Whispers on a Wing

Chapter Twenty Two

"So this is where you live?" Alice asked as she stepped through the threshold of my home.

I closed the door behind us and dropped her bag at my feet, the weight of it causing a thud to echo throughout the empty house.

"Yep, this is it," I nodded as I walked around her and into my makeshift bedroom. I hadn't cleaned up from this morning, when I'd woken up late and gotten ready in a whirlwind of chaos, so there were clothes and books everywhere.

I bend down to start cleaning them up, trying to make the place look better than it was, but I knew it wasn't going to do much. The house was what it was, a fire damaged abandoned building which I kept looking like that to stop people thinking someone lived here on the off chance it was found.

"It's nice,"Alice said from behind me, walking into the room and looking around. "Way bigger than I expected it to be."

I stood up from where I was, picking up loose discarded socks from the corner of the room, and turned to face her, frowning. "You don't have to do that, you don't have to lie just to make me feel better."

"I'm not lying," she said, looking a bit bewildered at me. "Yes it would probably benefit from a paint job and I would love it if we could get some power and plumbing put in, but it's clean and I love the furniture placing. The place seems so big with the tall ceilings and that fireplace with the original tilings is gorgeous."

I frowned over at her, confused. I was fully prepared for her to hate it, to start complaining about how the wallpaper was peeling off the walls and the rug I'd thrown over the splintered hard wood floor had holes ward through it, but I could tell she genuinely meant we said.

She liked it.

"Oh... well thanks," I muttered, throwing all my gathered clothes into a crate ready for me to take to the reservoir to clean tomorrow.

"You don't need to be so guarded with me Kathy, I'm here to be your friend because I want to be," she stressed as she took a few steps towards me. "I get that you have a difficult time trusting people, I understand why you have to be so guarded to protect yourself from people who may look at you differently because of who you are. But I know what you are, I've seen your wings, and I still want to be your friend."

She stared at me for a second, her deep brown eyes almost begging me to believe her, and I felt my shoulders drop slightly as if a weight had been lifted from my shoulders.

I had always felt like something was missing in my life, that even though I had Harper there was something else that needed to be filled. Maybe Alice could be that someone.

I nodded as I looked at the floor, feeling uncomfortable with her sole attention on me. I felt more exposed than I had in probably years and to know that Alice still wanted to stick around after learning so much about me was almost a punch to the gut.

In true Alice form she grinned at my awkwardness and came over to give me a tight squeeze as she hugged me.

I cringed as her arms wrapped around the top part of my wigs, the strength of her hug pulling them tight to my body, and I couldn't help the sharp inhale as the movement caused a sharp pain to pulse through me.

"Are you okay? Are hugs not allowed?" She asked, letting me go to get a good look at me. The expression she gave me reminded me of a mum looking down at a child, full of love and concern, and it made my heart squeeze all over again as I thought about my mum. She had never looked at me like that, even when I broke my arm she just took me to A&E without so much as a fuss. Back then I thought it was just because that's who she was, no nonsense, but now I wondered if it was because she knew what I was going to become all along and she secretly hated me for it.