Is Blood Thicker Than Love?

Silly Accusations

"So do you have anything in mind?" Laney asked me glancing and fingering her way through the clothing material on the rack. When I had agreed to go to this late night event I forgot that I didn't have anything to wear. I had called Laney but she said she couldn't go yesterday because LT had a bad cold but today Eric offered to take to care of them while she helped me pick out an outfit.

"No not really. I just don't want something too sluty or too boring. You know?" I replied hustling through the rack on the other side of Laney. I was glad she agreed to help because to be honest I was terrible at picking outfits. This had to go with this. The colors had to be color coordinated. The shoes had to tie everything together, it was just too much.

"Yeah  I understand." She muttered. "Oh what about this one?" She asked holding up a long dark green dress with sparkly material. It was cute? No the dress looked like it had been run over by a tractor trailer in a field of cow manure. "Are you kidding me?" I said looking at her like she was boring me. I mean come on I don't think my great grandmother would have been caught wearing something like that. It was disturbing.

She laughed and put it back on the rack. "So how is your pregnancy going?" I asked. I had been so caught up with my own problems that I never asked her how she was. I felt like a bad friend because every time I was around her it seemed like she wanted to say something but I never gave her a chance.

"Everything's great" She said all to quickly. First thought that came to my head was there's something wrong with the baby? But I wanted to be rational about this. Anything could be wrong. It's Laney for crying out loud. She cries about everything when she's pregnant. It was the pregnancy hormones. I walked over to where she was furiously going through the clothes and put my hand on her's. She stopped fiddling with the clothes and looked at me instead.

"What's really going on?" I asked sincerely. This was my best friend since we were kids. I knew her like the back of my hand. Something wasn't right. I could feel it. Tears were at the peak of her eyes. I rubbed her back in a comforting way to tell her it was okay. "I think he's cheating." She whispered looking back at the clothes in front of her. "Who?" I asked. "Eric?" She nodded.

It took all I had not to laugh at her sudden theory that her fiancé was cheating on her. He loved her for Christ sake. That's the damned reason he left me for her in the first place.

"Once a player always a player" They would say but that's not always true people can change.

I admit at first he was a player but his player days were surely over. He loved Laney, I could see it in his eyes. "Why would you think that?" I asked her, dropping my hand from her back. I didn't like her accusations. He was a good man and there was no reason for her to go around accusing him. "I just know okay." She said rather hostile using hand gestures.

"Listen. Before you go all crazy and accusing him. Did you ask him?" I mean the first thing you should do if you think a man is cheating on you is ask right?  I mean my therapist never gave me advice on love like that. She only said "if your in love you'll know." and then she dropped the subject.

"What will that do? He'd just lie Ave. Men lie. You know what? I don't even know why I'm talking about this with you. Just-Just leave it." She huffed walking off. It was surprising to me because I had never seen Laney lose her cool like that. Ever. She was always the one that would remain cool calm and collected about anything that came her way but this. This was new. This was not Laney

.

~~~

"Thanks for helping me." I said quietly. She nodded and exited the cab and walked into her apartment. After our talk about whether Eric was cheating on her not I decided to drop the subject. We went from store to store desperately trying to find me an outfit. I tried making conversation with her but she would only cut them short with one word responses. Once we found my outfit, we ate at Subway then left the mall.

Upon arriving home, I thanked and paid the cab driver and told him to keep the change. I didn't know what I pulled out my pocket and to be honest I didn't really care. He looked at the money wide eyed and nodded his head drastically saying that I was welcome.

Walking into the lobby of my apartment people were smiling generously and saying good evening. I gave a small smile and waved walking to the elevator to go to my floor. I owned the entire top floor. It was renovated to fit my personal style. In order to get into my floor you had to have a special code. That was only for safety reasons because by law I was still a Smith. Not that I wanted to be but that was my last name and it was given to me and it could only be changed if I got married to someone.

Marriage

I don't think I could ever get married to someone. Rephrase that. I don't think anyone would ever want to marry me. I had too many problems and flaws that came with me. I had to take therapy to rebuild my courage and strength. Being with me would only want to make someone jump off the nearest cliff.

I had two hours to get ready before the car came and took me to this event. I wanted those hours to go by as slowly as possible but knowing time, it was more likely to be unpredictable. Have you ever felt like when you wanted time to slow down but the only thing it did was manage to speed up?

Well now I only had 30 minutes left and I was dreading every second of it. I had started a count down so that I could go and come back as quickly as possible. I was doing this for my little sister and I wouldn't back down. I wondered what she looked like now. It had been months since I had seen her. Three and a half to be exact. Did she lose anymore teeth? Did she grow taller? Did her hair grow longer? How did she act? Was she bad or was she the sweetest thing you had ever seen?

Believe it or not a lot can happen in three and a half months. I missed her so much and I knew I had to do this for myself. But not just myself I had to do this for her.

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