The Marble Notebooks

Chapter 25

 After laying low for a few days, Bucky was getting back to normal. We spent a lot of time in the weight room after everyone went to bed so he could work out alone. We also sat on the balcony in silence every morning for the week. He would have little conversations with me here and there about how he felt. His head was all over the place. He spoke to me about memories that were triggered by those words the agent said, the images of my bruised neck flashing in his head every night before bed, or the fears of the trigger words working on him again. The ideas and memories were flooding his head and he couldn't swim out of it. I didn't think his time in solitude all week was the best way to deal with his stress so I suggested a night out on the town.

"What?" He chuckled when I told him. "We can't go to bars, nothing around here is open past 9 anyway,"

"Well, there are other ways to have a night out. Don't you remember being a teenager?" I said sitting with him on the couch in my room.

"Yeah, but what we did back then and what you guys did a few years ago is very different,"

"Maybe, but it will be fun! A night of no responsibility, just fun," I shrugged.

"Okay," He nodded seeming unsure of what I was scheming for us.

I left him in the room to shower and change and went to the kitchen where everyone was cleaning up from dinner. I grabbed a cooler from the pantry to fill with ice. I put beers, wine, vodka, some spiked seltzer's all in the cooler.

"What are you doing with all of that?" Sam asked coming up to me at the fridge.

"Bucky and I are going out," I said.

"What does that even mean?" Pietro asked taking a beer out of the almost full cooler and opening it for himself.

"Well since we can't go out-out, I figured we would pull a high school and get drunk on the basketball court," I said.

"I wanna do that!" Sam said grabbing more alcohol out of the fridge.

"I'm gonna bring down my speaker and some blankets to sit on," I explained.

"I'll bring some basketballs," Pietro said then zoomed out of the kitchen.

"Meet us there in 20," I said and handed the cooler to Sam to bring down then went to get Bucky. We went down to the main floor and out the back doors to the track and basketball court. I turned on the big lights that illuminated the basketball court and Bucky helped me spread out two big blankets on one half of the court.

"So this is your idea of going out as a teenager?" He huffed and sat back on the blanket.

"Almost, a couple more things are coming soon," I smiled and hooked my iPod up to the speaker I brought. "What kinda music do you like? Nothing boring and old please,"

"I thought this was for me. You can't limit my music options," He countered.

"Fine, just pick,"

"Fleetwood Mac," He picked.

"Really?" I smiled and searched for the Fleetwood Mac music I had on my iPod. "You like them?"

"Rhodes suggested them. I enjoy it," He said nodding. I shuffled all the Fleetwood Mac songs I had and Landslide played first. "Yup, I know this one," He smirked a bit.

"Great," I smiled and reached my hands out to pull him up from sitting.

"No," He shook his head.

"What? I didn't even say anything!"

"You want me to dance. I'm not dancing,"

"Oh please, it's just the two of us right now," I said and grabbed his hands out of his lap and began tugging on his arms with all my strength, him not budging a bit.