Love You More

chapter six - gasp

Alice arrived home from school on a breezy Wednesday afternoon, the autumn leaves crumbling beneath the shoes of Grace and Charlotte as they continued to walk past Alice's home and toward their own.

The timid girl peeked over her shoulder to catch their eyes once more. She gave a cute but tight smile to her friends as she pushed her key into her house's door knob and allowed herself inside.

She breathed in deeply, shutting and locking the door behind her. Alice smelled the sweet scent of pastries and her mother's floral perfume.

She found herself walking to her kitchen. Her soft footsteps went unnoticed until her mother turned to set a pie on the island at the midpoint of the room.

Alice could have laughed at how stereotypical her mother looked. A blonde woman with pearlescent blue eyes and an hourglass figure accentuated by a fit and flare dress that fell just under her knees.

Sometimes she wished she had gotten more of that classic beauty in her own genes, but it seemed Annabel had stolen the good features for herself.

"Well, good afternoon, Alice," the woman grinned a grin that indented both of her cheeks with perfectly symmetrical dimples.

Alice leaned against the mostly open doorway of the kitchen. "Hi," she whispered. Her mood did not match her mother's cheery demeanor, but it rarely ever did.

The woman cocked her head. "Hard day?" she asked, beginning to cut the pie she had made into eighths.

Alice shrugged, her oversized sweater falling off of her shoulder and resting on her upper arm instead.

"I'm just tired, momma," the girl admitted while tucking her hair, which was already indented from the time it had spent behind her ear.

Alice's mother began to wash her knife, holding a secret in her chest as to not spoil it for her daughter.

"Why don't you just relax in your room for a bit then?" the woman suggested, raising her eyebrows as if the idea had simply come to her at that moment.

Alice agreed.

"I love you," she smiled at her mother. She basked in the warmth that her mother's responsive beam brought her.

Alice's small black converse sneakers gently glided on the staircase as she jogged up to her bedroom.

She sighed as she entered, tossing her bag on her carpeted floor. Soon her thick binders followed suit.

Flicking her light on, she used her left foot to remove her right shoe by applying pressure to the ankle before repeating the same on the left shoe.

She kicked the sneakers out of her way as she gripped the bottom hem of her striped sweater, lifting it over her head and leaving it in her path to her vanity style dresser.

She began to unbutton and unzip her light wash denim shorts when she felt a sudden warmth on either side of her now nude waist, gasping at the unwanted contact.

Her heart palpitated as adrenaline began to coarse through her bloodstream. Her vision was blurry as fear clouded her eyes.

Before she could yelp one of the hands on her sides raised quickly to place a palm over her lips.

Her hazel eyes darted to the vanity mirror in front of her, being met by stark gray ones that calmed her only momentarily.

"I like this greeting," John smirked while removing his hand from her face and returning to fondle her bare torso.

Alice grabbed his hands and pushed them away from her, racing to retrieve her sweater from the ground to cover her body.

Her and John had never gone beyond a casual make out session in his car. She was nowhere near ready to show him her body in just her undergarments.