Like Father, Like Son ✔

Chapter 20 - Including Luke

CHAPTER 20

CAT

Luke picked the first day of finals to come down with a really nasty cold and it was safe to say that Cat was not amused. Cat had a final to write at nine in the morning, and Nick had one in the early afternoon so she wasn't about to ask him to babysit.

He was sleeping over at her apartment though so obviously she had no say in the matter whatsoever. The moment he heard Luke start to sniffle he volunteered to stick around while she wrote her exam, that way Luke wouldn't have to go into daycare and get all of the other kids sick too.

Cat was reluctant, telling him that he needed to study in peace, but he wouldn't have none of it. When she left to take the bus a few minutes before eight, Luke was nestled in Nick's arms on the couch watching cartoons.

If Cat had never seen the pair of them playing with building blocks together or racing toy cars around a race track, she would've thought the sight in front of her to be the cutest thing in the world.

Fortunately, her final was a fairly easy one and without the added stress of not knowing if Luke was doing alright, she was able to get it over with pretty quickly. She got out feeling pretty confident.

"I'm done, be home soon," she texted Nick as she headed toward the bus stop.

"How did it go?" Nick texted her back almost instantly.

"Aced it," Cat sent him, adding a cute little emoji, although she knew Nick's text-to-speech app didn't do such a great job of conveying those. "Did you get any studying done?" she asked him.

"A little," Nick texted her.

Bullshit, Cat thought. She knew him and his study habits; he'd been staying over most nights this week and she was pretty sure he only really studied once. He was a really smart guy though, the kind of student that just grasped things without having to make too much of an effort. He'd skim through his notes a few hours before his final and be good to go.

Cat shook her head, wishing she could be like that too... but no, she needed to study excessively just to get a decent mark!

Hearing the loud rumble of a big vehicle, Cat glanced behind her and spied the bus heading toward her. She sped up a little so that she was almost jogging, still a few yards from the bus stop. She gestured for the bus to wait for her when it passed. Fortunately, there were a few other people waiting at the stop and she managed to get there on time before the bus took off again.

"Next time I'm not waiting for you," the bus driver said crankily. She was a middle-aged woman with bushy gray hair and ugly yellow teeth.

"Yeah, sorry," Cat murmured, making her way to a seat at the back.

Just like that, her good mood was shot. She knew she hadn't kept the bus waiting; there were plenty of people still getting on the bus when she got in line, but the woman chose to pick on her regardless. 

It was totally uncalled for and unnecessary, but still, Cat felt guilty for some unknown reason and that feeling remained with her long after most people would've forgotten about it and moved on. Having random strangers patronizing her like that made her feel really fucking shitty... it was the downside of having mild social anxiety.

It was just a dumb, fleeting moment in her life, barely a few seconds, but it was still weighing on her when she walked through her front door almost half an hour later.

"Hey, it's me," Cat said automatically when she saw Nick still on the couch with his laptop next to him. Luke was in a similar spot to the one he'd been in when she left a few hours earlier, passed out with his head in Nick's lap. He was making it very awkward for Nick to get any work done. "Has he been like that all morning? I'll get him into bed so he won't bug you," she said with a guilty frown.