Sick Little Games

Jack Barakat was in complete utter shock to say the very least. He didn't expect anything like that to come out of Katherine's mouth, not even anything anywhere close to it. “Wait,” he said, suddenly laughing, “You’re kidding, right?”

The two girls looked at him blankly, total seriousness written all over their foreheads and within their eyes.

“Wow, you’re not joking…” he trailed off, his laughter coming to an abrupt stop.

“Ya think?” Katherine responded, shaking her head at him.

“You need to tell Alex. Now,” Jack stated, suddenly turning completely serious.

“How do you think he would react? Honestly,” Katherine pleaded.

“Maybe you should find out!” Jack threw his arms up in an ‘I don’t know’ kind of way. He was suddenly pissed; he couldn’t stand that she was keeping something this huge from Alex. He thought it would be something easy and simple. He was wrong.

However, a scared and unable-to-talk-to-Alex mood was perfect for the plan. Jack smirked a little at Christine as he realized this, and she nodded.

“Hold on,” Jack said to the two, receiving a slight questioning glare from Katherine. “I’m not going to tell him!” Jack threw his hands up in defense as he walked through the rooms, finding Alex still sitting on the living room’s couch, talking to Lucy.

“Hey,” Jack greeted him with a slight smile on his face, “You want to talk to Katherine, right?”

“I want to know what is going on, yes!” He exclaimed, his head going crazy with thoughts. He hated not knowing. It made him anxious. The fact that everyone was talking in the other room, without him, made him feel even worse. “You know, don’t you?” he asked skeptically, finally looking up at Jack.

“Yeah,” he grinned in accomplishment, “But that’s besides the point,” he added quickly when Alex groaned, glaring at him. “She’s going to tell you right now no matter if she likes it or not, and here’s what we’re going to do…”

-----

Katherine Murphy didn’t know what to think—frankly, she couldn’t think. She couldn’t believe that Christine just locked the door on her after declaring they needed to talk in private, leaving her face to face with Alex Gaskarth, the one and only, swearing she wouldn’t let her out until Alex knew and they were on friendly terms.

Either of those things occurring would be hardly possible in the first place.

Both occurring was as close to impossible as you could get.

Katherine didn’t know how she got herself into this mess, but she had. One thing she knew for sure was that she did not want to deal with it. So she stayed silent, taking in her surroundings.

She’d only been to Jack’s house for parties, and even then, she had never seen the room she was rudely thrown into. She looked aimlessly around the room, from its plain white walls to brown carpeted floors, to the countless amount of papers thrown around in an arrangement of clutter on both of the two desks. It almost looked as if it was a storage room, but something was telling her Jack was just messy.

She jumped slightly as a shadow appeared through the light coming in the window, just to realize it was only Alex. She sighed quietly, studying the way he paced back and forth slightly, hands in his pockets.

“Katherine, just talk to me,” he said gently, turning in her direction. She just shook her head 'no', looking down at her gray converses. “But I need to get out of here; I’m hungry!”

She smiled softly at Alex’s mature nature, but simply shrugged in response.

“You’re being mean,” he pouted, coming over to sit next to Katherine on the dark green sofa planted in the corner of the small room.

“How?” Katherine asked, feeling uncomfortable that he was so close to her that she could smell his scent and feel his warmth.

“Ha!” Alex grinned in victory, “I got you to talk. I win.”

Katherine rolled her eyes at his immature outburst, and looked down at her shoes once again.

“Look at me,” Alex said, changing the tone of his voice completely and picking her head up with one of his hands. “You can tell me anything, you know? I’m not going to judge you or whatever.”

“I know,” Katherine replied softly, shifting her eyes to look anywhere but at his.

“Then why does everyone know but me?” Alex wined, “You trust Jack over me? Jack?”

“I thought I could get some information from him in how to tell you,” she shrugged, “He was absolutely no help.” She wished there was an easier way to go about this and she wished Jack could tell her what it was, but deep inside, she knew there wasn’t in the first place.

“Flat-out is best,” Alex nodded.

“You’re going to freak out…” Katherine trailed off, “You don’t even get it, Alex, this is fucking huge. You’re going to kill me.”

“That’s such a lie.”

“Alright, maybe you won’t kill me, but you’re going to hate me forever,” she frowned, thinking of how much she really did miss Alex when she was away from Maryland. She didn’t know if she could take being away from him again, especially after Lucy now knew Alex was her dad. She wanted more than anything to create a stable life for Lucy, and for herself.

“I could never hate you,” Alex said seriously, but Katherine just sighed, unconvinced. “We’re going to be in here for a while, aren’t we?” he asked suddenly.

“That we are.”