Lionheart

Chapter 7

                Having done all of his chores, Nick brings his arms beneath his head and lets out peaceful sigh. He stares a little at the creamy ceiling from where he’s lounging on the spongy couch of his family’s cozy living room. Nick already finished all of his homework for the day, leaving him thankfully stripped of any more tasks… at least, possibly until his mother returns home from her work at the nearby daycare.

                Nick closes his eyes contentedly, praising himself for being able to prioritize his responsibilities. Heaven knows he could use a nap.

                But his phone rings and vibrates on the old, expended wood of the coffee table in front of the couch.  Nick almost makes a move to roll over and ignore the phone, but no one other than his own mother and uncle actually calls him. He’s also pretty sure that they’re the only tangible people in his contact list.

                Grumbling in protest as he glares at the bare ceiling, Nick reaches out, patting the wooden table in search of his phone. His fingers come into contact with the cool screen and he grasps the phone.

                He answers the call without checking the caller I.D. on the screen.

                “You!”

                Nick ends the call. He really should have checked first.

                The phone rings again. No surprise there. Nick waits, but the ringing doesn’t stop. He strongly deliberates ignoring the devil’s messenger of a kid that he already feels is looming over him, strangely invisible and subtle, but he wasn’t raised that way, no. At the outset, ignoring the call wouldn’t even make a difference. He can’t block her number because again, his mother taught him not to do that unless he is actually feeling threatened in any reasonable way that would cause permanent damage. Another reason is the sudden visualization of Mallory following him around as often as she could.

                So he answers the call.

                “You,” he says, as deadpan as possible. He prays to no one in particular that Mallory knows at least this social cue even though she’s always shown evidence of getting any social cue clearly not being the case. Nick concedes the opinion that Mallory is the type of person who backs off if she were told forthright, with the exact, if not harsher, words to her face, or in their current state of affairs, over the line.

                If Mallory is incensed over Nick hanging up, she doesn’t say anything—although it’s really not like Nick is going to give a shit. She is, however, huffy over something else entirely. It’s something that Nick, admittedly, might have forgotten about or at the very least, neglected to address.

               “Seth. What’d you do to Seth?” Nick narrows his eyes in confusion. Mallory’s voice sounds throaty and a hundred decibels quieter. Is that what she sounds like when she’s pissed, or is this just another thing he has to deal with now that she won’t leave him alone?

                He tears himself away from this wasteful train of thought. The memory of Seth making that face surfaces and what the hell it feels like an actual goddamn priority in his gratifyingly ho hum and snail-paced life. He keeps silent despite his—he doesn’t even know what he’s feeling. All he discerns in whatever the fucking hell is happening in his life (that all of a sudden kind of involves Seth Hammonds) is that he’s in some shit rut and it’s mind-numbingly inconvenient.