thin white lines | l. hemmings

19

It wasn't until after noon that they were all awake and done taking their shifts in watching Delaney. They were all still a little on edge if they thought too hard about the situation, but they knew they were fairly safe. Delaney was especially anxious about it because she wasn't nearly as used to this as they were. It was only the third time in her life that she had ever even seen a gun.

Twice within a week, and once before that when she was 15 and looking for some spare cash from her father to give to a senior she knew to supply her with weed. She shoved aside a stapled stack of documents to see the gun. It's safe to say she gave up the hunt and didn't smoke for the next year.

She was one of the last to fully wake up, only before Ashton. By the time she went down to the kitchen, someone must have gone out to the store because Delaney knew there was no way the kitchen was freshly stocked and somehow they were all feasting on different flavoured Pop-Tarts and drinking orange juice.

The thought of the sour orange juice made her cringe as she approached the table, plopping herself on the dining table bench. "Morning," Michael said quickly as she folded her arms on the table and laid her head on top of them.

"Breakfast?" Calum asked, grabbing an almost full box of frosted confetti flavoured Pop-Tarts and sliding it towards her. She lifted her head to peek at what he handed her, furrowing her brows.

"Is this considered breakfast?" She asked, taking one anyway and tearing the package.

"If you eat it in the morning it does," Calum shrugged, taking a mouthful of orange juice from a pristine glass he found in the cupboard. Delaney glanced over at a large clock hanging on the wall that read 3:54.

"It's almost four in the afternoon," she pointed out the contradiction.

"Well then it's an afternoon snack," Luke joined the conversation with the joke.

Delaney bit into the soft, iced pastry, realizing quickly that she barely remembered the last time she had one. After finishing one, she got up from the table to pour herself a glass of water and noticed Michael staring at the picture hanging above where she was sitting.

"That was my peak. I won't ever be able to pull off that amount of sequins again," she joked with a sigh, making all of them laugh a little bit.

"Is that your mom?" Luke pointed at the woman who had Delaney pulled tightly into her chest, her father with a hand on each of their shoulders.

Of course, she knew the photo well. She turned her head to meet her own face, much younger. She tightly pressed her lips together before answering. "Yeah," she let a sharp breath of air out through her nose. "Can you guess why my dad stopped coming up here?" She raised her eyebrows and went back to the remaining Pop-Tart.

The three boys didn't know whether or not to press on, it could be a touchy subject and she had already been through so much the day before. This seemed like something to only talk about if she were to talk about it first. Which she did, but looked quite uncomfortable now that she had.

Ashton came down the stairs, relieving them of the pressure on how to continue the conversation. "Did you get cinnamon ones?" He asked the minute he noticed the boxes on the table. Delaney noticed it out of the corner of her eye and handed it to him. "Sweet." He ripped the cardboard more than needed.

"The concert is tonight, right?" She asked, sweeping the fallen crumbs into her cupped hand.

"Yeah, we'll have to leave from here at like quarter to five probably," Michael said.

"Okay," she nodded and threw out the crumbs, washing out the cup she used before putting it back in the cupboard. She sat back down with them until they had finished eating and talking. Once they were done, they all went back up the stairs to put things back to how they were before they got there. They put the mattress back to the other room and folded the spare blankets.