Status: an epic battle with writers block. lets hope this one will prevale!
You're Not Alone
He Says He's Got Nothing Left To Live For
I looked at him, confused.
“Your stepbrother?” He looked at me with an ashamed look on his face.
“I might as well let you know now that Aiden is unfortunately related to me.” I nodded in understanding.
“Ah, that lovely person is related to you, huh?”
“Jesus, what did he do now?” I laughed.
“Nothing I can’t handle. He came into where I work and made an ass of himself, and then at the club, he was a dick, but that is pretty much the extent of it.”
“Oh, well then, I would consider you extremely lucky.” I snorted a laugh, which probably wasn’t very cute, but it just happened. He smiled and tucked a piece of hair behind my ear. “I had fun dancing with you tonight.”
“You weren’t so bad yourself.”
“Aw shucks!” I laughed and gave him a nudge.
“As fun as this was, I have to be at work in the morning.”
“Darn you and your common sense and responsibility.” He laughed at the look on my face and then stood up and held out his arms. I stood up and wrapped my arms around his waist.
“Thank you for the ride home.” He gave me a kiss on my temple and then we broke the hug.
“You are welcome. Can I see your phone?” I nodded and handed it to him, and then I watched as he put his number in. I walked him over to the door and told him that I would talk to him later. After I watched him get on the elevator, I closed my door and sat back down on the couch. As soon as I got comfortable, my phone started ringing.
~So, what happened?~ I laughed out loud. No one other than Lexi would have been able to text me just as soon as Christian left.
~Nothing all that exciting. I drove us home, and then he left.~
~What?! There wasn’t anything exciting?~
~I found out that he’s related to Aiden. Does that count>~
~As exciting? No, not at all.” I laughed and walked to my bedroom to get ready for bed.
~Well, that is pretty much all that happened.~
~Boo. That is all I have to say. Just, boo!~
“Well you can keep booing all you want. I have to go to sleep. I have to work in the morning, then school the next day.~
~Stupid responsibleness!~
“Funny, that’s what Christian said.~
~What?!~
I texted a goodnight message to Lexi, leaving her hanging about what I meant. After I plugged my phone into the charger, I got into my pj’s and got into bed. Tomorrow was my last day before I had to start my senior year of high school. I had heard that American schools were quite a bit different from British ones. I wasn’t all that excited to see if that was true.
~The Next Morning~
I woke up to ‘Hate My Life’ by Theory of a Deadman ringing right next to my face. I picked it up and saw two things: 1) it was 9 o’clock in the morning, and 2) my least favorite person in the world was calling me.
“Hello.”
“Can you come in right now?”
“Yeah, hello to you too.”
“Enough with the attitude.” Carly said. “The manager I scheduled is sick and no one else can do it.”
“Carly, we’ve been over this before. I am not a manager. I don’t know what I am doing.”
“Yeah, well, you don’t need to. You are scheduled for this morning anyway, so I’m going to need you to go ahead and do that.” I took a moment to compose myself before I said something that I would regret.
“Alright, I will be in as soon as I can.”
“Good.” I hung up the phone and contemplated throwing it across the room. I decided that would be a stupid idea, and settled for getting dressed instead. As soon as I was done, I went down to my car and headed for the stupid place I call work. When I got there, I found Carly standing by the back door, waiting.
“What took you so long?”
“You’ll excuse me if I didn’t really have much notice. You do know that I wasn’t supposed to be here until 11:00 today, right?” She rolled her eyes.
“I already did the stuff that managers have to do. All that is left is stocking stuff, turning machines on- that kind of stuff.” And with that, she was gone. I walked inside and put my Selfish Machines CD into the CD player and turned it to ‘The Boy Who Could Fly’ and got to work. The first thing I did was turn on the machines, since…well, it was an ice cream store. After that, I set up all of the grill stuff, put all the tables and benches together in dining room, and started the laundry. It was about 10:30 by the time that I was done with all of that, so I turned the lights on and grabbed a headset. While I was waiting for the first other employee to come in, I started making waffles and singing along to Pierce the Veil. Ten minutes later, the phone rang, and I knew it was one of three things: a cake order-which I hate taking, the employee calling off or telling me that they would be late, or someone asking when we closed.
“Dairy Queen. This is C.J., how may I help you?”
“Why aren’t you at your apartment?” I scrunched my face up, trying to figure out who was talking to me. “It’s Paige.” She said, sounding hurt that I hadn’t realized who it was right away.
“Yeah, yeah, I figured. What can I do for you?”
“Well, I was bringing you breakfast and was going to talk to you about what happened between you and lover boy last night.” I rolled my eyes and tucked the phone between my shoulder and my ear so I could fold towels as she talked to me.
“Nothing happened between me and lover boy. He took me home, we talked for about five minutes, and then he left.” She scoffed on the other end of the line.
“Well that’s not nearly as juicy as I was expecting. Are you defective or something?” I let out a huge laugh just as someone walked in the back. I saw that it was Cory and waved a hello.
“No, I’m not defective, but I’m not that kind of girl either.”
“I’m not that kind of girl either.” Both of them mocked at the same time, using fake British accents.
“That’s not nice guys.”
“Guys? Who else is there? Is it Christian? Did you lie to me?”
“No, I didn’t lie to you. Cory just walked in. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to get back to work now.”
“Alright, fine. Do you think you’ll be able to do anything later?”
“Probably not. I still have to get all of my stuff together for tomorrow.”
“Ugh, don’t remind me. I so am not looking forward to the first day of school.”
“Yeah, I can see where going to a place full of people that you’ve known for the last ten years of your life would be difficult.” I could practically hear her rolling her eyes.
“You know what I mean CJ.” I laughed.
“Yeah. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Alright. Let me know if you need any help picking out something to wear.”
“Will do. I have to get back to work now before Cory burns the store down.”
“I heard that!” Cory yelled from the grill area.
“Okay. Bye.”
“Bye.” I hung up the phone and put all of the towels where they went, and then walked over to give Cory a hug.
“How are you today Hon?” I smiled.
“Well, okay, considering.” He looked up at me for clarification. “Carly called me in at 9 because the manager for this morning called off and she didn’t want to do it.”
“Why didn’t you call me? I could have come in a little earlier.” I grabbed the toast and started to put it in the toaster. “Thanks.”
“Yep. I was fine, I guess. She came in and did all the things that I didn’t know how to do, but then she left me here all alone.”
“Call me next time.” I smiled, and leaned into his side.
“Hopefully there won’t be a next time.” He laughed.
“I heard that.” I laughed and walked back up on frontline so I could finish stocking stuff. We didn’t have any customers between when Cory got there and when Jeremy got there.
“Hiya love!” I called when I heard the back door open.
“Hey English muffin.” I laughed and gave him a hug as he came onto frontline to clock in. “Is it just us three this morning?” I shook my head.
“I am pretty sure that Jackson and Tony are coming in at 12. I don’t know why they decided to have that many people. I guess it might be because they are stupid and don’t have a manager on shift.”
“Are you serious? Who is supposed to do it?” He asked, throwing away his receipt.
“Your English muffin.” He laughed and gave me another hug and a kiss on the temple.
“You can handle it. As long as there aren’t any boobs on the shift, we’ll be fine.”
“Thankfully I don’t think there are any boobs today. That shift was last week.” I said, making a face to show him how unhappy I was with the last shift.
“Ha! Well, all I can tell you is that you will do fine.” Cory said, walking onto frontline to get something to drink.
“Yeah, I wouldn’t worry about it.” Jeremy added.
“If you guys say I shouldn’t then I won’t, but don’t get any funny ideas.” I said, pointing at each of them. “If you’re slacking, I’ll kick your britches.”
“Ha! She said she is gonna kick our britches.” Jeremy thought this was the funniest thing ever. I had gotten used to them laughing at my accent by now.
Work wasn’t really eventful. We only had a handful of customers, and it had started to rain outside.
“Guys, I’m bored.” I said, sitting on the desk in the back.
“Wanna have another DQ 500?” Jeremy asked with big eyes.
“Ya know, that does sound like fun, but with my luck, one of the owners would walk in and then we would all be fired.”
“That would be a problem. My ki…” Jeremy got cut off by the chime that told us a customer had just walked in. Jeremy and I bum rushed the counter; however, upon seeing who it was, I promptly went to turn around.
“What’s wrong Ma? Shudder in my presence?” I rolled my eyes and balled my fists.
“Something wrong CJ?” Cory asked, coming out of the grill.
“No.” I said, and then I turned back around to face the customer.
“Will this be for here or to go?”
“That depends, if it was to go, would you come with it?” I literally puked in my mouth. The look on his face was priceless, and Jeremy and Cory were laughing behind me.
“No, but really. Order your food and leave please.”
“Alrighty then, this will be for here.” I sighed and took his order, and then went to make his Blizzard while Cory went to make his food.
“So, you were lookin’ pretty good last night.”
“Thanks.” I said, clearly not interested in what he was saying.
“Are you going to DJ more?”
“Probably.”
“Do you know any words that are more than a syllable?”
“Yes, and I’m proud of you for knowing what a syllable is.” He was just standing there looking like he was getting ready to eat little children.
“Order out front.” Cory called from the back. He better had been making an order for drive thru because that is the only acceptable reason as to why he wasn’t up there with me dealing with this punk. I walked over to the pass-through and put all of his food on his tray. If he was any other person, I would have felt bad that he was eating out in dining room all on his own. As it was, he was who he was, and I found myself not giving a shit. After I piled everything on, I grabbed some napkins and went to take the tray out to him. I had gotten about halfway back to the counter when he called me back over to him.
“Can I have more ketchup?” I just stared blankly at him for a minute.
“Why couldn’t you have asked me before I came all the way back over here?” He smirked because he knew he was pissing me off.
“Would you like a complaint filed against you?”
“How many can I get you sir?” I asked, my voice laced with hatred.
“Just one.” I about punched him right there, but I composed myself- like I was having to do a lot that day- and got him his one packet of ketchup. While I was on my way back to the counter, someone picked me up and spun me around. When the person put me down, I about hit them, thinking it was Aiden. When I spun around however, I found myself staring up at Christian.
“Hey!” I said with a smile, hugging him tightly. He hugged me back and kissed my temple. “How are you?” He walked with me back over to the counter, staying on the customer side while I walked around behind it and leaned over to talk to him.
“I’m fine. Just out and about.” I smiled.
“Yeah, uh huh. How did you find out where I worked?” He smiled back at me sheepishly.
“Paige told me.”
"I should've known."
“Your stepbrother?” He looked at me with an ashamed look on his face.
“I might as well let you know now that Aiden is unfortunately related to me.” I nodded in understanding.
“Ah, that lovely person is related to you, huh?”
“Jesus, what did he do now?” I laughed.
“Nothing I can’t handle. He came into where I work and made an ass of himself, and then at the club, he was a dick, but that is pretty much the extent of it.”
“Oh, well then, I would consider you extremely lucky.” I snorted a laugh, which probably wasn’t very cute, but it just happened. He smiled and tucked a piece of hair behind my ear. “I had fun dancing with you tonight.”
“You weren’t so bad yourself.”
“Aw shucks!” I laughed and gave him a nudge.
“As fun as this was, I have to be at work in the morning.”
“Darn you and your common sense and responsibility.” He laughed at the look on my face and then stood up and held out his arms. I stood up and wrapped my arms around his waist.
“Thank you for the ride home.” He gave me a kiss on my temple and then we broke the hug.
“You are welcome. Can I see your phone?” I nodded and handed it to him, and then I watched as he put his number in. I walked him over to the door and told him that I would talk to him later. After I watched him get on the elevator, I closed my door and sat back down on the couch. As soon as I got comfortable, my phone started ringing.
~So, what happened?~ I laughed out loud. No one other than Lexi would have been able to text me just as soon as Christian left.
~Nothing all that exciting. I drove us home, and then he left.~
~What?! There wasn’t anything exciting?~
~I found out that he’s related to Aiden. Does that count>~
~As exciting? No, not at all.” I laughed and walked to my bedroom to get ready for bed.
~Well, that is pretty much all that happened.~
~Boo. That is all I have to say. Just, boo!~
“Well you can keep booing all you want. I have to go to sleep. I have to work in the morning, then school the next day.~
~Stupid responsibleness!~
“Funny, that’s what Christian said.~
~What?!~
I texted a goodnight message to Lexi, leaving her hanging about what I meant. After I plugged my phone into the charger, I got into my pj’s and got into bed. Tomorrow was my last day before I had to start my senior year of high school. I had heard that American schools were quite a bit different from British ones. I wasn’t all that excited to see if that was true.
~The Next Morning~
I woke up to ‘Hate My Life’ by Theory of a Deadman ringing right next to my face. I picked it up and saw two things: 1) it was 9 o’clock in the morning, and 2) my least favorite person in the world was calling me.
“Hello.”
“Can you come in right now?”
“Yeah, hello to you too.”
“Enough with the attitude.” Carly said. “The manager I scheduled is sick and no one else can do it.”
“Carly, we’ve been over this before. I am not a manager. I don’t know what I am doing.”
“Yeah, well, you don’t need to. You are scheduled for this morning anyway, so I’m going to need you to go ahead and do that.” I took a moment to compose myself before I said something that I would regret.
“Alright, I will be in as soon as I can.”
“Good.” I hung up the phone and contemplated throwing it across the room. I decided that would be a stupid idea, and settled for getting dressed instead. As soon as I was done, I went down to my car and headed for the stupid place I call work. When I got there, I found Carly standing by the back door, waiting.
“What took you so long?”
“You’ll excuse me if I didn’t really have much notice. You do know that I wasn’t supposed to be here until 11:00 today, right?” She rolled her eyes.
“I already did the stuff that managers have to do. All that is left is stocking stuff, turning machines on- that kind of stuff.” And with that, she was gone. I walked inside and put my Selfish Machines CD into the CD player and turned it to ‘The Boy Who Could Fly’ and got to work. The first thing I did was turn on the machines, since…well, it was an ice cream store. After that, I set up all of the grill stuff, put all the tables and benches together in dining room, and started the laundry. It was about 10:30 by the time that I was done with all of that, so I turned the lights on and grabbed a headset. While I was waiting for the first other employee to come in, I started making waffles and singing along to Pierce the Veil. Ten minutes later, the phone rang, and I knew it was one of three things: a cake order-which I hate taking, the employee calling off or telling me that they would be late, or someone asking when we closed.
“Dairy Queen. This is C.J., how may I help you?”
“Why aren’t you at your apartment?” I scrunched my face up, trying to figure out who was talking to me. “It’s Paige.” She said, sounding hurt that I hadn’t realized who it was right away.
“Yeah, yeah, I figured. What can I do for you?”
“Well, I was bringing you breakfast and was going to talk to you about what happened between you and lover boy last night.” I rolled my eyes and tucked the phone between my shoulder and my ear so I could fold towels as she talked to me.
“Nothing happened between me and lover boy. He took me home, we talked for about five minutes, and then he left.” She scoffed on the other end of the line.
“Well that’s not nearly as juicy as I was expecting. Are you defective or something?” I let out a huge laugh just as someone walked in the back. I saw that it was Cory and waved a hello.
“No, I’m not defective, but I’m not that kind of girl either.”
“I’m not that kind of girl either.” Both of them mocked at the same time, using fake British accents.
“That’s not nice guys.”
“Guys? Who else is there? Is it Christian? Did you lie to me?”
“No, I didn’t lie to you. Cory just walked in. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to get back to work now.”
“Alright, fine. Do you think you’ll be able to do anything later?”
“Probably not. I still have to get all of my stuff together for tomorrow.”
“Ugh, don’t remind me. I so am not looking forward to the first day of school.”
“Yeah, I can see where going to a place full of people that you’ve known for the last ten years of your life would be difficult.” I could practically hear her rolling her eyes.
“You know what I mean CJ.” I laughed.
“Yeah. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Alright. Let me know if you need any help picking out something to wear.”
“Will do. I have to get back to work now before Cory burns the store down.”
“I heard that!” Cory yelled from the grill area.
“Okay. Bye.”
“Bye.” I hung up the phone and put all of the towels where they went, and then walked over to give Cory a hug.
“How are you today Hon?” I smiled.
“Well, okay, considering.” He looked up at me for clarification. “Carly called me in at 9 because the manager for this morning called off and she didn’t want to do it.”
“Why didn’t you call me? I could have come in a little earlier.” I grabbed the toast and started to put it in the toaster. “Thanks.”
“Yep. I was fine, I guess. She came in and did all the things that I didn’t know how to do, but then she left me here all alone.”
“Call me next time.” I smiled, and leaned into his side.
“Hopefully there won’t be a next time.” He laughed.
“I heard that.” I laughed and walked back up on frontline so I could finish stocking stuff. We didn’t have any customers between when Cory got there and when Jeremy got there.
“Hiya love!” I called when I heard the back door open.
“Hey English muffin.” I laughed and gave him a hug as he came onto frontline to clock in. “Is it just us three this morning?” I shook my head.
“I am pretty sure that Jackson and Tony are coming in at 12. I don’t know why they decided to have that many people. I guess it might be because they are stupid and don’t have a manager on shift.”
“Are you serious? Who is supposed to do it?” He asked, throwing away his receipt.
“Your English muffin.” He laughed and gave me another hug and a kiss on the temple.
“You can handle it. As long as there aren’t any boobs on the shift, we’ll be fine.”
“Thankfully I don’t think there are any boobs today. That shift was last week.” I said, making a face to show him how unhappy I was with the last shift.
“Ha! Well, all I can tell you is that you will do fine.” Cory said, walking onto frontline to get something to drink.
“Yeah, I wouldn’t worry about it.” Jeremy added.
“If you guys say I shouldn’t then I won’t, but don’t get any funny ideas.” I said, pointing at each of them. “If you’re slacking, I’ll kick your britches.”
“Ha! She said she is gonna kick our britches.” Jeremy thought this was the funniest thing ever. I had gotten used to them laughing at my accent by now.
Work wasn’t really eventful. We only had a handful of customers, and it had started to rain outside.
“Guys, I’m bored.” I said, sitting on the desk in the back.
“Wanna have another DQ 500?” Jeremy asked with big eyes.
“Ya know, that does sound like fun, but with my luck, one of the owners would walk in and then we would all be fired.”
“That would be a problem. My ki…” Jeremy got cut off by the chime that told us a customer had just walked in. Jeremy and I bum rushed the counter; however, upon seeing who it was, I promptly went to turn around.
“What’s wrong Ma? Shudder in my presence?” I rolled my eyes and balled my fists.
“Something wrong CJ?” Cory asked, coming out of the grill.
“No.” I said, and then I turned back around to face the customer.
“Will this be for here or to go?”
“That depends, if it was to go, would you come with it?” I literally puked in my mouth. The look on his face was priceless, and Jeremy and Cory were laughing behind me.
“No, but really. Order your food and leave please.”
“Alrighty then, this will be for here.” I sighed and took his order, and then went to make his Blizzard while Cory went to make his food.
“So, you were lookin’ pretty good last night.”
“Thanks.” I said, clearly not interested in what he was saying.
“Are you going to DJ more?”
“Probably.”
“Do you know any words that are more than a syllable?”
“Yes, and I’m proud of you for knowing what a syllable is.” He was just standing there looking like he was getting ready to eat little children.
“Order out front.” Cory called from the back. He better had been making an order for drive thru because that is the only acceptable reason as to why he wasn’t up there with me dealing with this punk. I walked over to the pass-through and put all of his food on his tray. If he was any other person, I would have felt bad that he was eating out in dining room all on his own. As it was, he was who he was, and I found myself not giving a shit. After I piled everything on, I grabbed some napkins and went to take the tray out to him. I had gotten about halfway back to the counter when he called me back over to him.
“Can I have more ketchup?” I just stared blankly at him for a minute.
“Why couldn’t you have asked me before I came all the way back over here?” He smirked because he knew he was pissing me off.
“Would you like a complaint filed against you?”
“How many can I get you sir?” I asked, my voice laced with hatred.
“Just one.” I about punched him right there, but I composed myself- like I was having to do a lot that day- and got him his one packet of ketchup. While I was on my way back to the counter, someone picked me up and spun me around. When the person put me down, I about hit them, thinking it was Aiden. When I spun around however, I found myself staring up at Christian.
“Hey!” I said with a smile, hugging him tightly. He hugged me back and kissed my temple. “How are you?” He walked with me back over to the counter, staying on the customer side while I walked around behind it and leaned over to talk to him.
“I’m fine. Just out and about.” I smiled.
“Yeah, uh huh. How did you find out where I worked?” He smiled back at me sheepishly.
“Paige told me.”
"I should've known."
♠ ♠ ♠
Yeah, aaaahhhh, you know what it is- another update! Yay!!!! Let me know what you think. My teacher is kicking us off of our computers. I will be updating this chapter later tonight-adding video content and whatnot. Bear with me.