Here and Now

Chapter 3

Chapter 3

What. The. Crap. As I watched the girl who still had not told me her name walk away, that's all I could think. What the crap. I had pulled out all the stops, trying to get her to even look at me, and when she did, this disgust and determination flooded her eyes and I was floored. She had walked away from me. Literally just walked away from me without even saying goodbye or repaying the favor by giving me her name. The determination that I saw in her eyes, flooded my own. I was going to find out that girls name. I went back to my table and just waited, I knew she would have to come back eventually.

"What was all that about?" My brother Jonathan asked me. He was only an inch or two shorter than me with spiked, auburn, hair. When I say he was shorter than me, it doesn't mean much since I was a wopping 6 foot 6 inches tall, and still have possible another inch to grow. I'm a senior, Kolden is a freshmen in college, and Jackson is a senior in college. Me and Jackson, actually tied in height at the moment but, hopefully, that'll change pretty soon.

"Nothing yet." I said, quit annoyed.

"You didn't bag her?" He said with a smirk on his face. My head whipped around to him and glared daggers.

"Shut up." I grumbled.

"Is there a problem?" The peacekeeper, Jackson, added in. Both of us whipped our head around with our lips curled. We were all very close but, Kolden and I hate it when Jackson intervenes with our life and conversations. Jackson was all christian, and 'holy'. Personally I thought he was just a holy pain in my butt. Not that I had a problem with his Christianity but I had a problem with him constantly trying to tell me I'm being dumb.

"No." We replied in unison. My dad tried to stay out of our brotherly feud. But my mother on the other hand thought it was unhealthy for us to get in a small quarrel with eachother. "It'll ruin your brothership." She would say, "You don't want that." Whenever she got into her long rants about how the relationships between brothers is more important than any other relationship because-and I quote- they will be there till the end, we couldn't help but roll our eyes and want to stick pins in our fingers.

"Are you guys ready for your check?" The girl said, interrupting our soon to be full on argument. I studied her again, I could see she was trying to avoid looking at me.

"Um, actually can I ask you a question?" I heard Kolden ask from my left. I looked over to see a small smirk at the corner of his lips. My eyes softened from their hard glare when I realized what he was doing. Buying me more time.

"Sure."

"Would you like to sit down?" Kolden gestured to the seat empty beside me. Her eyes slid to the seat and then back to him, then briefly to me and then out to the crowd that had dwindled. I knew that it was getting closer to closing time and the place was emptying out. We were one of the few stranglers. "The question may take some time."

"I'll stand." Her voice flat, no emotion seeping through. Stoic much.

"How long have you guys been open?" He asked. I immediately knew what routine he was doing and calculated in my head, when exactly I should join in. I looked over to see the same look on Jackson's face, he didn't know why Kolden was doing this particular 'act' but he was in. We locked eyes and mentally thought through what's next and who was going first. As I said, we brothers were close.

"About 3 years." Her hard face never faltered, a lot of practice had been put into the no emotion facade we were experiencing. I mulled over the idea for a moment until I move back the the subject at hand.

"Really? Wow. That's amazing. I have never been here before. Could you tell me like the history of how it opened and stuff. I'm really curious." I could see her eyes slip from Kolden to my parents, hoping for a rescue, but Jackson had already preoccupied them and they were in deep conversation with eachother as Jackson slipped his seat a little closer towards us to join the conversation at the big, round table.