Thick and Thin (New Version)

Chapter Nine: Brooke

My alarm jolts me awake. Even on a Sunday morning it blares through my phone speaker at 6 a.m. sharp. I reach to the table and shut it off, instinctively sitting up in bed and stretching. I yawn and wipe the sleep from my eyes. There's a nagging feeling in the back of my mind, the kind you get when you know you're forgetting something but can't remember what it is. I slump out of bed lazily and grab some workout clothes from my dresser drawer, fumbling in the dark to get dressed for my morning run. I fling my bedroom door open and head down the stairs, nearly having a heart attack at the sight of a dark figure curled up on my couch.

Oh yeah, that's what I forgot about. My mom died yesterday and now Johnny Christ is sleeping on my couch waiting to run back to California with me in tow. I sigh and take the last of the stairs two at a time, walking into the kitchen to grab an orange before my run.

"Brooke?" Johnny sits up sleepily, squinting in the darkness with wild slept on hair.

"Oh," I say disappointedly. "You're awake."

"And so are you," he yawns. "You okay? If you can't sleep we could -"

"I slept just fine." I cut him off mid-sentence. "I'm going for my run."

"Your...wait. You run? Are you sure you're a Sullivan?"

"Yep," I respond matter-of-factly. "No denying these eyes."

"Sorry, it's just...I wasn't expecting that is all. I mean, I'm sure it would be fine if you took a break for a few days or..."

"I'm fine," I say rather harshly, digging my fingernail into the peel of my orange and ripping it off. The sticky juice runs down my hand and onto my wrist. I wipe it off on my leggings and take a big bite out of the orange. It's the first thing I've eaten in nearly two days.

"Alright," Johnny says, opting to not push the issue further. "Well, just be careful."

"Why?" I ask him, taking another juicy bite from my orange while I stare at him expectantly. He looks back at me, dumbfounded.

"Wh-?" He sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose between his fingers. I shouldn't be this difficult and I know that, but sometimes I just can't help myself. "You know who you remind me of?" He stands up, stretching his arms high above his head and walking into the kitchen, propping his elbow on the island and resting his chin in his hand as he looks up at me.

"Who?" I ask, tossing the rest of my orange in the trash and wiping my hands off on my shirt.

"Matt."

I scoff, rolling my eyes. "What makes you say that?"

"Your attitude, of course. I hate to say this but you might even be worse than he is."

"I don't remember Matt having an attitude." In the years that I spent in California, Matt was always the more laid back one out of the group. He was always kind to me, anyway. Kinder than Johnny was.

"Yeah well, people change."

An awkward silence settles over us for a moment. It seems like there's more that Johnny wants to say, but he pushes himself off the island and walks around to start a pot of coffee instead. I watch him carefully as he hunts through the cabinets and pulls out a bag of cheap coffee. "That's probably stale," I warn him.

"I've had worse," he responds. "Now where's the damn filters?"

"The drawer on your right."

"Thanks." He grabs a filter from the drawer, shoves it into the top of the coffee maker and pours some coffee into it straight from the bag without even measuring. I raise my eyebrows at his back.