Don't Touch Me, Hold My Hand

5

"Here's your shit, you need anything else?" 

Isaac threw a grocery sack onto my bed and it hit my leg. I turned over my shoulder to glare at him.

"Don't let Mom hear you with that mouth." 

He rolled his eyes.

"Mom made this mouth." the suck-up smirked. He didn't say anything else, just stayed standing in the middle of my doorway. 

I sat up and pulled the bag he'd thrown towards me. Opening it, I saw he'd bought the peanut butter fudge cookies I'd asked Mom to get me. I frowned. 

"Isaac you crushed all my cookies when you threw them." I stated plainly, still sitting on the bed, just glaring at him. 

He looked at the cookies and then shrugged and turned to leave. 

"Hey, wait, how long are you home?"

Isaac made a big deal about turning around again to face me and sighed a very long dramatic sigh. He pouted at me. 

"Aweeee, you miss me or something? Understandable, but I can't say the same."

I threw a pillow at him. He didn't flinch. 

"I'm home until Monday, but I'm not even sleeping here, so make sure Mom knows I won't be doing any housework. She always sticks me with dishes." 

"Yeah, who do you think does them while you're gone?" 

He just looked at me. Okay, fine then, he can be that way. Not like I actually wanted him home anyway. 

"Whatever." I said because he was still just standing in my doorway on his phone. "Isaac."

He looked up.

"Leave." I moved my arms out as if I could push him out of my room using the force. 

"Yes your bitchness." He swung himself back into the hallway without shutting my door. I counted to nine, picturing him slinging his lanky body through the house and towards the front door. "Don't forget to tell Mom!" he yelled, and then I heard the door slam shut. 

A wonderful brother I had. Truly. 

~~~~~~~

Yeah, so much for Isaac getting out of housework. No way was I getting him out of dishes the entire weekend. Mom would just make me do them if I told her he wasn't going to be home all weekend, so I took it upon myself to also not be home all weekend. It wouldn't kill our parents to interact with the house a little bit. 

I settled on a cute enough outfit and grabbed the book I was reading. Maybe I could pick up an extra shift at the bookstore downtown. They usually only scheduled me on Mondays and Tuesdays, but I'd cross my fingers for a busy weekend and no-show coworkers. Surely I could manage being out of my house for a Saturday. It couldn't be that hard. From the stories I overhead in all my classes, my classmates did this regularly. Without conscience, it seemed. 

The Book Babe was a small, locally-owned establishment cozied up between a bakery and a thrift store in the downtown square. It was easily my favorite place to be, and I'd told the owner on multiple occasions I'd do overnight shifts if she ever chose to make the store a 24-hour place on weekends or something. Kendra declined me every time, laughing, and always shaking her head like even she, the owner, couldn't imagine being in the bookstore that long. 

"Laura," she'd always say, "if I let you spend the night even once, you'd never leave again. And I'm pretty sure your parents would hold me accountable. Don't make me go to court, I'd have to find jeans without holes in them."