ੈ✩‧₊˚ 𝐄𝐗-𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐑𝐒 ༊*·˚ ┊͙ 𝘦𝘭𝘭𝘪𝘦 𝘸𝘪𝘭𝘭𝘪𝘢𝘮𝘴

✯ chapter twenty five

『 ↝ the short lived memories ↜ 』

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THE WALK SEEMED AWFULLY LONG. Andie nervously picked at her fingernails and anxiously looked around, to make sure no one was following her. Her head was constantly turning in all directions, and when it wasn't, she was looking down to the ground with shame and embarrassment.

Her knees were shaking and so were her hands. The route to her house seemed shorter than usual, for some odd reason. She looked up as she slowly halted in front of her porch that was leading directly to her main door. She briefly closed her eyes as she took a deep breath in, making up her mindset that everything was going to be just a-okay.

Andie made her way to up the few stairs and looked down on her feet stopping directly at the doormat with the painfully regular 'welcome home' sign, that in retrospect didn't seem all that normal, but rather very coincidental to her in this moment. She looked back up at the white wooden doors, raising her hand and without hesitation knocking firmly on the door.

She waited a few seconds too long, but just as she was about to knock again, the door opened revealing auntie in a rather disheveled appearance. It took only about a second before auntie smiled wildly and pulled Andie into her bony but comforting embrace. Andie smiled as she melted into the hug.

After a few seconds of pure appreciation, auntie pulled back, holding Andie's shoulders at arms-length muttering a small "let me get a look at you" and "you changed so much!" comments. She finally let go and scurried inside, enthusiastically inviting Andie inside. The girl awkwardly sat at the table, feeling so close, yet so estranged with her own house. She looked around with a small smile, taking in the small details that always remained the same throughout her whole life.

"So tell me everything." Auntie said bringing to the table a small kettle with two porcelain cups, evenly distributing the hot tea amongst both of them. She finally sat down at the opposite end of Andie, listening to what she had to say.

"Uh.. where to start" Andie started looking down at the table, laughing to relieve some of her awkwardness. "I found out I really have a sister that lives in Seattle." she stated with a mix of sourness and a gentle smile on her face. Auntie looked at her with her eyebrows raised and proudly made a remark. "I always told you you had a sister! There was no need to doubt me" she laughed a little.

The small pause of silence from both sided overcame the dining table. "Is that where you disappeared to all those months ago?" she asked sentimentally. Andie didn't reply. Instead she just nodded her head and slightly squeezed her lips together. 

"And Lance?" auntie finally asked, addressing the elephant in the room. Suddenly the whole atmosphere seemed to shift. Suddenly the chair seemed to be much more uncomfortable than it was a minute ago. Suddenly it seemed to get hotter in the room and Andie's throat closed up and went dry, as she started sweating in her hands.

"She uh.." She started, unsure of how to do so. "I think she went after me.. And I had no idea." Andie tried to sugarcoat it as much as possible. She never was a very straightforward person. She never wanted to hurt people's feelings. Auntie just watched her in anticipation of what she would say next.

Instead, Andie simply took out the cartoon-doodle patches and badges that Lance had strapped to her jackets and slid them across the table, towards auntie. She looked down at her hands that were nervously rubbing on her thighs. Auntie looked at the badges immediately understanding what was happening. The tears in her eyes came welling up faster than she expected. It was as though she could feel physical heartbreak in her chest.

"How could you?" she gritted through her teeth not daring to look at the suddenly estranged girl in front of her that looked up shocked, only muttering a small "what..?".

"If you hadn't left us for a goddamn stranger, Lance would've never left Jackson and she'd be here with me! Safe!" Auntie broke out screaming and crying. Although Andie could've argued that it wasn't a stranger it was her blood-relative, and that she never forced Lance to go after her, she chose not to. It would only add fuel to the fire. Plus she didn't have enough willpower or energy to argue with the last person she could still call family. She didn't want to lose her too. So the whole time she was just muttering "I'm sorry" and "I didn't mean to".

"You stupid child! We took you in when you had no one! We took care of you! Lancey took care of you! You don't understand how much you meant to her and how much she's done for you! But how could you? You were always chasing that girl of yours, never taking a second out of the day to appreciate Lance!" Auntie continued with her word vomit, that unreperably destroyed Andie from inside to out.

"How did you know..?" Andie asked quietly, now her eyes starting to sting with pain of incoming tears.

"Because I actually care about Lance! I always saw how she looked at you! I saw how you looked at this girl, and I saw how Lance looked at you! If you paid any attention to her you'd know just how much you were hurting her on a daily basis!"

Andie felt crushed. She felt as if someone sucked the last motivation to not give up out of her. She no longer had the thriving power to live that her survival instinct provided her with during her adventure. She was numbly looking at her shaking hands.

Everything after that was a blur. All the could hear was auntie screaming at her to get out and that she was no longer welcomed in her childhood home. She walked out the door, looking back at it, only to see auntie breaking down in the hallway after not having someone to take out her grief on anymore, not even bothering to close the front door.

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rosary thinks...

yeah so that was interesting......

You know me I had to do some damage at the ending of the book ;)