Falling for a Star (Complete)

Chapter 19 - Coming together

***** Brenley's Point of View - A few hours later *****

"So, remind me. Do you have any brothers or sisters?" Dylan asked me.

"No. It's just me," I said, letting out an exhale. "After my Mom passed away, my Dad was so heartbroken, he never remarried."

"What was that like, being an only child?"

"I hated it," I said sadly. "It was boring and lonely, especially on holidays. Doing fireworks and Easter egg hunts and opening presents on Christmas morning would've been a lot more fun if I had other kids to share it with."

"I'm sorry," he said sympathetically. "Honestly, I can't relate though. Everything was loud and chaotic at our house. I would have killed for some quiet, alone time growing up," he laughed. "It was survival of the fittest and we had to fight for what we wanted tooth and nail."

"What kind of things did you have to fight for?" I asked.

"Literally everything; our parents' attention, toys, clothes, cars, money, food."

"Food?" I asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Yeah, my poor Mom had three growing teenage boys to feed and we were always starving," he laughed. "At our house, whoever finished their plate first got seconds first, so it was always a race to scarf it down and get seconds before the food was all gone. You can imagine what kind of chaos that was."

"Yeah," I smiled, as I pictured what that must have been like. Then I let out a sigh and looked down at my hands, saying quietly, "That must have been nice though, having a Mom to cook you meals and a family to eat dinner with."

He thought about it and said, "Yeah, I didn't really appreciate it at the time, but now looking back I do. What were dinners like at your house?"

"My Dad worked a lot, so it was usually just me at the house alone, cooking my own dinner." I shrugged my shoulders. "On the plus side, that made me a good cook from a young age and I've always been really independent."

I looked over at him and he gave me a smile. "I like how you always try to look at the bright side of things. I tried to do that when I was growing up too, especially when money was really tight."

"It must have been hard on your parents to afford raising four kids. Kids are SO expensive," I told him, shaking my head. "It was hard enough for my Dad to afford raising one."

"Yeah," he nodded. "Everyone at our house had to help out. If we wanted brand name shoes and clothes, and money to go out with our friends, our parents made us pay for it ourselves. As soon as we were old enough, me and my brothers had a newspaper route and we collected eggs from our chickens and sold them to the neighbors. When I was fifteen, we started mowing yards in the neighborhood and we actually made pretty decent money at it. I bought my own car at sixteen and I paid my way out to Hollywood all by myself at eighteen. I was really proud of that," he said with a smile.

Hearing that made a lightbulb go off. "Then you of all people should understand why I don't want help buying a house. I want to do it by myself, so I can feel like I really accomplished something big on my own," I said.

"Yeah, I understand," he nodded. "When you earn things by yourself from working hard, it's a lot more satisfying when you finally get it."

"Yeah," I nodded with a smile. "Exactly."

I felt like he really got me. That didn't happen very often. Usually people told me I was stupid for turning down my Dad's offer to help me buy a house, but Dylan actually understood. He was probably the last person on earth I would have expected to understand where I was coming from.