed to be taped up, and did I mention that I was hungry? Yeah, I did.
Give it another half an hour, you don't have any right to complain about his punctuality after what you said.
Shutting my eyes closed I leaned on the cold, hard coffee table. The cold seeped into my skin and somehow made me feel more exhausted. I was on the verge of falling asleep.
The phone buzzed loudly, vibrating the table and snapping me out of my sleepiness. Some part of me, the stupid part, wanted to believe that it was Ethan calling me, although he didn't have my number. It wasn't. It was my dear mother, probably planning my death sentence for not answering her calls earlier.
I stood up unsteadily, cursing Preston, Horry, Ethan and the universe for torturing me. I grabbed my bags and walked out of cafe as quickly as possible, my sore arms protesting against the heavy bags and my legs burning every time I took a step forward. Ethan, the article and school could go to hell, I was too tired to care.
I'll deal with it tomorrow, I told myself. Although I wasn't sure if tomorrow wouldn't become day after, and then the next week; after all, one of my best talents was procrastination.
I was still too tired to care, and mom was probably getting ready to practice the art of strangulation, and I wasn't sure if I didn't want to risk it if I was allowed to sleep forever.
So, yeah. That's the tenth. I'm not very happy with it, it'll be cool if you comment and let me know what you think. But if you don't, I'll understand, thanks for reading :)
Cyan
Dedicated to treesa122 for supporting a lot more than I probably deserve :)