Love of Hades

Chapter Two: Dreaming is for Nerds

'Where am I?...Am I dreaming?...This must be...I'm not at my small apartment...I stand up, looked at my hands, the front and back of them, then looked up to see one of the old houses I grew up in. But where was my mother? I walk around the corner to see her high out of her mind on the couch, surrounded by her friends that watched me whenever my mother wanted to go out. She noticed me looking at her which causes her to stand up, walk over to where I was, and kneels in front of me. Taking my hands into hers, she says, "Liana, you're going to see so many people, and I'm going to tell you right now. No one is going to love and care for you more than I will, you may have found someone but that doesn't mean he will love you as much as I did. You can't replace my love!" Without thinking, I push her away when she said that last sentence then everything around me began to get dark.'

-4:34 a.m.-

I quickly shot my body up from my bed after I pushed my mother in the dream. I rub my head feeling a headache approaching, this wasn't the first dream I had of my mother, and woke up with a severe headache, never understood why though. Throwing the blankets off me, I get up to walk to the bathroom that is connected to my room, along with opening the cabinet to grab the aspirin and a paper cup to fill up water to wash it down. The one thing I couldn't stop thinking about was what my mother said 'You can't replace my love' everything about it made me think about her more. It has been nine years since she passed and nine years since I changed my life. I shake off the feeling of her and walk back to my room to see the clock saying [4:35] in the morning, well I might as well go back to sleep since I have to close tonight. Going back under the covers I begin to quickly fall back asleep.

Before I knew it, I was woken up by my alarm going off. Taking a look at my phone to see it was [2:00] in the afternoon, I turn the screen off then gets back up from the bed and fully woke up for the day. It's been two weeks since I was last late to work and ever since Levi started working at the café he's been walking me home, so I wasn't alone which meant I was doing more night shifts instead so he could. It has been a nice change for once, he's been helping me more than anyone has ever done. Since he's been walking with me, I learned a few things about him but nothing about his past, understandable I didn't talk about mine either. Sal hangs out with me from time to time but doesn't know me enough to take a look into my past. As I walk into my kitchen to make some food, I get a notification from my phone, I go to pick it up to see it was from Levi saying 'tonight we're deep cleaning the café so we're closing early.' I sigh knowing tonight is going to be a long night, I already didn't want to go in, but I want to stay living in this place, so unfortunately I have to go do this.

-After Closing-

"What a day!" I say turning the open sign to close and then going to sit down at one of the booths that were close to the door. I lay down and take a quick break to not only collect my thoughts from all the rude customers I had to deal with but because I was already tired and wanted to go to sleep in my bed again. As I was thinking about my bed, Levi leans over the booth to see me laying down and says, "slacking off already?" All I gave him was a shrug then pretended to fall asleep, he moves in front of me to grab my hands and pulls me to sit up. "Awe, I was sleeping," I say jokingly as I stood up in front of him. "Let's get this started, the faster it's done the sooner we can start walking before it gets too late," Levi says as he walks over to each table to flip chairs over on top of them. I couldn't help but smile when I was joking, that's the one thing he was able to do that I wasn't able to do for my entire life. Smile.

Levi took the dining area of the café as I took behind the counter with all the machines. It didn't take us as long as I thought it would, an hour in all Levi had to do was finish moping up the dining area, as he did that I go grab the things that I brought with me, and walk back out. I then go sit in the booth from before and waited for him to get done. Out of the corner of my eye, I notice two strong men standing across the street staring at me through the window. I quickly look away putting my back to them as I gave Levi a look, worried that they were waiting for us to leave. "Levi?" I asked which causes him to stop what he was doing and looks at me, "yeah what is it?" I pointed behind me and said, "those two men across the street, they look like they have been there for a minute, do you think they are waiting for us?" Levi puts the mop in the bucket and looks out the window to see them, he stared back with no emotion coming from his eyes then grabs both the mop and the bucket to put everything away after he watched them walk down the alleyway. I didn't know if he was ready to kick their ass or not, but then again those guys seem nervous when they saw he was watching them. As soon as Levi came back I asked, "did you know them? They walked away as if you gave them the chills" he then puts on his coat and grabs the café keys from the pockets then finally said, "No, but I sure hope they don't try anything." I follow him as we both exited the café and as he was locking the door, I exhale a sigh hoping they left and I was just being paranoid. We begin to start walking, as I couldn't stop looking around us still having that feeling someone was watching, then all of a sudden I didn't notice but my body was getting closer to Levi's and I accidentally bump into him. "Are you okay?" He asks noticing that I was off, "just being paranoid, sorry everything is fine" I said but something told me he knew better than to not notice that I wasn't okay. Another hour goes by and that feeling doesn't go away, so I finally said, "Hey can I ask you something?" he looks over at me as we continue to walk beside each other, "do you think you can stay with me until I can feel comfortable again." Levi turns to look in front of us as a smirk crept on his face, "Yeah, I can do that." Yeah...For some reason that smirk was creepy, I honestly wasn't worried about that though. I mainly didn't want to be alone.