Isabella

Chapter 43

A/N - I'm back, I'm back 😤

The end is extremely near...

Happy Pride Month ❤️❤️🏳️‍🌈

~~

"What the fuck is going on in here?", I turned to the doorway, the unamused expression of my youngest older brother making me chuckle, "why are there so many of you?".

"We're having a sleepover", I stated the obvious and he groaned.

"Fucking brilliant", he grumbled, "is that my blanket?". I turned to Ezra who dropped the thing as if it was on fire.

"Uh...no?", he scratched his neck and stood beside me, "you can take it if you want, we've got a lot". Xander stared between all five of us slowly, then at the floor, then into my eyes.

"Keep it", he muttered, his eyes still trained on me, "don't keep us all up tonight". Before I could even answer he disappeared and his footsteps retreated upstairs, someone was in an exceptionally happy mood.

"Is he always that...that?", Cooper asked and the twins snorted simultaneously.

"Yes", they replied.

"I remember once Caleb showed up at ours with a black eye because he fought Xander, just because he said his cooking was shit", Amelia expanded and I chuckled, sounded about right.

"Remind me to not get on his bad side", Cooper chuckled nervously and Gray patted his shoulder, "I'm hungry".

"That's new", I muttered, "we can order a takeaway, it just depends on whether we can all agree on something".

"Pizza", Amelia spoke first, only to be completely shut down by everyone else, "what?".

"Aren't you sick of it?", Gray dropped onto the sofa and raked a hand through his hair, "I want something different- anything but pizza".

"Don't be such a buzzkill Gray", Amelia dashed a pillow at her twin's face and he cursed, jumping up and hitting her with one back, "ow!".

"And to think they're the oldest", Cooper shook his head, "let's get dessert".

"For dinner?", Ezra frowned, looping an arm around my waist and pulling me into him, "so healthy Coop, shouldn't you have a salad or some shit?".

"Funny", he deadpanned, "the season's done, I don't need to swim for a long time now". So yeah, Cooper hadn't even enlightened me on the fact he was on the school's swim team until like two weeks ago, talk about being kept in the dark.

"I don't think that's how it works", Gray paused his fighting with his sister and straightened up, "aren't you supposed to keep training to stay in shape?".

"You sound like my parents", Cooper narrowed his eyes at him, "I hate my parents". Okay then.

"I'll go back to shutting up", he surrendered.

"Xav!", I yelled, knowing I was no longer waiting for these assholes to make a decision; my brother slid into the room and nearly fell over, clinging onto the door frame for support.

"Sup?", he cleared his throat and scratched his head, "woah, this looks awesome- y'know there was this one time there was a spider in mine and Xander's room, so we slept down here instead- we set it up just like this- the pillows, the blankets, horror movies- okay, what did you want?".

Keeping up with Xav's disorganised trail of thought was something I'd grown accustomed to easily; and unlike some of my brothers I'd never be the one to cut him off from whatever he was saying, no matter how random it was.