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Fifteen | Cherries

SOTC: Elastic Heart by Sia (ft. The Weeknd, Diplo)

"Wake up!"

I shot my eyes open, squinting in the light my turn-on lamp provided to find a maid's eyes ready to pan-sear me.

"Xerxes wants to see you now," she then seethed.

Pipe down fire crotch, I wasn't the one who put letters in math.

But even with my stark confusion, I rose out of bed in my silk pajamas to follow the maid out of my room. I managed to catch a glimpse of my clock announcing, 2 A.M.

What did he want at 2 A.M?

My teenage brain gave me dirty answers to that before settling on confusion again.

Eventually I was led into the Dining Room I was forced into when I was first captured here. On one end of the table, Xerxes sat in a chair, a candle grazing against his jawline in a perfect shadow. Glistening those hazel eyes, and flickering that teardrop tattoo on and off from sight. Why did kidnapper as sus as Red with a soulmate have to be hot?

And why the frick am I here?

"Sit down, please," he said, and I did as he instructed next to him.

"Why did you call me out here?" I asked.

Xerxes propped his elbow onto the wooden table, his fingers running through the blonde wisps on his head. Hazel eyes met a torch to the left of his vision.

That's when he goes:

"Americans are so stupid."

I could hear the air in my mind as I blinked.

Mans just continued. "I think I brought in a Western zoo. One girl demanded a maid to speak English after being told she was in Greece. Another maid slapped a girl across the face when she asked what her pronouns were. It was a funny story, because the maid did look like a man. And when we got the boys into the medical room to get their immunization shots, one of them smacked two fingers on their arm and screamed, 'SHEEEE!' But no one in the room was female."

"Are you on psychedelics?" I asked the cleanest question I could muster.

"No."

I crossed my arms. "You woke me up at two A.M to say Americans are stupid."

"I couldn't ask while Maria was awake. You and her have something called..." His rumbling thunder voice stopped. "What's the American word for it?"

"Beef?"

"I was going to say you were reaping the effects of confrontation, but I suppose that works, too," he breathed out. "Plus we like to speak about other subjects."

I cringed at what 'other subjects' possibly meant. Dialogue to splice a priest like Fruit Ninja miles away? Or at least scald themselves in Jesus's holy water?

That'd be some dirty water...

"It wouldn't mean Americans are stupid," I said after performing CPR on my last brain cell, turning Xerxes's head to my face. "You'd be implying American teenagers are stupid."

"Good point."

"Plus, some but not all could be using humor as a defense mechanism against pain. Or they're actually stupid and then you'd be right about x amount of the population. However, assuming the entire American population based off your experience with a handful of a sole age range is like assuming all Greeks drink vodka because you saw one drink vodka," I concluded.

"That's the Russians."

"You get the point," I sighed.

Xerxes paused before he asked: "Do you use humor to solve your problems?"

"It's the only way to solve your problems."

"Tell me a joke," he said. "It can be as messed as you want."

Well, if it could be as messed up as I wanted...

"Why is reverse cowgirl illegal in Alabama?" I asked him.

Xerxes shrugged. "Why?"

"Because you can never turn your back on family."

A smirk sputtered out an undeniable curve on his face as he breathed a, "Damn."

Wow. I didn't even think I'd even get him to smile.

"But I guess continuing about the American pubescents in your house, they don't know who they are yet. Most of them didn't even know what they want to be when they grew up," I concluded, tracing a stitch I had found on my nightgown I found.

"What did you want to be when you grew up?"

I shrugged.

"I know you know, and I'm not going to let you leave until you tell me, Clara Stratton."

"Be an international spy." I paused, half-expecting Xerxes to laugh but he didn't. "I even learned how to fight off of YouTube." I continued, tapping my fingers against the table. "I was good at that second thing more than I realized."

"What do you mean?"

I shrugged, gazing at the illuminating torch to the left of me.

I'd rather try to forget.

After a few moments I turned back to Xerxes looking at me. "If you weren't the big bad leader of House Christakos, what profession would you get into here?"

Hazel eyes then grazed themselves against each incision of the wooden table as air exhaled into his lungs visibly.

"Horses," Xerxes finally said. "I wanted to train race horses. When I was younger, my now deceased uncle, Polly's soulmate, used to take me to horse races. And horses... they're a level of majesty, of pureness, reliance. Ending their lives makes my skin crawl more than anything even if you're extracting its pain for its well-being. They are simply the work of Gods." He paused. "I was going to do it before becoming leader of House Christakos."

"Why didn't you?" I asked.

"I went to a place I never mentally came back from."

What?

Xerxes carressed his thumb against his lip. "My life is like cherries. There's always a dark pit in the center of the sweetness." He stared off as he finished, "You can never get all the joys in life without breaking your teeth on that hard darkness."

Next Chapter Teaser: The meaning of, "I went to a place I never came back from." is revealed