Home?

Chaper 24: Stand up for you.

Declan

    A good 10 minutes later we are sitting outside her house. It feels like forever since I brought her back here. I have been dreading bringing her back here because the little piece of me inside thinks I'm not going to get her back. I know she doesn't love me yet especially of what I just did today, I'm going to have to work even harder to even consider it. She did forgive me and she told me to forgive myself but she didn't see the look on her face when I said I just want to sleep with her. That image of her betrayed face is burned into my memories.

It took me forever to forgive myself for what happened to Sophia. My little sister, now I have let someone else actions affect mine again. That's the one problem I have, well I have a lot of problems. One of the problem is, what am I going to do about Grace? What can we do about Grace? How in the world are we not going to get Ivory sent to another state? And then we have this whole thing with Ivory's mom and dad. Well her mom make her move back in? Will her dad blame this on her too? So many questions I don't even know the answers to. So many questions I have no clue where to start to answer them. So many questions that I'm too scared to answer.
As we're sitting outside her house it just now occurred to me that she's never called it her house with meaning. She's never called my house her home. Does she think that she doesn't have one? More questions. This in particular I'm too scared to even ask, too scared of the answer.
Look around her house, it's the same perfect little Barbie doll house that it was the first time I saw it. There's a garage, so you can't tell if her dad home or not. I guess we'll just have to take her mom's word for it.

When I walked down from my room when, we were still at my house. Ivory and my mom were looking at each other as if I missed out on something important. The look on Ivory's face was unsureness as if she didn't know what was going to happen. At first I thought they were talking about her mother, but after looking at them that option seemed unlikely. Their faces were to serious for it to be that matter. And if it was about that they would've shared their conversation with me but as soon as I walked on the stairs and I noticed me they got quiet and stiff. I have a little feeling that the conversation was about me. Maybe Ivory was second-guessing forgiving me and my mom was reassuring her. But if she was second-guessing she wouldn't have let me take her anywhere she would've just told me, wouldn't she? Now I'm second-guessing everything.

"Ready?" I look at her nervously.

"As much I'll ever be," she says it opens a door not giving me a chance to open it for her. Maybe it's not the time to be opening doors for her.

We get up to the front door and stop. We don't knock, we don't go in, we just stand there.
Ivory staring at the door like it's going to open just with the motion of her mind. It doesn't look like she's going to move or if she even has motivation to move.

"I'm right here," I whisper in her ear. "I'm always at an arm's length."

She nods her head with her eyes close, reaches for my hand, and I knock on the door.
With in seconds you could hear footsteps running to get to the door. What looks like Ivorys mother swings the door wide open. Ivory's mother looks different from the last time I saw her. She looks plus put together. She's not wearing a white blouse or pencil skirt. She's just wearing jeans and a blue T-shirt. Her dark eyes have bags under them from exhaustion. Last time I saw her hair was in neat defined long curls unlike Ivory's which were scattered all over her head but now She has it in a ponytail with her hair almost touching her shoulders.

As, soon as she sees who's at the door her face completely lightens up. The bags under her eyes aren't as defined, her eyes aren't as dark and depressed, her skinny body isn't as jagged as it was before.