Stay With Them Tonight

ALLIE P.O.V.

I woke up in the morning, freaking out a little bit when I didn’t see my room around me. I was on a dark couch in a dark room, and I could only make out the blury shapes around me; a TV across from me, a table next to me, a body at the end of the couch. Reality kicked in, and I realized I had fallen asleep in the living room of the Luce house.

So as not to disturb the person on the end of the couch, which I was pretty sure was Jason, I got up slowly and quietly. My legs were all tangled in the blanket someone had thrown over me, and I secretly smiled over at Jason, knowing it was probably him.

Last night, he had also put Danny to bed (Danny didn’t want a girl to do it, or so he said). I had been cleaning up in the kitchen, but went to make sure Jason didn’t smother Danny under the covers, or start a fire with the nightlight (although it could happen, right?). It sounds ridiculous now, but I didn’t have much faith in Jason’s parenting skills.

Instead, I found Jason laying next to Danny, sharing a pillow and Danny watching the book as Jason read it softly and smoothly.

Ten minutes later, when Jason came out into the living room, I didn’t mention a thing to him, but he probably saw I knew, because I wasn’t able to keep the tiny smile off of my face. He had rolled his eyes, which was weird, seeing how that was usually what I did, and went upstairs. And then I had started my movie, which I had gotten over halfway through before he came back down.

After that, he had played one of his favorite movies (with lots of fighting and blood), and we had argued (albeit good-naturedly) over whose movie was the best, continuing to argue and not paying attention to the third movie we had chosen together, when Ryan came home.

“Ryan!” I said, getting up quickly and going to bug him about the date.

“How did it go? Where did you go? Her mom gave you the speech, didn’t she? She’s actually better around the fifth date- she knows you’re serious about Kelly. Are you going out again? Did Kelly look happy?” He laughed, answering my weird questions slowly on purpose to annoy me.

“It went fantastic, we went to some restaurant. Yeah, Kelly looked really happy. Her mom is only, what, five-three? Five-four? She still managed to scare the shit outta me. And I don’t think she’ll be nice until at least the tenth date.”

“Tenth date! So it went well!” I laughed, throwing my hands up in the air. Ryan had sat down in one of the poufy chairs in the family room, Jason was still on the couch, and I sitting on the arm of the chair next to Ryan’s.

“What have you guys been doing?” Ryan had asked.

“Watching movies,” I said, at the same time Jason said “arguing.” I turned to face him.

“Hey! We weren’t arguing that much!” I turned back to Ryan. “He’s just trying to make it sound bad.” Ryan looked between us, looking mystified. After watching Jason with Danny, I was a lot nicer to him.

“Well, I’m going to get changed and we’ll watch some more movies?” he asked, getting up slowly and still looking at us with a confused expression.

“Mm-hm. We can watch one of mine.” I said.

“You only have chick-flicks!” Jason exclaimed.

“You only have horror and bloody movies!” I countered.

*****

And so we had finally agreed on watching How to Train Your Dragon, which was neither a Jason-movie or a chick-flick, until Ryan gave up and went upstairs around two. Jason and I popped in movie after movie after movie, always trying to pick one the other will admit is good. Luckily, I had my stash of favorites in my bag, so I wasn’t stuck choosing from a house that had four males and one female in it.

I guess I had eventually fallen asleep, and Jason not long after. Now here I was, sitting in the kitchen with only the light over the sink on. I walked to the doorway of the living room and looked around in the dim light.

I could play another movie . . . I thought, staring at the darkened TV screen. Jason shifted, and I decided I didn’t want to wake him up by putting another one in. Maybe I could go back to sleep. I stared at the couch, suddenly feeling tired again.

Well this was a waste of time, I told myself. I was about to go turn off the light, when Jason spoke my name groggily, opening his eyes and squinting at me. He had a huge mark where his hand had been resting on his head, and his expression was one of confusion and tiredness. I was struggling not to laugh.

“Yeah?” I asked quietly. He closed his eyes again, resting his head on the back of the couch this time, the mark prominent even in the poor lighting. I chuckled, watching him. Would he even remember he woke up? Probably not.

I decided I liked sleeping-Jason much more than I liked awake-Jason. He was kinda cute, in the way you look at a puppy and go “awww.”

I turned off the light and made my way slowly back to the couch, almost tripping on the second blanket that had gotten thrown on the ground. Picking it up, I sat on the couch and threw it over Jason. Satisfied with that, I curled up and fell asleep again.

*****

“Cow! Cow! It’s a COW!” I shouted, pointing at the mini white-board.

“YES!” Danny shouted, jumping up and waving the board around.

“How did you not see that!?” Jason asked Ryan incredibly. “It has horns! And spots!”

“It looks like a moose! Was that supposed to be a cow?” Ryan asked incredulously. The four of us were currently playing Pictionary, and Danny and I were kicking butt. We high-fived and Danny sat back down.

“Chicken!” I yelled, springing up as Ryan said “nobody’s drawing anything!”

I ran to the oven and pulled the chicken out, setting it on the hot pads. I looked down at it, checking to make sure it didn’t overcook. I sighed in relief. I never remembered to set timers, so anything that I baked wound up overcooked.

“Move the stuff over,” I called. It was about noon, and for some reason I can’t fathom, I chose to cook chicken and seasoned rice. And bake it, no less. I was just in a cooking mood I guess. Everyone had gone along with it, and here we were.

“Wait! Let’s go outside!” I said. The hot food and the cool air would be nice. I was enjoying this babysitting thing way too much. There was a clamor as they got plates and silverware.

“Anybody home?” Kelly asked from the front door. “I knocked, but nobody answered.”

“Hi, Kells,” I called as she walked into the kitchen. I noticed she was glancing over at Ryan every two seconds.

“Hey, I have to go to the bathroom. Kelly, come with me.”

“Can’t you pee by yourself?” she asked as I took her arm and pulled her upstairs. Instead of the bathroom, I pulled her into my guest room.

“How was it?” She smirked at my bluntness and started going off about the date, telling me everything I wanted to know; Ryan had been fantastic, he had smelled good, he had taken her to a restaurant that sounded like a sneeze, and they had laughed and flirted the whole time. She had gotten some weird sounding crap that had turned out to be seafood (she hated seafood) and Ryan had switched plates with her. When she said she had kissed him, a grin came over my face and she blushed back at me.

Eventually, she exhausted my questions, and I exhausted her answers, and we went back downstairs. The guys were already all outside eating on the screened-in back porch, and we grabbed plates and joined them.

“That was a long potty break!” Danny accused us. We shrugged and steered the conversation elsewhere.

*****

Later that night, we all decided to go out bowling. We invited everyone, including Katie and Greg and Tyler and went down to the local place.

By the middle of the game, it was quite clear I was not going to win. I had the lowest score out of everyone, Greg’s score just a few higher than mine. Surprisingly, Katie was hitting almost every single pin, getting high scores every time, and acting like it was no big deal. I was stunned, and couldn’t believe she was so good.

“How did you do that!?” I asked. Every time I tried to throw it straight, it wound up going all screwy and landing in the gutter. Ryan was almost as good as Katie, and Jason, Tyler, and Kelly fell somewhere in the middle. Honestly, I would have expected one of the guys to be the best, possibly Greg, and Katie, being so tiny, to be one of the worst, aside from me; it was a long-established fact in my family that nobody on earth could be as horrible at bowling as I was.

“I just throw it and it hits all the pins, Allie,” Katie said. “I don’t really know how it works.” I pouted. It was my turn, and going right after Katie was a serious confidence drain.

“Need help, Allen?” Tyler asked.

“Please!” I begged. Everyone laughed as he walked over, coming up and putting his hands on my shoulders as I turned to glare at the ten little pins that seemed so far away. He told me the stance to stand in, correcting my position and bringing my hand back. I blushed a little, not knowing why.

I reminded myself of when I was little, and I fell in the pool and almost drowned, and I didn’t like swimming anymore. Tyler was the only reason I had eventually learned to swim. He had taught me as soon as he found out I couldn’t, and had kept teaching me until I learned just a few short weeks later. At the time I was twelve, and had been making excuses not to swim for years.

He stepped back, letting me throw the ball myself, and I threw it. One, two, three, fourpins went down.

“I hit four pins! I hit four pins!” I jumped up and down, and gave Tyler a huge hug. I pulled away and found that everyone was staring at me oddly.

“What?” I asked. “That’s the most I’ve hit the entire game!” I grinned and sat down at the bench, next to Katie.

“Tyler, you are my new favorite person.” I smiled at him as he sat down next to me.

“Ooooh, gutter ball, bro.” Ryan told Jason, who had just done exactly that. He laughed good-naturedly and shook his head.

“I’ll be right back,” he told us. He walked away, towards the bathrooms. He glanced back as he walked away, and our eyes connected. I shrugged it off, wondering why he looked a little different somehow.

“Hey, where’s my brother?” Katie asked.

“He went to the bathroom,” Kelly said from the lane.

“Wait- what Katie?” I asked.

“Hm?” I looked at her oddly.

“You have a brother? Why haven’t I met him?” I accused. Everyone stopped what they were doing to stare at me. I felt myself heat up. Did I just say something stupid?

“Is he here, then?” I pressed. Finally, she laughed. Everybody else did, too.

“Allie,” she said. “I love you, but sometimes you are such a blonde. What’s my last name?” she asked. I thought for a second.

“. . . Mayor, right?”

“Ok, and what’s Greg’s last name?”

“What does Greg have to do- oh crap. It’s Mayor, too, isn’t it? Greg is your brother!?”