Blessing in Disguise

Chapter 12: Surprise at midnight

"What kind of drunk are you? I have never seen you drunk." Nyx asked James.

The latter looked up from the food and put down the fork. "I don't like drinking."

"Why?"

"You don't drink too."

Nyx snorted. "Even if I want to, I can't. Doctor's orders. But you can. So why?"

James shrugged, his shoulders slumping. "Every time I drank alcohol, it was never for a good occasion. It only made me feel lonely. I drank more, hoping it would make me feel less lonely, but it didn't. It only made it worse. So, I simply stopped doing it."

***

The next few days Nyx was too busy moving her things to her new apartment. The day after she signed her lease, she woke up early ready to get started. Murmur was meant to be left with either Lucy or Walter until she was done unpacking, but the cat didn't want to be left behind, so Nyx couldn't do anything about it, but take it along. Fortunately, the cat would sit by the widow of the living room, looking at Nyx with its blue eyes as she travelled back and forth from one room to the other with her things in her arms.

Nyx originally wanted to ask her father or Owen for help, but her father went on a business trip a few days ago, and Owen was too busy with his work and family. With things being like this, moving to the new apartment took longer than originally planned, but Nyx didn't mind it. She took her time painting the walls, cleaning the place and setting up the rooms. Putting on some music, singing along to the lyrics while Murmur looked at her... it felt good and therapeutic.

These last three months had been quite tiring. Being alone was exactly what Nyx needed to sort out her feelings and thoughts.

The apartment wasn't that big. It had two rooms, the bedroom and the living room, the kitchen and the bathroom. The small size was something Nyx liked about the place. If the apartment were any bigger, she wouldn't have time to clean it. Besides... living alone in a big place could be quite depressing sometimes. The small place was more comforting.

By the end of the week, Nyx resumed her usual daily routine. Waking up, going to work, coming back from work, playing with Murmur, watching a movie... it was nothing out of the ordinary. Walter dropped by one of these days, following Nyx after work, wanting to take a look at her new apartment.

Nyx didn't have anything against it, but she felt that ever since Walter visited her that day, he started acting weird. Every time they ate lunch together, he would ask Nyx about the neighbourhood and if she had met any of her neighbours, and when Nyx told him that she hadn't ran to any of them yet, Walter would stare at her for a few good minutes as if trying to decide if Nyx was telling the truth or not.

This thing happened so many times, it was getting rather annoying. What was even more irritating was that when Nyx confronted Walter about the reason why he kept asking her about this, the old man would act as if he suddenly got dementia. Nyx felt the burning desire to steal this man's teeth again.

With Walter giving her those strange looks every day, aside from being bothered by it, Nyx started to grow curious as to why her grandfather would act like this. But no matter how much she tried to get him to talk, the old mule wouldn't mutter half a word about it.

Nyx was left with no other choice but to get it out of him by other means.

To annoy Walter, she started taking her jar with teeth with her whenever she went to eat with him. Usually, the jar would be taken with her everywhere, but Nyx didn't take it out of her backpack often because there had been complaints in the company about it before. However, Nyx started taking the jar out of the backpack and place it right in the middle of the table where Walter could have a nice view of it every time they ate lunch. Even when he came to her office to talk about work, the first thing Nyx would do was to move her jar from its usual spot by her computer to the middle of her desk for Walter to spectate.