The New Kid (Book 1)

Chapter 21

Elliot

I was up most of the night, unable to sleep. It was mostly due to the fact that Colton and I were talking well into the early hours of the morning because of how nervous he was for seeing his mom later. Then after he had fallen asleep, I was still worried about him, because I couldn't help it.

It felt like I had just drifted off to sleep when Mama woke me up for breakfast.

Crawling out of bed, I made my way to the kitchen, still half asleep. There wasn't much planned for today, at least not that I knew of, so I could probably get away with doing nothing for the next couple hours after breakfast, maybe even napping.

"You look exhausted, sweetheart," Mom said as I sat down at the table, a plate of pancakes and bacon already waiting for me.

I nodded, leaning my head on my hand and picking up my fork, staring down at my plate. Looking up at her was too much work right now. "Yeah. I was talking to Colton to about three, I think," I admitted. "Maybe later than that."

"No wonder you were still sleeping when we got here."

My head snapped up at the voice coming from the seat directly across the table from me. I smiled widely at the sight of my sister and her fiance, Justin, sitting in front of me. "How long have you been here?" I asked Kris, extremely confused, but definitely more awake than I was a second ago. I didn't think they were coming up until Tuesday at the earliest.

She glanced at the clock. "About an hour. I was actually surprised that you were still sleeping, but I guess you talking to your boyfriend all night will do that."

"An hour?" I questioned. What time was it? I looked at the clock to see it was almost eleven. I usually never sleep past nine on the weekends. "Woah," I muttered, realizing I was the only one with food in front of them because they probably all ate already.

Everyone started laughing at me then, and I pouted. It's not my fault. I was just worried about Colton. Speaking of, I jumped to my feet, needing to get to my phone. He should have already seen his mom by now. Hopefully it went okay.

"Where are you running to?" I heard Justin ask just as I was leaving the kitchen. "Not even going to stay and chat? Or eat your breakfast?" I stopped and turned to face them all again.

"I have to talk to Colton."

Mama shook her head, a small smile on her face. "Sit, Elliot. You will both be fine not talking to each other for a little bit longer."

I sighed, but sat down anyway. I hadn't told my moms that Colton was going to be seeing his mom today, only because I wasn't sure if he wanted other people to know or not. So I just kept it to myself for now.

The rest of breakfast was spent with Kris and Justin explaining how they managed to come up here a few days earlier than planned. Justin's boss was nice enough to give him the entire week off, so they took advantage of the free time to have more time to plan for the wedding that's this Sunday.

Honestly, as the rest of the morning went on, I got really distracted and never went to go get my phone, even when we left the house to go do wedding stuff in the early afternoon, which I didn't realize until we were already in the car and it was too late to turn around.

"I'm so glad you came with us today," Justin said to me. We were sitting in the waiting room of a dress store while Kris and our moms were in the back getting her dress fitted or hemmed or something like that. "I would have been so bored being the only guy here. Especially because I'm not allowed to go back there."

I let out a small chuckle. "Like I even had a choice. But I don't mind." I looked over at him with a smile. "I'm glad you're going to be my brother. As long as you don't hurt Kris, cause then I'll be really mad. And then I'll have to hurt you."