Rumored Nights

"Alice right?"

She looked behind her into the face of an innocent looking kid from her Gym class last year sitting behind her in the somewhat empty car.

"Yeah, I'm guessing you're Jason's brother...?"

He smiled and stuck his hand out from the back toward her shot gunned seat.

"Adam, but you can call me Sisky."

A polite but friendly smile found its way to her lips, finding the distraction of this kid's introduction far more welcome since William had left them in the car to let Jason show him something in the house.

Alice rolled down the window by her to let a cool breeze from the seasonal cold front wash out the stale air.

"So how long have you known Bill?" Sisky asked, obviously unaccustomed to the silence that came with enjoying life.

"Couple of years." She shrugged, not wanting to go into detail of their friendship.

Even still she wasn't sure she could explain all those minute details since not even she quite understood how they had become the friends they were today.

It had started off innocently enough, a hot summer day at a baseball field where her brother Ryan had dragged her with him to a baseball game he and a group of neighborhood kids had crudely organized to pass the time.

Looking back on it Alice realized why he had taken her with him on one of his 'no girls allowed' outings unlike all the other times she had begged and pleaded to go.

It had only been a few months after their father's death, long enough for Alice to start having nightmares and to run to comfort of the only protective arms she could find, her older brother.

If the car accident had never happened he would've mocked her or shoved her into Caroline's room, but like the tragedy had haunted Alice's mind with dreams of death, it had caused Ryan to take on the role of older brother, too shaken by his fathers death to lose anyone else in his family.

This day was one of their mothers bad days; days spent lying in bed and buried under the covers to hide her tears from her children.

Ryan wasn't fooled by this and in the absence of their mother's care, he and Caroline had taken on the role of caring for Alice and for their mother, whether it was cooking meals, doing laundry, or cleaning the house.

On that day while Caroline was at a sleep over, it had been left up to Ryan to take care of Alice, choosing to take her with him instead of canceling their plans to stay home with their wounded mom.

That day had changed it all.

While Ryan had been on the baseball diamond, boredom had overtaken Alice and she began to wander, eventually getting into trouble as most eight year olds do.

It had been an accident of course, a common one most uncoordinated eight year olds had, one little misstep and she had slipped onto the concrete.

As her arm bled from protecting her from the fall, a small eight year old Alice curled up on the pavement, her immature mind and concepts of death soon had her under the belief she was going to die.

It was then a tall gangly kid running late to the game found her.

William, almost two years older than her, felt even older as he helped her up off the pavement and dried her tears.

He didn't laugh at her when she asked him if she was going to die but did what her brother would've done by making her laugh to forget the pain.

The years William had been a cub scout weren't wasted as he bandaged her up and proceeded to take her back to the field with his arm protectively around her.

Alice vaguely remembered her brother changing course from running a homerun to running to her, or the look of shame he held when William explained what happened.

It had been that day he realized he wouldn't always be able to protect his little sister, but that he could at least make sure she wasn’t alone.

Alice had never felt like a burden to her older siblings till William became a constant fixture in her home, playing video games with her brother, camping out in the backyard with him; not till she saw what growing up too quickly had cost them.

William must have spent half his life in their home by the time Ryan went off to college just as Alice started high school.

She thought that once her brother wasn't around she'd only see William perhaps in the hallways of their high school, believing a popular kid like him would never take the time to look at the lowly freshman she was.

But quickly, almost overnight, the tables had turned from best friend's sister to best friend and suddenly William began walking her to class, coming over in the afternoons, and taking on the protective role left empty after Ryan's departure.

For someone who had always had a shadow constantly around, waiting to step in if she needed them, the feeling was like having the blankets ripped off you and being exposed to the cold, only to have them quickly replaced.

That first year of high school was where William became Bill, no longer just Alice's brothers' best friend but hers as well, and that was enough to help her ignore the funny way her stomach flipped when his eyes met hers.

Those same eyes and that same reaction hit her, pulling Alice out of her day dreaming and into the present where Bill and Jason were walking back to the car.

"Sorry about that," Jason grinned, getting in the back with Sisky. "My girlfriend called and I enjoyed making Bill squirm with all our lovey doveyness."

"At least it wasn't phone sex." Bill muttered, looking at Alice instead of Jason with a mischievous joking in his eyes.

Hidden behind his playful banter Alice recognized the same warmth that had been in her brother's gaze at Christmas, the last time she had seen him.

But with a second glance she realized there was something more there, something that drove any thought of Ryan from her head and turned her stare pointedly to the window.