Stay With Them Tonight

The cup had jumped from my hand, dumping the rest of the water on Jason before hitting his chest, much like I had, and falling to the floor.

The cup rolled dejectedly around us and stopped against my foot. I felt my face explode in heat. Kill me now, please, I thought.

*****

“Uh.” Boy I was being eloquent. We were looking at each other, and he seemed almost as bewildered as I was. “Hi,” I started. “D-do you think I could, uh,” I stuttered. I was trying to say I needed to get around him.

“So you already fell for me?” he asked, using the literal interpretation of this situation to his advantage. He smirked at me. I scowled at him.

He looked down, seeing right through my white shirt to my blue bra (it wouldn’t have been nearly so bad if this had happened when I was still wearing my blue shirt earlier) and down to my pants, which were soaked and still looked like I had peed myself.

“Shut up. Let me go,” I said harshly, blushing furiously.

“You first.” Oh. My hands were gripping his shoulders. I was still tilted towards him. I took a step forward to stand straight, which happened to be one step closer to him that I wish I didn’t have to take. I couldn’t move back, not with his hands firmly on my waist.

Even when I was standing straight, I only barely came up to his face. I guessed that he was about six inches taller than me, at least. My eye-level was right about at his mouth. I pointedly didn’t look there.

I decided I really needed to get out of this situation. I raised my hands, palms toward him and open, showing him very obviously that I had let go. He just smirked again and copied me, pulling his hands slowly away from my waist and holding them in the air around me, palms open.

I stepped backwards this time to get away from his hands at my sides, being careful not to fall down the stairs. How perfect would that be? I thought. And Jason looked like he would use any excuse to touch me again. I definitely didn’t want to look like he needed to stop me to keep me from falling down the stairs.

I walked around him, and I felt him turn to look at me. I knew without looking that he was still smirking.

Well, that was interesting . . . I thought to myself.

I looked to the right automatically when the open space came up, and saw that Ryan was looking up at me from the family room, and I silently cursed that you could see from downstairs. Or could you? It was pretty dark up here, since I hadn’t turned the hallway light on. Did he see what just happened!? No, he couldn’t have been looking that long, right? It’s not light enough for him to have seen it.

**** *

I was downstairs in the kitchen in black scrub bottoms and a green tank top with Gir slippers. I had taken a second while changing out of my previous wet clothes to be happy I had brought something in addition to my sleeping shorts.

When I had come back out of the room, Jason was coming back up. When he saw me from across the hallway, he gave me a knowing look, trying to imply something. I glared back at him.

I finished the last of the movie with Ryan and Danny, and figured it was time to eat. It was a little after six by now.

“You okay, Allie?” Ryan asked from the living room, where he was playing with Danny. I had been in here for quite a few minutes, wondering what to make for dinner.

“Yeah. What do you guys want for dinner?” I had the walk-in pantry open, and I was looking at the boxes of Hamburger Helper and such.

“S’getti!!” Danny called. His voice was a little bit muffled from the wall separating us.

“Okay,” I said back. “Where is that stuff?” I muttered, still looking around the Hamburger Helper. “It should be around here,” I told myself.

“Nope. It’s over here.” I jumped about a foot and turned to see Jason with spaghetti in his hand, holding it out to me. I snatched it from his hand angrily.

“Will you stop fucking doing that!?” I said quietly as I stormed past him into the kitchen.

“Doing what?”

“Doing that! That stupid face you make. This isn’t a joke. Just stop, okay? I’m here mostly for Danny and so your mom won’t worry while she’s away, so either play nice or get away from me.” I looked around the kitchen for a second. “Where’s a pot?” I asked him, instead of looking like an idiot and opening every cupboard.

“Oh, I can play very nice, if you want me to.” He opened a cupboard near my leg and gave pulled out a nice-sized pot and handed it to me.

“See what I mean? Just go away.” I turned away from him and filled it with water, ignoring the directions on the box. I put it on the stove and added a little salt. In the meantime, I walked into the pantry and got tomato sauce.

I delved into the fridge until I found ground beef and put that in a skillet, which I curtly asked Jason to get for me. He sat on a counter, wisely on the other wall of the kitchen, while I pulled out a smaller pot for the sauce from the same cupboard as the bigger pot. I put the spaghetti in the boiling water as I drained the meat and put it in the sauce.

Ryan poked his head in, giving his brother a look. “Hey, Allie. You alright?” He looked over at his brother again, and I suppressed a smirk of my own. Jason returned Ryan’s look mockingly.

“Yep. Dinner’s ready in a few minutes, so you might want to wash your hands. Danny, too.” I ignored Jason, but he got up and went to the sink to wash his hands. Ryan left to get Danny. “Can you get out some bowls, please?” I asked Jason. If he was willing to be civil, I was too.

He got four out and set them next to the stove. He also got a strainer from a cupboard above me, and leaned in close. I moved away, and he gave it to me. The amused smirk had come back when I moved away from him.

I was glad someone was here so I didn’t have to fumble my way through all of the cabinets, but I discovered they were pretty much in the same order as my own at home. In the morning I could probably do without anyone helping me.

I jumped as someone touched my shoulder, and I grinned when I turned around and saw it was Ryan. “Food ready?” he asked.

“Yeah, just let me drain the pasta.” He took the pot before I could and grabbed the strainer. “Thanks.”

Jason seemed bored and wandered into the other room. I smiled in relief. “You really don’t like him, do you?” Ryan murmured quietly when he came back with the strained pasta.

“Nope,” I said definitely. We laughed.

“Pasta!” Danny came into the kitchen, Jason in tow. Ryan grabbed a bowl and filled it for him, and we sat down to eat. Nothing could ever be silent when Danny is around, and he started talking as soon as he had a fork in his hand. I remembered that we had been eating spaghetti when I first learned we were moving.

“Is Danny really that funny?” Ryan asked. I was smiling as I remembered, and Danny had just told some joke.

“No, I was smiling because I haven’t had pasta since we started moving. We’ve been living on pizza and Chinese while the houses have been messes.” Why was this so interesting? I didn’t know, but we started talking about me moving and what it was like while Danny had a one-sided conversation with Jason.

“It wasn’t bad, and we only moved like twenty minutes away. It’s closer to my new school, and I’m near Kelly.” He looked surprised when I mentioned Kelly.

“Kelly-down-the-street-Kelly?” he looked interested. I twisted more pasta and ate it, getting sauce on my chin. He laughed and handed me a napkin. I heard Jason chuckle, but when Ryan and I looked over he was completely engrossed in conversation with Danny.

“Yep. She’s my best friend,” I continued out conversation. We talked more about her until we were done eating. I started cleaning up, and Ryan joined in. Jason just walked out with Danny.

Lazy jerk. I didn’t realize I spoke aloud until Ryan laughed. We finished by 7:30, and Danny went to take a shower. He got out smelling of shampoo and soap, his dark hair curling to his head. He looked a lot like what a younger version of Jason would look like.

I couldn’t imagine Ryan, with his shorter hair, looking like this particularly adorable kid here. I imagined him tiny with a grin and short fuzzy hair. I smiled at the thought. He must have been cute as a kid.

“Can you read, Allie?” Danny looked up at me pleadingly. I laughed and said I could. “Yeah!” he cried, taking my hand for the billionth time tonight to lead me to a room I hadn’t been in before.

It was his room, which was on the main floor. There were a few toys left out, but there were bins along one wall with toys filling them. His bed was partially made, and his floor looked freshly vacuumed. It was the work of a neat six-year-old boy and his mom.

He told me to sit in the chair against his wall by his bed, and Ryan went to get a book from the short bookshelf as Danny wriggled under the covers. This is very domesticated, I thought. It was unnerving to think that I might be here in ten years. At least, I hope I might be, I thought. This was way too much to wonder when I was just babysitting, and I shook my head to clear the thoughts. There was a small sports lamp next to the bed which switched on when you turned on the light switch.

Ryan brought over a Dr. Seuss book. I stared at the cover. All the rhymes would surely tangle my words. I opened it and hoped for the best.

I stared down at the page a few minutes later, willing myself not to mess up. “. . . When beetles fight these battles in a bottle with their paddles and the bottle’s on a poodle and the poodle’s eating noodles, they call this a muddle puddle tweetle poodle beetle noodle bottle paddle battle.” If that’s not a tongue-twister, I don’t know what is.

I felt a hand on my knee, and I jumped about a foot. Ryan brought his finger to his lips and pointed to Danny, who was fast asleep. I quietly put Fox in Socks back on the bookshelf, still trying to puzzle out that sentence, and snuck out of the room with Ryan.

“How long was he asleep?” I asked in a whisper when we were safely out of the room and far enough away that we wouldn’t wake up Danny. Ryan led me into the family room, and we sat down on the couch and he turned on the TV to a movie.

“About five minutes,” he stated bluntly. He looked at me from the corner of his eye.

“What? Why didn’t you tell me sooner?” I asked him accusingly. He grinned.

“Because it was funny watching your face while you tried to keep your words straight.” He continued watching the random movie, but I wasn’t really paying attention. He seemed flirty sometimes, but I thought that was his personality. It was, right?

I was tired from tossing and turning all last night, so after an hour of watching some horrible comedy, which we made fun of the whole time, I said I was going to bed.

“Really?” Ryan looked disappointed for the lack of company.

“Yeah. I have work at seven, so it’s best if I go to bed now. Uh,” I said awkwardly. “Can I take a shower?” Curse my stupid easy blush. I hadn’t thought of taking a shower before I came, and with having worked all day I felt the need for a shower.

He looked about as uncomfortable as I felt. “Yeah, you know where the bathroom is?”

“Yeah. End of the hall upstairs, right?” I started getting up and walking away as I talked.

“Uhuh. I’ll see you in the morning,” he said, smiling. His dimples came out.

I smiled back and went upstairs. That was not a very good conversation, I thought.

I went into the bathroom, glad I had shorts and another tank to change into when I got out. I grabbed those and other necessary stuff and went into the bathroom. Somehow I avoided Jason, which seemed like more than I had been able to do all night. I locked the door, just to make sure.

I opened a cabinet and found a towel, and brushed my teeth quickly while the hot water came on.

I was enjoying the hot water relaxing my muscles and looking forward to going to bed. Until halfway through the shower when there was a bang on the door.

“Ry, hurry the fuck up.” I wished it were anyone other than Jason. So much for avoiding him.

“I’m not—” I started before I heard Ryan calling from downstairs that Jason was an idiot and it was not him in the bathroom.

“What? Well, shit. How the hell was I supposed to know?” his voice got farther away as he quickly walked away. Did he have a cussing issue? I mean, I had cussed more than usual that night, but I was stressed from the tension of “babysitting” two guys my age. And I was stressed even more from having said boys get a really good look through my soaking white shirt and having to deal with a playboy.

Shower done, I used the towel and hung it up to dry, changing into my shorts and extra tank top. I turned the light out before I left the bathroom so if I ran into one of the guys they wouldn’t be able to see me well.

I cautiously opened the door and made a mad dash to the guest room, which was right next to the bathroom. I shut the door quickly and leaned against it, finally relaxed.

I went and opened the window a little since the air had turned off and it was nice outside, even if it was raining. I went to the double-sized bed and crawled under the blankets, even though I knew I would probably kick them off sometime during the night. I wrapped myself in the covers and fell into my dreams in as soon as my head hit the pillow.