Bucky's Roommate

Chapter 13

"Immanuel's here." Michael told Adel as he knocked on the door of the bedroom the college student was staying in. "He wants to see you."

Adel looked up from his phone and stood up, stretching his arms over his head. He tossed his cellular device to Summer, who caught it without taking his eyes off the book he was reading. "Is he downstairs?"

The priest shook his head and gestured towards the back of the house. "By the garden. He didn't want to be anywhere else." 

"You'll be okay, Summer?" The college student asked as he pulled on his boots and switched his glasses for his shades. He drummed his fingers on the bed once and Madonna came over, mewing softly as she batted at his hand. 

"Yes." The assassin glanced up from his reading material to give the other man a half smile, his grey-blue eyes filled with mirth. "I will be fine."

Adel grinned back and picked up Madonna, depositing her on the other's lap. "Good. You know where I'll be." He walked down the hall towards the stairs, careful to go quietly because one of his cousin's kids were taking a nap while their mother finished last minute homework. He winked at her when she glanced over and she smiled tiredly back, her fingers never pausing on her laptop. Her husband was asleep on the bed, drooling into the pillow, after coming home from working the graveyard shift at his job.

He took the stairs quietly, carefully avoiding the creaky points of the steps after years of memorizing where they were before. He had to be quiet at this point in the afternoon because many of his tiny family members were napping, and he had it on good authority that their parents would find a way to kill him if he woke them up.

While he and Summer were upstairs, the rest of the hoard had arrived with their spouses and kids. The family was a big one, good lucks seeming to come their way whenever it could be helped. Despite the size of the house, it still seemed to fit anyone that wanted to stay comfortably, no one ever feeling squished or inconvenienced. He had a lot of family members, and he honestly wasn't sure how they were all related to him. Those that weren't immediate family members like Dalila and his mother were labeled as either cousins if they were younger, aunts and uncles if they were the same age or older, and grandma or grandpa if they were elderly. It was also entirely possible that he wasn't related to them at all, and they were just random people that came by for free food.

If he was asked directly how many family members he had and what their titles were, he'd tell you that he had twelve cousins, two grandmas (both widows), one grandpa (not a widower but a man that had four wives, each crazier than the last), six aunts and five uncles (none of them married to each other), and one sister. That brought the total up to twenty-seven.

Adel was walking by the kitchen, intent on getting to the back door, when he was stopped by his mother, who held a seven-day pill box against his chest. He hesitantly grabbed it, making a face when he saw that there were four in each little square. "Why?"

"You don't get enough vitamins, silly angel." She shook the container, raising an eyebrow at him. "You need to take care of yourself better."

"I take care of myself just fine."

His mother didn't say anything as she patted his cheek, but he was still offended, staring after her as she walked away. He thumbed open the lid for Thursday, tipping out the pills onto his hand before tossing them in his mouth, dry swallowing them. He left the box on the counter near the plastic apples his mother had for the sole purpose of tricking people into biting them. So far, the only ones who had never done it was himself for obvious reasons, and Bucky and Summer because they hadn't been there long enough.

Finally, Adel managed to reach the back door without further interruption, closing it softly behind him as he stepped out onto the partially shaded patio. Some of his cousins were sitting out on some lawn chairs but they didn't do more than wave at him as he passed, preferring to stay on their phones. The garden was a fair distance away from the house and the direction to it was marked by a stone pathway.