We Who Are Jaded

Chapter Two

There was nothing elegant about crashing back into ones own body, especially when already struggling with being royally hacked off. 

I blinked and attempted to shrug off the intense vertigo that assaulted me. Swallowing hurried breaths, I inspected the familiar surroundings. The blue walls, scratchy bed sheets, book shelves and my own irrepressible rage could only have mean't one thing. 

"That indigo eyed git!" 

He always, always got away with that.When fully embraced in his Indigo form in our peculiar dreamland, Kieran could banish me at will and so calculatingly so. How dare he excuse me with his seductive kisses? I'd show him. I was not his play thing to be summoned and dismissed as he pleased.

"Perhaps he's never been warned about playing with fire," I whispered into my pillow, relishing the thought of all the possibilities that might entail.

I stretched, my body aching bitter sweetly. The pillow I brought to my chest was no match for the man it substituted but I was going to have to get used to it if I intend to ignore him. Indigo Boy was all confidence and charm and all too capable of melting my resolve in a heartbeat.

Not this time.  

Stiffly, I rose from my bed and wandered to the window. Spreading the curtains wide, I marked that there wasn't much to gaze upon but the rusting fire exit and an optimistic sun trying to break through the clouds. 

I flicked the cover of a half read book on the window sill and wondered when I would find a moment to finish it. It wasn't as if I had become popular by any means but between Beth and Kieran, free time was something of a distant memory. Still, I was grateful for the distraction, summer holidays had never been an adventurous affair in the Evans household and this year was no different.    

It was eleven thirty according to the alarm clock I'd somehow abandoned on the floor. I never slept in...and come to think of it, my mother had never allowed such a thing.

Then again, for all my holidays hadn't ever involved any jet setting, Mum and my step father Ross did their best to make it just as peachy for my half brother, Jackson. Thank the Lord I was old enough to stay home while the rest of my family went out and made a spectacle of themselves.

I had been born to my mother before she'd had a chance at life herself. My biological father was French, too delicious for my mum to resist being young and impulsive and probably very drunk. One passionate, careless mistake and nine months later I arrived to crash my mother's party. 

Mind you, she got her chance at her happy ending two years later when Ross Evans walked in. Ross had been so accepting and understanding and somehow was besotted with my mother he couldn't wait to put a ring on her finger.

Don't get me wrong, I liked Ross, enough for us to co exist, but anything more than that between us was challenging. I was bound by loyalty to another who I wanted nothing more than to give everything to.  

My real father disappeared after spending night with my mother. There had been no suggestion of their affair being anything more than a one night stand and I was not naive enough to believe any different. I held nothing against my father for walking away.

But after his accident, my father was traced back to the only point of reference he knew and that was my mother. All other recollection was robbed from him and never returned. You could say it was something like spontaneous Dementia that permitted him from knowing his own mind.

All I knew was that he was my dad and he was my everything.

After righting the alarm clock, I ventured out of my room – hoping to find something satisfying to appease my hunger. However, I knew there was probably only a slice of bread, a couple of tomatoes, some leftover chicken, a slither of cheese, a bottle of almost emptied wine and - if I was lucky - a tea bag in the nooks and crannies of my kitchen. By the time Mum and Ross would realise the kitchen was wasting away they'd have finished that bottle of wine: guaranteed.