Growing Up and Other Tall Tales

Chapter 31

I wake up on the cool floor.

"Donovan." I say groggily. "Did you just kick me out?"

There is a little rustling and a turn of sheets and Lyra's head pops out from above me. She blinks, disoriented and confused. Then a small lazy smirk trickles onto her lips. She lets out a soft, sleepy laugh.

"I'm so sorry." She seems genuinely apologetic

"I demand the blanket for damage." I grumble heaving myself back onto her bed. She scoots further into the wall to make room for me.

"Such a baby. What damage? You aren't even hurt anywhere." She weakly pushes me before snuggling into her pillow

"Emotional damage, Donovan." I manage before falling asleep again

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"Rise and shine,"

I groan.

"Wakey, wakey,"

I turn away from the sound.

"You have five seconds to wake up or help me God, I will pour coffee on you,"

I sit up, eyelids still refusing to budge, and rub my eyes with the base of my palm. I feel the space next to me. Sensing the warmth but the absence of a body, I open my eyes a fraction to see Lyra standing over me by the bedside. The foggy outlines condense into definable features as I turn to her.

She pushes a mug into my hands and I fumble to take a grip, until I hear a sigh and then smaller hands wrap around mine and leave them safe around the handle. I blink blearily up at her and scratch the back of my head.

"You should've left," she tells me

It takes me a while to process what she said and when it does settle in my mind, I frown indignantly.

"I'm sorry," I sneer, "I was the one hogging your leg. Not to mention I was kicked out of bed. I distinctly recall something about emotional damage."

She blushes and kicks my legs but doesn't say anything.

"It's tea," she looks down at the mug which I was eyeing suspiciously. I raise my eyebrows at her and then looked back at the mug unconvinced.

"Really?"

"No," she makes a face, "I lied. It's arsenic,"

I snort and shrug because the answer was good enough for me and I took a sip. It was still hot. My lips burned but the pain drove my eyes to slide completely open bringing the whole room into sight. There's sunshine, like liquid caramel pouring down in lush falls from the open windows. The sky is beginning to smother itself into a fresh blue and the chatter of a neighborhood awakens.

"Apparently, the sun before eight o'clock is good for your skin," she drones drinking what I could smell was coffee, "Says Kathy," she continues distastefully and smacks her lips together

I laugh and roll my head in circles trying to stretch out the cramps in my neck. She makes an odd face of accusation at the light.

"Whatever did the sun do to you?"

"It woke me up. You know you snore?"

Liar. I smile.

Letting the sun off the stand for a while, I lean back and watch her a little. I don't know why. I just did. And it occurs to me with a start that this is perhaps the only time I woke up next to a girl and stayed for tea, or stayed, period; the one time I've only just slept in a girl's bed, the only time I've ever looked at them in the morning after. And it's almost instinct to reach for clothes thrown into random, dark corners carelessly under the lackluster spell of too much alcohol and too little self-respect.

It's a lot of first times.

Her hair is pulled up in a cruelly messy bun with careless curls jutting out stubbornly, she is still wearing the clothes she was wearing from last night and a side of her face is dented with pillow marks; her skin is still alit with that morning glow.

I tear my eyes away from her before she could notice and hurriedly look towards to the door searching for a line of conversation that didn't involve parent issues or me being an absolute creep, preferably.

"What about the others?"

"Hm?" Lyra looks back at me and places her mug on her lap, "Diana is still asleep. Hye-Rin's at work and Kathy is in the washroom,"

"What about you?"

She shrugs and joins me, placing her head on the bed with her legs hanging out. She tilts her head up to look at me and her bun is crushed under the weight of her head, her raven black curls smoldered in a radiant glow making it brown, coffee brown.

There is something comfortable, I think, in how we are both back on our backs, looking at each other. Something homely, something warm, domestic.

"I don't know. Its Sunday. I might go to the library later. Maybe, I'll hang out with Nick. Watch something," and then she nudges me raising curious eyebrows

"I might go back to work. There is nothing much for today, though," I break, my teeth clutches to my lower lip, "I'm going to have to go back," I look down and she looks away uncomfortably, "Some of my stuff is still there. I have to make up an excuse to the others as to why I'm moving out, permanently,"

There is a breather.

Lyra's finger, the one with the nail always painted, taps a curious rhythm at the mouth of her mug.

"Moving out?"

"I can't live there anymore," I say and I'm surprised at how sure and confident I am

She turns on her side and sits up on her leg,

"Don't let me get in between you and her. You had something with her I never did,"

"I thought I did," I shake my head

"She loves you," I look up at her in surprise and I realize how hard it must be for her to say it. I see it in her eyes. The unblinking downcast greys, burdened with a sorrow that any child feels, the jealousy, the bitterness. And I realize that somewhere deep in her darkest parts, there is a Lyra who loathes me, someone who despises me for stealing her mother away from her and it bothers me.

"Why are you defending her?" I sit up too

"I'm not," she clears her throat and looks at me, "I'm telling you the truth. She loves you, Aiden, a lot. And she needs you,"

Lyra laughs at the look on my face, "I know but what's the point? I do hate her but at the end of the day, it's just going to be painful for both of us. And I've enough of that already and I'm too tired to deal with more. So tired." She pauses and continues determinedly as though she was urging herself to go through with it, "I'm going to let it go."

She is right, I realize and there is something that surges in me that makes me so proud. She is still that: furious and feisty but also now, something more. Something entirely her and something that makes me oddly, proud.

"Your thumb," I nod at it finally giving into that curiosity, "Why is it the only one painted?"

She looks down at it surprised as though she has never been asked that before, thinks about it and then shrugs, "Why not?"

"No reason, no meaning, no deep scarring villain origin story?"

"Nope? Sorry to disappoint." She shrugs

I look closely to see if she isn't telling me anything and she notices. Lyra laughs and places her chin on her shoulder, her eyes glinting in untold mischief.

"Should everything make sense to you, Aiden Romanov?" she asks me teasingly and I feel her searching my face. It's my turn to shrug. She leans and whispers. "You know, curiosity killed the cat."

"But satisfaction bought it back." I say back, almost instinctively

Her eyes twinkle and she stares great big, silver moons at me and I realize it's Lyra Donovan, the girl who doesn't make any sense, the girl who refuses to make any sense just to make a point.

And if the smile that follows tells me anything, it's that she knows.