Butterfly

6. River And Jess.

Chapter Six: River And Jess.

♡ Jessica Washington ♡

"So I probably won't get home until around eleven, but River might be home before then, I'm not sure. I've already made Ashley's dinner, so you don't need to worry about that. She'll probably want to sleep at around seven anyway, so after that you can do what you want, really. There are films on the shelf under the TV, and River has some video games as well which I'm sure he wouldn't mind you playing. If you want any food, you can have anything you want. If the phone rings, just ignore it, same goes for if someone knocks on the door. And I think that's it," River's mum, Rachel, informs me. It's Thursday evening, and it's the day that I agreed to babysit Ashley, River's sister.

"Okay. Have fun," I tell Rachel, who smiles. She is dressed up smartly, wearing a black dress with black heels, with her hair neatly tied out of her face.

"I'll try, thank you for doing this. I'll see you later," Rachel smiles, before she leaves the house.

At the moment, Ashley is sat down in the floor in front of the coffee table, with her homework in front of her.

"Do you know anything about Literacy? Rivar usually helps me, but he isn't here," Ashley asks, and I smile slightly at how sweet she is. I remember when I was her age, and English was called Literacy. And the way she says River is cute, too.

"Sure, what do you need help with?" I ask, moving to sit down beside her.

I spend the next hour helping her with her homework, which is basically just spelling and punctuation, so it is just correcting the mistakes in some sentences.

"Riva can't use commas very well. Every time I ask him to help me with things like that, he always gets it wrong," Ashley tells me, and I laugh softly at this.

"Boys are stupid, anyway," Ashley smiles, as she puts away her now-completed homework. Well, what she said isn't technically true, because there are people like Albert Einstein, Charles Darwin and Isaac Newton, but I'm not about to argue with a seven year old.

"Do you want to watch a film or something before bed?" I ask Ashley, who nods, her dirty blonde hair falling over her face as she does this, excitement filling her small face, which I now notice has a few light brown freckles scattered across her cheekbones and nose.

"Can we watch The Princess and the Frog?" Ashley asks, as I sit down in front of the shelf of films, looking for the film. I find the film and put it on, before sitting down on the sofa beside her, as we start to watch the film.

Ashley starts to get tired as we watch the film, and after denying that she didn't want to go to sleep and said that she wanted to watch the end of the film, she eventually falls asleep after the part where Tiana meets Ray.

When I'm sure that Ashley is asleep and won't wake up, I pause the DVD and try to carefully pick up Ashley without waking her up. Once I have picked her up, I carry her up the stairs and try to work out which room is hers.

After opening nearly all the doors in the house, it soon becomes obvious which room is Ashley's. The walls still smell of paint, since they only moved in a few days ago, but the room is painted pale pink, with thin curtains surrounding the bed, making it look like a princess bed. The window in her room looks out onto their garden, which is the same size as mine. Their garden is a lot better than ours though, as they have a small swing set and one of those blow up swimming pools, whereas ours just had some white roses scattered around, as they're my mum's favourite flower, as well as some lavender, because my mum likes the colour.

I carefully put Ashley on her bed and pull the covers over her. She was already in her pyjamas, thank goodness, so she should sleep comfortably. After tucking her in, I switch off the lights in her room and quietly close the door, before heading back downstairs and into the living room, where I watch the end of the film.

Once the film has finished, I put away the disk and switch off the TV. I take out my phone after this and scroll through Instagram for a bit, before I hear someone at the door. I hear the door open, and it doesn't take long for me to know that it is River.

"Go upstairs, I just need to check something," River whispers to someone, as he closes the door behind him. His voice is slurred, so he has clearly been drinking. So much for a nice dinner out to catch up with his friends, he definitely went to a party. Okay, he is definitely with a girl. The sound of high heels on the wooden floor would have given that away, if I had been listening closely enough.

"Don't be long," a familiar female voice whispers, except last time I heard this voice it was a lot louder, telling me that I'm a 'fucking bitch'. If you didn't guess, it's Bella. Well, so much for being friends. So a girl slaps me, and I say that I consider River one of my friends, then he decides to have sex with the girl who slapped me. What a good friend he is. I mean, I don't have many friends - I have one - but I don't think I'd ever sleep with anyone who had slapped Olivia.

I hear footsteps up the stairs, and then the door to the living room slowly opens and River pokes his head through the gap, looking around to check if anyone is there. When he sees me, he steps into the room.

"Don't worry, I'm going, I just wanted to make sure you knew that I didn't just leave Ashley alone. I assume you can take it from here," I tell him, grabbing my stuff off of the side. He smells of alcohol, and he has lipstick smudged across his neck, surrounding where Bella has clearly bitten the skin.

"Thanks...for looking after Ashley, I mean," River says, trying not to slur his words while also being quiet, presumably because he doesn't want Bella to hear.

"It's fine, River," I reply, before heading to the door. He seems to notice that, for whatever reason, I'm not particularly happy with him. He probably notices this only because I actually used his name, rather than calling him book boy. Noticing this, he wraps his fingers around my wrist and turns me around to face him.

"Jess," is all he says, surprising me slightly, since this is the only time - that I can remember - that he has actually called me Jess, rather than using my full name. I raise an eyebrow, wondering why he is bothering to stop me. What does he think I'm going to do, stay and watch them have sex?

"Goodnight, River,"  I say, before opening the door and leaving, heading next door to my house, where I go to bed.

~*~

AUTHOR'S NOTE:

Hello! I hope you liked the chapter, it was quite short which I apologise for though. If you did like it, maybe drop it a vote or leave a comment, I'd really appreciate it! I've had a cold all week and I went back to school so I hope you week was better than mine! Thank you so much for reading x