intoxicated

eleven

I wake up the next morning with only a slight headache and don't bother to do anything about my appearance except throw my hair in a lazy bun before heading downstairs to clean. Luckily, my brother made it pretty clear to everyone not to go upstairs yesterday, which spares us the trouble of cleaning the entire house and makes the situation a lot easier.

I decide to head to the kitchen first, partly because I need my breakfast and partly because that's probably where it looks the worst. The breakfast part is a lot more important though.
But when I walk into the kitchen, I see someone already munching on his cereals. That someone being Jack.

Jack, who's avoiding me.

Jack, who I almost kissed last night.

And then Jack, who fought against kissing me as if I was a bucket of water and he was a candle that wanted to keep burning.

I sigh.

Upon hearing that sound, he turns around and spots me, giving me a small smile and mumbles "morning".

"Morning." I reply drily, annoyed at his own dry greeting. He's either hungover - which I honestly hope is the case - or is actually still trying to avoid me. I grab myself some toast and a coffee and join the table. "Where's James?", I ask.

He shrugs and then shortly answers, "You guys didn't have anything to clean with."

I nod. "Figures. We kinda forget about the whole cleaning thing sometimes. All we really do is vacuum. We should probably work on that." I say, just because I'm becoming more and more annoyed by the second. Is he really going to let my brother dictate who he talks to? Because I'm surely not letting my brother get a say in who I talk to.

I look at Jack. No. fuckíng. reaction.

"Are you seriously just going to ignore me?" I snap.

At that he looks up at me, smirking. "I knew you listened to that conversation the other day."

"What are you even talking about?" I say quickly, hoping he'll start to doubt it again. Was this his plan all along? Was he just waiting for me to say a wrong word so he could call me out on it?

But Jack doesn't let me irritate him, only shaking his head at me with a small smile on his face. "You know exactly what I'm talking about."

I sip on my coffee, not knowing what to say anymore. I know he knows I heard their conversation. He was never really convinced I didn't in the first place, so there's no use in trying to deny it any longer. Still, I curse myself for not being able to hold myself, maybe if I hadn't snapped Jack would have remained unsure wether he was right or not. I blame my slip up on my little hangover and sleepiness, although I know it would have happened sooner or later anyway.

"I don't care what he says, though." Jack says nonchalantly after I don't say anything for a while. "Bringing you to the mall was stupid, but I know what I'm doing. And I'haven't doing anything wrong." He adds.

I look up at him, a small genuine smile tugging on my lips. My own curiosity takes over when I ask, "But why doesn't James want us to hang out?"

"He is your big brother after all. He's just trying to keep up with the stereotypical protective brother." Jack winks.

I chuckle, even though I know that it's only a part of it, if any. My brother has never been the protective kind, he would always trust me enough to make my own decisions. All he ever did with my last boyfriend was stalk his Facebook account. Not that Jack is my boyfriend - or anywhere near that - which just makes my brother's behaviour even weirder.