You Sang To Me - I'm Not Broken Hearted Trilogy, Book 3

Prologue

                  

I sat on the couch, my arms crossed over my chest, and one leg bouncing uncontrollably up and down, in a fit a nervous expectation, while I stared down the front door of my house. My son was sitting beside me, exactly the same posture, and with a grimace that I'm sure could kill a man if need be. He had a hat on his head, a fedora like mine, and it was pulled down in just the right angle to make him look a bit like an Italian mobster. I smirked at that, then pulled my own hat down as well.

            We were trying to look as threatening as we could, and I would have said that we were succeeding, until my wife walked into the room in her nightdress and burst into laughter. I looked up at her, frowning as she held her stomach with one hand and braced herself on the wall with the other. Declan looked up as well, sighing a little overdramatically at her. "Mom," he said, drawing out the vowel in a whine, and then he looked at me.

            "Alexandra," I said, whining just like my son, and she looked up at me, scrunching up her nose in that familiar way. Twenty-One years of marriage, and I still wasn't over that look.

            "Don't call me that," she warned, still smiling a bit as she walked gracefully across the living room to sit on the loveseat across from us. It was dark in the living room, as Declan and I had decided that it would look more threatening that way, but the moonlight from the windows caught in her hair and made her eyes shine. Her dark curly hair was beginning to gray a bit at the roots, and even though it was barely noticeable, I would never tell her that. She looked beautiful still, and I never wanted her to think that she didn't. "Are you two going to sit here all night?"

            "Until nine thirty," I stated, glancing at the clock on the wall. It was nine o'clock now. "When I told him to have her back."

            "And what if they're a little late?" Allie asked, smirking because she already knew my answer.

            "Then we go out and kill him," Declan answered, pulling his hat back down and reassuming his position against the couch. I crossed my arms again, leaning back with him.

            "Patrick," Allie said, a warning tone in her voice. "You have to let her date. She's thirteen now –"

            "And she can come home at the time I specified for her," I stated, cutting her off with a slight grin as she glared at me.

            She turned her glare on Declan then, and he sighed. "What's your excuse?" Allie asked.

            "I don't like him," he mumbled. "I don't like him having his hands on my sister."

            "Why don't you like him?" Allie asked, sounding surprised, "He seems like a perfectly nice boy, I think."

            "Have you looked at him?" Declan laughed. I could almost hear the eye roll that was happening under the brim of his fedora.

            "Your sister dresses the same way," Allie reminded him, frowning a bit. I knew she didn't like the way our daughter dressed. I didn't like it either. If I had to describe it, I'd have to say she was a walking incarnation of 2005 Pete Wentz. Jet black hair that she dyed on the regular, old band t-shirts (some of which, I'm pretty sure were Allie's at some point), and shorts and skirts short enough to make me die a little bit on the inside. She caked on the makeup every day, and I would be more understanding of it if all of the makeup wasn't literally lifted from Pete's old stash of black everything.

            Just as I was beginning to cringe, a pair of headlights illuminated the living room. Declan and I both got up, sprinting to the front window to peek around the curtains. Allie got up, sighing and shaking her head at us, and began making her way back to bed. Declan and I watched as the boy didn't even bother to open my daughter's door for her, and I clenched a fist as he took her hand in his and walked her up to the front door.

            He was three years older than her, but with the way he dressed, you'd never know it. Tonight, he was dressed in an ACDC t-shirt, with a leather jacket over it and pants that looked painted on his scrawny legs. I think those were leather too. He was wearing black converse, just like my daughter's, and his hair was jet black and reached past his shoulders. He had a few piercings in his face, and a tattoo on his arm that I had questioned him about earlier. He's sixteen, how did he have a tattoo if it wasn't illegal?

            I watched as he stood on the porch with her, straining to get a better look, and then it happened. "Son of a bitch," I muttered, flying away from the window to stand at the front door, staring at them through the peephole there, as Declan stood behind me, shaking slightly with anger. They were kissing, well, more like licking each other, to be honest, and if he didn't pull away from her in the next two seconds, I was going to have his head. Suddenly, the light over their heads started flickering. I looked back at Declan to find him standing next to me, steadily pumping the light switch up and down. I smirked at him, then looked back at my daughter. She looked up in annoyance at the offending porch light, then glared right at the peephole of the door. I tried not to smirk as the boy blushed and stepped away from her.

            I opened the door, faking surprise as I let my daughter push past me into the house. "Thank you for bringing her home on time," I said, smirking in self-satisfaction as the boy nodded at me.

            "Of course, sir," he stated, looking anywhere but at my face.

            "Have a good night," I said, quickly closing the door before he could even answer, and earning myself a death glare from my daughter. Her eyes looked twice as frightening as they should have, given the thick layer of eyeliner surrounding them. Her arms were folded over her chest, with about  twenty or so band bracelets covering them. On her left wrist was a Fall Out Boy bracelet, one I'd given her when she was younger.

            "Are you guys serious?" She snapped, looking between Declan and I. "It was just a kiss!"

            "If that's what you want to call it," Declan smirked, laughing a bit.

            "Shut up, Dec," She sneered, suddenly turning on her heels and storming off to her room. Declan and I stood in silence until we heard the slam of her bedroom door, quickly followed by the blare of music, and then my wife screaming at her to turn it down. I sighed and took my hat off, running my fingers through my thinning hair.

            "Well, I'm going to bed," Declan stated, walking away with a proud strut. I shook my head at him and followed upstairs, passing by the door with a Green Day poster taped haphazardly to it, and into my room, where my wife was lying in bed with a pillow over her head to block out our daughter's music.

            Just another day in our life. Our crazy, perfect life.