Jake

31. Letting It Slip

"Well, you know how to drive now. On the bright side."

Sophia said, "Yeah, this wasn't the way I wanted to learn. Come on, let's get inside. It's a good thing my mom's not here yet." Jake laughed a little.

She just ignored him and said, "Come on."

She shut off the car, took the keys out of the ignition and dropped them into Jake's lap before opening the door and getting out. He grabbed them and hurried out of the car to catch up with her as she started to unlock her front door. He followed her inside and watched as she went straight into her room and shut the door loudly behind her. But that wasn't her intention, it just closed a little harder than she wanted it to. She locked it and sat on her bed for a minute, leaving Jake to wander the house by himself, since he had really only been in three of the rooms. And he didn't pay too much attention to two of them. For the first time, he actually saw the four framed photos of Sophia in the living room, and when he sat down, he realized for the first time how comfortable the Blackhart's couch was. He looked up at the ceiling and before he could check what time it was, he'd fallen asleep.

Sophia came out of her room and when she found Jake on the couch, she softly stroked his shoulder to wake him up.

"Hm?"

"Jake. Come on. You can't sleep on the couch." He put his head in his hands for a few seconds before he stood up and just stared at her.

She looked away and said, "If you're tired you can go sleep in my room or something."

He simply kept staring at her until he finally said, "I'm just really thirsty."

"Uh...there's cups in that cabinet," she pointed towards the kitchen, "maybe you should drink some water. I'll uh, be in my room." He nodded and watched as she walked away before finding a cup in the kitchen and filling it all the way up with water. He didn't even realize how fast or how much he was drinking until the cup was empty. He set the cup down on the counter and held onto it while he caught his breath, all the while not knowing what was real and what was a minor hallucination. He figured the best thing to do to make it stop was to just go to sleep. So as he slowly walked towards Sophia's room, he thought. Not about one particular thing, but about a lot of things. Things he couldn't keep track of because all of his thoughts were just whizzing around in his head. When he made it into the room, he found Sophia on her laptop. He didn't know what she was doing but he kind of really wanted to. He sat down on the side of her bed and just looked at his shoes for a long while. Sophia looked over at him every now and then because he sat there like that for over 10 minutes.

Finally he turned around before softly and calmly asking, "Can I sleep with you?"

She didn't even look at him as she said, "Yeah, I mean, you can sleep wherever you want, I don't care."

He said, "No. I mean..." She looked at him, expecting him to finish, until she got it and her entire face lost all expression.

"Oh." There was a long pause. She finally said, "Not today." He nodded softly and looked back down at his shoes. They were quiet until they both eventually went to sleep.

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The next morning, Jake woke up in an empty bed. To his surprise, he could see fine and his head didn't hurt as bad as it did last night. He was really thankful for Sophia in that moment though. If it weren't for her, he'd probably be stuck in his room for the next 3 weeks, even though it wasn't his fault. Wow, he thought, she's the best.

Just then, he heard a door open and in about three seconds, all he could smell was a wonderful fruity smell. It smelled like berries. Or watermelon candy. Or berries and watermelon candy! Whatever it was it smelled so good he could barely stand it. He sat up and right at that moment, Sophia walked in wrapped in a towel.