"Loren!" I looked up from saving Isaac's phone number into my contacts to see Leighton walked towards me from the study to my right, her glasses on and her short hair half tied up on the top of her head, indicating that she had been working. Dan's car wasn't in the driveway, and I didn't hear the boys, telling me that the three were out of the house, leaving Leighton and I alone. I sighed, slipping my phone into the pocket of my shorts, turning to her.
"Where have you been?" She stopped a few lengths away from me crossing her arms over her chest, and a brief flash to the future made me feel a premature moment of pity for the twins and the wrath they would face if they ever crossed their mother. She already had years of practice on me before the twins.
"I went to the beach to read," I started, moving the book slightly in my hand. "My car wouldn't start so I had it towed. Isaac and I grabbed lunch, we hung out for a while, and then he brought me home. All innocent." I watched as a mix of emotions danced over Leighton's face, from suspicion to concern, to restraint and relief, then finally something that resembled a resigned, remorseful expression.
"Loren," she started again, exhaling. I held up my hand to stop her.
"I don't want to hear it, Leighton," I sighed, trying to turn away from her, but she lightly grabbed onto my wrist, stopping me.
"Can you just listen, please?" Leighton begged, nodding her head slightly to the side. "You don't know what I'm going to say. Don't cut me off before you even give me a chance." She let go of my arm and moved to the side, sitting down on one of the lower steps, moving close to the wall. Even though I still knew exactly what she was going to say, I followed after a moment, sitting on the same step next to the railing, swiping my hair back behind my ears as I stared forward at the door, knowing that Leighton was looking at me.
"I need to apologize for what I said about Isaac. It was insensitive of me and not at all the kind of comment I should be making as your big sister. I wasn't thinking about you when I said it, but I should have been. I was thinking about Dan. However," her tone started to switch from gentle and apologetic to more firm, and I instantly knew what was coming, and instantly wanted to retreat up the stairs. "Loren, I'm concerned about you."
"Leighton," I tried to interrupt her again, and this time she put her hand on my knee to stop me. I dropped my eyes from the door to where her manicured fingers were resting, another habit she hadn't seemed to drop since moving down south. I wanted to brush them off, but couldn't bring myself to move.
"I may not be around much anymore, but I'm not clueless, baby. I know you nearly flunked out this semester, that you're on academic probation, and that Dad being an alumnus is basically the only reason they're letting you stay." I flinched at her mention of our father and his indirect involvement in my schooling. "I know that you've been partying, that you almost got arrested." I winced even more at her words, at the memory they brought back, trying desperately to dispel it from my mind.
"I need you to talk to me. I need to know what's been going on, why you're acting out like this. I'm worried, Loren, and so is Mom and-" I huffed out a laugh, shaking Leighton's hand off my leg as I shook my head.
"She doesn't actually care about me, Leighton. She's only concerned about her image and her ex, neither of which I am currently doing any good for. Don't buy into her bullshit." Beside me, Leighton folded her hands together as the rest of her body tensed. I didn't need to look at her to see the way her back straightened and her lips pursed, as she fought back the urge to argue back.
"She does, Loren," Leighton sighed, her words tight and controlled. "And so does-" She tried for finish her sentence for the second time, and for the second time I cut her off.
"Stop!" My voice raised marginally, and I was thankful that Dan had taken the boys and I had no fear of upsetting them with my yelling. "Don't you dare try to tell me that Dad cars about me, or any of us." I clenched my fists together as Leighton unclenched hers beside me to reach up and release her hair from over her shoulders, shaking it down and running her hands through it to relax it around her neck.
"Loren," she sighed again, resting her hands in her forehead as her shoulders dropped. I glanced at her as her body relaxed, shaped as tired as her voice sounded. For the first time, I wondered if maybe her attempts at trying to convince me that our father still cared about us, was her own attempt to convince herself. Still, I didn't want to be a part of either.
"No," I forced myself to soften my voice. "I accept your apology, Leighton, and I'm not mad at you over what you said because you're my sister, and I love you, and I know you didn't mean it, but I will not let you try to justify what our parents have done to us, to me, as them somehow showing that they care. They don't. If that had, Dad wouldn't have left us, and Mom wouldn't have exiled me from not just one, but both of our homes this summer, and she would have believed me when I told her about-" I stopped myself suddenly as Leighton's concerned expression started to meld with sadness, and I let Nolan's name linger in the air between us, finding the two-syllable word too painful to say. "Just stop, because there's nothing you can say to me that could convince me that either of them care about me." The infliction in my voice made Leighton's expression dropped as she looked at me, made my heartrate pick up in my chest as I tried, and ultimately failed, to try to keep myself in control of my words and emotions.
As the words ended on my tongue, I stood and stalked up to my room.
Even though it was still early in the afternoon, I stripped myself of the clothes I was wearing for a pair of cotton shorts and a t-shirt, dropping onto my bed after digging through my bags for another book. I settled into the center of my bed, kicking my feet up behind me as I flipped to the first page, letting myself get lost in another world beside my own for a few hours, hoping it would be enough to override the other urges I was feeling, the desire to get lost by other means.
It was the combination of my stomach growling and the sound of car doors shutting outside that eventually pulled me from the worn pages. Then sun was just starting to set, and the boys' squeals of delight mixed with Dan and Leighton's voices carried up the stairs and through the door. Abandoning my book on my bed, I made my way downstairs, wandering into the kitchen where my family was.
Leighton was holding both of the boys in her arms, turning her head between them to kiss both their cheeks and nuzzle her nose into their soft skin, making them squeal and giggle every time. Dan was washing his hands in the kitchen sink, drying his hands on the towel that hung beside it before checking on the two pans of chicken and vegetables that Leighton had frying on the stove.
"Hey, kiddo," he said over his shoulder when I entered the kitchen. "I didn't think you were here. Where's the car?" He kept his head turned towards me as he reached into the cabinets for plates and glasses.
"I had to bring it to AJ's earlier. It wouldn't start and needs a few repairs." I neared him, reaching for the dinnerware he was removing from the cabinets to help him set the table as behind us, Leighton settled the two boys into high chairs and placed some chopped pieces of fruit in front of them from the fridge to keep them occupied while we finished setting up dinner.
"Sounds expensive. You got it covered?" I smiled at Dan at his offer, but shook my head.
"It's taken care of," I responded, choosing to omit the specifics of who was taking care of it, not wanting to start another argument over my interactions with Isaac. "Thank you, though." I helped Dan set the table and then sat between the twins, playing with them as they mashed their food around their trays, more of it ending up on the floor from where they threw it then in their mouths.
In a few moments, Dan settled diagonal from me to my right, Leighton to my left, at the round table, dishes of stir fry in front of us, smaller pieces of the vegetables set aside and softened without the seasonings of the dish for the twins at my sides. I ate quietly for a while, watching as Leighton and Dan both put more effort into feeding their sons than feeding themselves, slowly chewing my food as I tried to dig through my memories for any that even resembled this sort of interaction between myself and my parents. Any image that came to mind, however, contained the revolving door of maids and butlers we had growing up in replace of my parents, and the memory weighed heavy on my chest as I wondered how much life would be different now if my parents had been involved, but felt still filled with the smallest amount of hope, knowing that if I could be sitting here with my sister and her family, watching her laugh at something Dan was saying while simultaneously convincing Elliot to eat a piece of carrot, that maybe everything would be okay.
When dinner was over, and Dan was upstairs bathing the boys while Leighton and I stood in the kitchen clearing away the food and washing the dishes, Leighton looked up at me as she passed me another plate to load into the dishwasher.
"You were awfully quiet at dinner," she commented, leaning over the kitchen counter towards me. I glanced up at her as I settled the plate into the dishwasher, my view of her partially obscured by my bangs, a reminder to me that they could do with a trim. I would have to try a decent hair stylist down here for the summer.
"Just lost in my own thoughts," I responded quietly, shrugging slightly as I straightened, swiping my hair back behind my shoulders.
"Any worth sharing?" I watched Leighton as she gathered the used silverware from the table, looking tired from the day but still content with what she was doing, making me once again aspire to reach a place in my life that she had reached, to feel as happy and as comfortable as she felt, the find peace.
"How nice it is to sit down and have a real family dinner." I watched as Leighton faltered slightly in her movements, the tiniest bit of sadness flickering through her expression, her lips turning down into the briefest of frowns before she corrected it into a smile, but when she looked at me I could still see the trace of sadness behind her green eyes. For the first time, I wondered if maybe she hadn't fully reconciled with our upbringing as I thought.
"You don't realize how much you've missed out on until you actually get it." She tried to smile, but the sadness and regret was still there, showing me just how much Leighton was still hurt by the abandonment of our father and our chronically absent mother, who could never make up for her lack of parenting, no matter how many maids and butlers she tried to send to us to wait on our every need, or how much she tried to buy our affection with cars, clothing, and jewelry. Leighton had moved to Georgia to escape her, Lyla and Lena were in their senior year of college in California to put as much distance between our unhappy home as they could, with no hint of coming back. Only I, somewhat ironically, had stayed so close to home by going to college in New York, and it was likely what fueled the explosive blowout that happened between my mother and I just days before I hopped in my car and drove down her for the summer.
"You'll get out too, baby." Leighton stood from arranging the silverware in the dishwasher and hugged my tightly before I could protest the contact, her chin resting on my shoulder. I resisted my initial reaction to push her away, less comfortable with close proximity and contact these days, and forced myself to reciprocate her hug.
"Thank you," I said softly, "For everything," causing Leighton to pull me tighter against her. I smiled at the hug, but couldn't ignore the sense warning and foreboding that formed in my stomach as my mother pushed her way to the forefront of my mind, and what would happen when I returned for school in the fall, as the email my father had sent echoed the words she had screamed at me, that I wasn't worth it joined it, as Nolan's smug smile as the world believed his side of the story over mine burned behind my eyes, and Isaac seemed to show up right in the middle, along with the dozens of implications of our potential friendship. The past I was so desperately trying to run from seemed to crowd around him, threatening the self-destruction of the one thing that might possibly made me forget my real life long enough to be truly happy.
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A/N: Happy Tuesday! Happy summer! Happy end of school for me (finally!). I hope you all are having an amazing week so far! Don't forget to vote/comment if you're enjoying the story. :)