Fate's Cruelty

Chapter Twenty Three: Battling Thoughts

Chapter Twenty Three: Battling Thoughts

                I ran down the stairs taking them two at a time. It was Monday morning and I was already running late for school. I dashed into the kitchen and found my mother sitting at the kitchen table, staring at her cup of coffee in her hands. My fast pace slowed as I grabbed for an apple and I stared at my mother. Her dyed red hair was down cascading down her back in natural waves; usually it was up in a bun, her usual do for work but today she wasn’t even dressed.

                It had always been my mom and me in the house and it wasn’t because my dad left us or anything. He was still in our lives he was just out of the country. He was in the army and as much as my mom and I hated it, it was something he wanted to do. Fight for his country.

                I cleared my throat but that didn’t get attention. Something was wrong. I could feel it, my mother was never like this, she was usually up early and ready to go before I even was but today she was still wearing her PJ’s.

                “Ma?” I asked setting down my apple and sitting down in the chair next to hers. “Are you okay?” I placed my hand lightly on her shoulder and she seemed to be snapped out of whatever trance she was in.

                She looked up at me, her dark brown eyes swollen and red, as if she had spent hours crying. My heart beat quickened and at that moment I knew something wrong, something horribly wrong.

                “What’s going on?” I asked.

                A sob escaped from my mother and tears quickly started streaming down her face. Yes, something was defiantly wrong.

                “What happened?” I asked biting my lip.

                “Your father.” She managed to say a few minutes later.

                At that moment I felt as if my heart had broken into a million pieces. My father? My mother was crying because of my father? “What happened.” I repeated this time it wasn’t a question.

                My mother’s crying simply replied to my question and for some reason my patience was running thin. I had always been an impatient person with a very short temper. Adam had always made fun of me saying that I had a short temper because I was a short person.

                “WHAT HAPPENED?!” I screamed standing up from my seat, nearly knocking the chair down in the process.

                My mother looked up at me, her eyes wet and red. “They killed him.”

-Present day: 1 month later-

                I woke up slightly gasping for air, the memory of the day I received the news about my father playing as a dream. An arm around my waist tightened and I looked over to my left, a sleeping Ethan lying under my covers.

                A month had passed since Ethan’s birthday, Valentine’s Day had come and gone and even though it was cliché, that was the day that Ethan and I got back together, officially. It had been a few weeks since we started dating again but somehow we had fallen back into the rhythm of being together just like we had in high school.

                The clock on my nightstand read 6:26 AM and I mentally groaned. It was Monday morning which meant that I had morning college classes. My head fell back onto the pillow and I twisted my body around so I was facing Ethan’s sleeping figure.