The silence was palpable.
Even through the phone, and that made me more than a little paranoid. The only thing that I could hear was my own breathing through the phone, hearing it crackle on my end as the stunned silence visibly echoed through the line.
Then, someone coughed.
I had lived there long enough to know what every fart, sneeze, and cough sounded like in that house (you're lying to yourself if you say otherwise about your household), and my hindsight reaction was instinctively 'that's not Alex'. Alex didn't cough like he smoked twenty cigarettes a day, he coughed like it surprised him each and every time.
Finally, someone spoke – and that time it was Alex. An awkward laugh at first, obviously that bit flustered. "I think you have the wrong number."
It was an excuse to hang up the phone and pretend that it never happened. But, no, my tipsy mouth just had to run away with itself.
"Nuh-uh, do not pull that card with me," I continued abruptly, my slur that little bit more obvious, and obviously a little pissed off that he had said that, "you self-righteous prat. You can't just kiss someone and leave 'em high and dry. That's not proper, pal. 'Specially with you walking around in your underwear all of the time. It's so annoying," I groaned, physically slapping my hand over my eyes, "it's like you wanted me to – oh, oh, oh! You did, you sneaky little –"
Finally, I'm cut off. He probably should have done that earlier, before I could go off on a spiel about how sexually frustrated I was at that moment in the time.
"I'm sorry," Alex says, voice firm and far too business-like for my liking, "but this is the wrong number. I hope you find who you're looking for."
The moment he hung up, I was immediately having second thoughts. Was that actually Alex? He wouldn't have responded like that. I frantically scrolled through the phone and made sure that the number I typed out was, in fact, Alex's. And it was, so I had to exhale in relief.
Actually, was it relief? Maybe I should have been panicking over that factor, especially because it was Alex who had heard me say that - heard me spiel out things that probably should have stayed behind firmly closed lips.
I felt sick, and maybe a little giddy along with that. Not a good combination, considering that every time that I inanely laughed – I felt the urge to bend over the toilet bowl.
Just to be safe, I slept in the bath that night.
No water in it, just a pillow and myself folded up in an uncomfortable position. I didn't particularly want Kelly to scold me for vomiting on her floor, so being in a container already was a good idea - especially because the toilet was directly adjacent to that.
But I didn't get sick, so some of my dignity remained. I had a shower in the bath, just about bothering to remove my clothing and toss them to the floor before taking the shower head and monotonously directing it around my body in random directions.
I must have looked like a drowned rat.
Legs tucked up against my chest and hair dripping down my forehead as I held the shower head over me and stared at the rubber duck in front of me that was almost mocking my headache. The warm water was helping soothe my aches and effectively waking me up. Not enough to care when the door swung open to unveil Kelly.
Well, that made me feel a little better. With her hair something akin to a bird's nest and her shirt partially tucked into her sleep pants, Kelly looked like she had been dragged through a bush throughout her unconscious state. Then again, I sure wasn't one to talk.
She glanced over to me and gave me an acknowledging grunt, to which I returned with a slight inclination of my head. And it was the moment when she just continued to the sink to brush her teeth that I realised how comfortable I had come to be here.
There had been a time that I would have been mortified to have someone walk in on me naked (not that she could see anything indecent, but that wasn't the point), and Kelly definitely wouldn't have stepped foot out of her room without doing some pre-preparation.
We merely stayed there in companionable silence before Kelly threw me a towel and grunted that she had to pee. I didn't want to stick around for that, so I tied the towel around my waist and promptly exited the bathroom.
Violet stuck to her plans from the night before, bringing me to therapy without complaint – Alice sitting happily in the back and humming along to whatever tune was playing quietly from the radio. All things considering, it was a relatively comfortable ride. No one felt obligated to speak, so none of that tension that existed between us was really prevalent for those twenty minutes. My mind was on everything else other than the embarrassing call that I had made last night, maybe because I had yet to recall the nitty gritty details of it – but whatever.
"Good morning, Sam," Dr Summers greeted the moment that I stepped into her office, legs elegantly crossed over the other as she sat in her lavish chair as normal – smiling pleasantly as though our sessions had actually become a perk of her job. I highly doubted that, but she did give me some insightful pieces of advice here and there.
I couldn't lie and say that I wasn't at least a little paranoid that she was repeating half of these things to Austin, considering how close they were to one another (the odd mother-son classes indicating little else). But I had retained enough trust with her through those last few weeks to at least hope that she didn't say anything, and even then some part of me would have shrugged his shoulders at the mere prospect of Austin finding out about this.
"Morning," I replied, dropping down to my designated seat.
"So, is there anything that you feel we need to address today?"
It was the same statement that she started every session with, giving me the choice to disclose any information I wished before she directed our entire hour together. Normally, I let her do that. But this time I actually had something in particular on my mind.
"Yeah, there is."
If she was surprised by the blunt statement, she didn't disclose it other than a brief raise of her brow before relaxing back into her seat and allowing me to take the wheel.
"I think we've gotten to the point where you can evaluate that I'm pretty shit at dealing with people."
"I'd phrase it a little less insulting, but I catch your drift," she assured me, a slight smile quirking the corners of her lips.
"I get that communication is pretty important, you've said that before, but how exactly do you talk to people?"
It's not as though I could go up to someone and bluntly ask them a question without expecting a punch to the jaw. Maybe I needed to work on my finesse.
"You're thinking of something in particular, aren't you?"
I made a non-committal noise at that, merely shrugging and averting my gaze. It was more of a yes than I could have hoped for.
"And I'm guessing it's kind of a taboo topic?"
Another shrug. Dr Summers was used to my reluctance in giving more information than I felt comfortable with. But she was a trooper with it, really, continuing on with the next hour as though I had given her each and every detail of my pathetic predicament.
Feeling a little bit more confident when emerging from her office, the rest of the day went off without a hitch. Well, kind of.
Alice had ended up spilling half of her drink all over herself during the film, and I had fallen asleep during it. Other than those two slip ups, it was relatively okay. Even with Violet there. Seemingly the movie tired Alice out way more than any of us had anticipated it to, and the little girl was falling asleep in the back of the car. Right in the middle, because she wanted to be between me and Violet without actually sitting in the front.
"Today was nice," Violet murmured, the gentle trace of a smile on her face as she made that simple observation.
"Yeah." A long and tense silence encompassed us and I drummed my fingers against my knee and ran my tongue over my bottom lip before speaking again. Remember what Summers said, ease into the conversation.
"How did you and Alex meet?"
It was a little bit hasty, but at least I was initiating conversation rather than the other way around. Visibly surprised at the question for a moment, Violet took a second to mull over her response as she pulled left off of the motorway.
"Through work," she said simply, glancing to me as though assessing whether she could continue.
With a slight nod from me, she thought it best to go ahead.
"My office got a pretty odd letter from a video game designer. The format was all over the place and they were more than a little relaxed about it. But it was eye-catching, pretty different from the other drones of letters that we normally get. So I called him back for a meeting."
Violet smiled, letting out one breathless laugh that just sounded like a slight exhale.
"We went out for coffee a few times to discuss advertising his game. And, well, I made a brass assumption that he was trying to charm me into getting the slot. He said that he was just trying to charm me into calling these meet ups a date."
I was silent for a few moments, letting the corniness mull over in my head before I nodded. Well, that was more romantic than any kind of pick up line that I had heard before. To be honest, the most elaborate one I've ever heard was 'you're hot, we should make-out.'
"That sounds nice," I concluded with another one of my solemn nods, feeling a slight twist of guilt in my gut even though I hadn't done anything extremely incriminating at that point. I had just made out with the man that she planned on marrying, nothing else.
Oddly enough, rationalising my actions actually helped somewhat.
"Yeah, it was," she concluded whimsically.
When we got home, I half expected for the house to be cast in darkness. Kelly much preferred going over to friends rather than having them over, and she barely stayed in the house alone on her own accord. Which is something that I had noticed from time to time, that she was scarcely alone. Even if she was just sitting in the corner of a room with someone else in it, she had some kind of companionship. Anyway, evidently she had a good enough reason to stay at home because the living room light was on.
Violet carried Alice inside, draped half over her shoulder as she huffed and fondly said, "if she grows anymore, I won't be able to do this."
Figuring that I had little else to do for the evening, I proceeded in to the sitting room only to stop in my tracks. Kelly was sitting there on the couch, a broad grin on her face as she crossed her legs and absently glanced to the person in front of her every so often.
Austin and Kelly were playing with cards. I blinked a few times before clearing my throat to make my presence home. Austin merely turned around to grin at me, unabashed – in great contrast to Kelly who was looking at me as though I was going to blurt out her atrocious crush on the guy.
"Nice of you to let me know you were abandoning your home, you complete shut in," he teased lightly before turning back to the game, deeming it far too important to dismiss just because I showed up. "But I made a friend, so my time has not been wasted."
"A friend that is completely murdering you at this game," Kelly assessed, snatching away one of his cards with a triumphant 'hmm!'
"I'll leave you two to your..." I peered down at the name on the packet of cards, "top trumps." Alice's top trumps, actually.
Austin was a little bit too preoccupied with trying to beat Kelly to object, but I came back later anyway to sit in the corner of the arm chair and idly glance to how immersed they were getting between flicking through pages of my book.
It was nice. Kind of.
*
Well, Austin wasn't wrong.
I stayed home for the next few days after that, probably lazing away when I could have been doing something productive with my time. I took Alice to her lessons, of course, and occasionally went for a walk either by myself or with Austin. But, for the most of it, I was happily keeping myself company.
Until Alex came home.
Violet wasn't due back until this evening, and everyone else was previously preoccupied – but I still assumed that it must have been her or Kelly coming home rather than Austin.
A lot of my wasted time and idle energy had been dispersed between trying not to think about Alex, and thinking about nothing but him.
"I'm not cooking today, just so you know," I called out to whoever was coming in the door, sounding all too bored. Which, yeah, I was.
"Good to know," a deep voice responded, the heavy clunk of a bag being dropped onto the floor audible.
Shit.
"How was your, uh, trip?" I asked, glancing over the back of the sofa to Alex who was removing his jacket and undoing his tie with a jerking motion.
"Fine." His voice was coarse, and maybe a little bit stern. That didn't help with any anxiety that I might have been feeling at that moment in time. "But I got this really weird call during one of my conferences," insert a brief pause, "on my business number. So everything was on loud speaker."
Oh, shit.
"Wrong number or something?" I tried to continue casually, but a little croak in my voice gave away that bout of confidence that was now quickly dwindling.
"Must have been," Alex hummed, stepping in to the living room and pivoting around the front of the couch to face my sprawled out position. He looked tired, and a little pissed off at that - shadows beneath his eyes and the five o'clock stubble just hinting at his jawline. "'Cause I don't know a single person that would try starting up phone sex while they were drunk. My friends tend to have a little bit more sense than that."
Ouch, now that was a jab and a half.
"Listen – "
"No, you listen," he cut me off, hands splayed on either side of his hips as he peered down at me, almost predatory in nature. "That call almost cost me my deal, but luckily they believed my bullshit about a wrong number. It's times like these that I really remember that you're just a kid."
"I'm seventeen next week," I shot back, feeling a little offended.
"Exactly, a kid." Alex ran his hand over his face and sighed, squeezing his eyes shut for a moment as he tried to clear his thoughts. "Sam, I don't know what you picked up from what happened – but we should just leave it here. Forget everything that happened and just leave it, alright?"
I was stunned, eyes wide and peering up at him before I lost my shit. Screw the communication techniques that Summers had meticulously brought me through, I was fit to burst.
"No," I huffed, standing up and glaring at him, "you don't get to do that to me. I've been fucked over by too many people just to be dropped in the end. Make the choice right now, do you want to be like everyone else or do you wanna do what you want?"
Silence. Again. Any shred of ferocity that he had before lingered in nothing other than a steady rise and fall of his chest as he furrowed his brows and matched my glare.
"What I want to do is illegal," he responded, voice cool and even. I grinned almost sadistically at that, bared teeth and all.
"That just makes it more fun."
*
Any explicit chapters will be posted separately to this story because I really don't want to change the rating. But I'll post an update on this to let you know if and when that will be uploaded.
Picture is of Dr Summers.