This Will Change Everything

5: My Eyebrows Need Waxing

"You know I can't...and, and mother, I can't just leave her-"

I tried to explain desperately but he placed his index finger on my lips to prevent me from saying anything else,

"I own a condo up in Miami, well technically my father does, but that doesn't matter we can go and liv-"

I slowly removed his finger from my lips, we were forgetting something

"But wait, what are we gonna do about your fiance Leo? How are we gonna get her out of the picture?"

He ran his finger through his hair and let out a sigh,

"You just let me handle everything, don't you let your pretty little head worry about a thing"

I couldn't help but believe in him, after all, I trusted him with my life.

After staring into each other's eyes for what seemed like an eternity, he began to lean in closer, and closer, until he was inches away from my face, our noses practically brushing against each other, he calmly said in a soothing voice,

"Wake up darling or I'll have no choice but to dig my boogers and smear it all over your face"

I frantically twist and turn in my bed all of a sudden until I realized I wasn't the only one in the room. I was aware of the fact that I was awake but I didn't want to open my eyes. Opening them would mean that a 21 year-old version of Leonardo DiCaprio wasn't really suggesting we go on a romantic getaway just now, nope. It would all have been a dream.

Why must you get my hopes up like that you sick disturbing thing I call 'brain'.

"Yo, I know your awake, get up lazy pooh" the figure viciously shook me.

I squinted towards the alarm clock, 20 freakin' minutes left.

"Look, I'm actually gonna dig my boogers Lani, don't try me. I will smear this on your face-"

"God I'm up, I'm up. What are you doing in my room Kai? I was about to kiss LEO gosh! I was this close,"

I demonstrated with my fingers how close I was to kissing Leo.

"Wait you mean DiCaprio? I thought you'd stop fantasizing-"

I held my hand up to his face,

"How dare you suggest that I stop fantasizing about my male idols. It's the only thing that boosts my self confidence every morning and fulfills my-" he held up his hand to my face,

"Don't finish that sentence, please, I don't want to know. Just hurry up and get yourself washed up, cuz we've got..."

He dramatically raised one of his eyebrows and stared out my window and slowly walked out of the room simultaneously with out taking his eyes off of it. Okay....

"...Company"

What did he mean by 'company'? Oh! The suspense was killing me so I rushed over to the bathroom and pounded on the door wildly. For males, my brothers for some reason take a long time in there.

"Sam! Hurry up man, it's not like you gotta put makeup on or shit, I might pee on myself hurry it up!"

I heard the door unlock itself and out came my step dad Adam in his blue striped pj's with his ruffled up hair and a tooth brush in one hand,

"uh uh uh," he said sticking out his index finger,

"And to think you kiss your mother with that mouth. Sorry honey, but your gonna have to wait this one out, my eyebrows need waxing." he wiggled his eyebrows,

"Do you think this face ," he said gesturing towards his face,

" Screams: 'I woke up like this'? I don't think so hon."

And with that he slammed the door on my face. What ever happened to chivalry these days?

So I had to wait for another 5 WHOLE minutes for him to get out to finish his business. I went in there, took a quick dump, brushed up, and added a thin line of eyeliner on my eye lids. Have I ever told you that I was seriously addicted to eyeliner, like foreal, I can not step out the house without it. Now all I had to do was to tame the beast, I looked at myself in the mirror. My Hair. I argued with myself mentally until we decid- ahem... I decided on a Inverted french braid. Maya has been teaching me how for awhile now. 3 minutes later and BAM! I couldn't even recognize the hot babe staring right back at me. Woo-oh, Zack you are missing out on this, biggest mistake of your life turning me down back in the 7th grade. He'll come around, I'm sure of it. I mean 4 years? That's not that much. I wink at myself-don't ask why- and run straight to the kitchen.

After I had some OJ, with a side of toast I sprinted out the door and down our driveway towards Maya's SUV. I stopped in my tracks when I noticed a different figure in the car. I slowly approached the car until I could recognize who it really was. No way.

The person was in shotgun, they slowly rolled down the window for what I thought was for dramatic effect. With batting eyes the person said,

"It's been awhile, Lani."

I stopped in my tracks. Nope this wasn't happening.

*****

" Hey dad, look look!" I squealed. For a little 8 year-old I was pretty high up on the swings.

"Yeah cool, cool", he just waved his hand off, eyes not leaving the newspaper. At least pretend to be interested.

"No, dad look over here, I'm higher than her!" No, she wasn't. He took a quick glance towards her then returned to his paper. I could've sworn a small smile tucked at his lips.

She jumped off of the swing, just a little hop, nothing serious. But she didn't land on her feet.
He tossed the newspaper over and got off of the bench and jogged over,

"Honey, you okay?" he grabbed a hold of her leg and examined it thoroughly. For some odd reason I wanted to jump off too, maybe even scrape my knee a little. So I jumped and did just that.

"Lani, what are you? Five?" he yelled, he got her off his lap and set her aside and walked over to me disappointingly. His eyes landed on my knee, I actually scraped it. But he didn't grab my leg or examined it with care like he did for her.

He looked back over to her with sad eyes,

" I guess we gotta walk back home sweety, Lani here is hurt" he looked back at me with eyes I couldn't read. So we got up and started for the street.

As we crossed the intersection, she grabbed my arm tightly and whispered,

"Stop messing up the only time I get to spend with him, you monkey magnet!" she ran up ahead and caught up with dad, he took hold of her hand and as he did she turned back at stuck out her tongue.

It took all of my strength to hold back and suck in the tears that were dying to slip.