Unemployed Hearts

Chapter 4

May 12, 2012
How we Brandon and I became friends?

It was extremely bright and I found myself trapped in a mirror maze. I had no idea how I ended up here. The mirror in front was reflecting an image of a girl in white gown, deep black eyes, pale skin and…blonde!
I couldn’t bear that image so I ran. I ran in every direction. Everywhere I went I saw the same girl and the hem of her dress flying behind her everywhere she ran. Something was strange. I stopped and looked at the girl in the mirror. I raised my hand to see a ring on it and the girl did the same thing.

That girl was me… my blonde version.

My eyes sensed something and I saw Jason Wood, blood dropping from his moth, holding me by my waist and his fans about to dig into my neck skin, the image that made me scream.
“Aaaaaaa!”
I got up screaming and my eyes opened. I was sweating and panting with fear.
“What is with you?” Brandon murmured in irritation and threw his cover away and sat up to face me. Brandon and I had to share same bed, our head facing each other’s toes. I had a small house so no extra room for visitor. Well, I never had any visitor staying for the nights, that’s why never felt a need to buy a bigger house or extra bed. Neither do had I had any money to buy either of that.
And then he yelled, “You do this intentionally, don’t you? I’m trying to sleep here, lady. Just because I took your money from the jar and I’m staying at your place doesn’t make you my boss. Are you really this stupid or do you just enjoy being irritating. You have to rotate on the bed and then your legs will do tap dance on my head and then you will crawl on to my side,  throw me out of bed and then you will pull the blanket!! What is it you want?”
I knew he was very tired. Living with me wasn’t easy. In fact, it was like hell. I was shabby, lazy, and most often annoying.
But I was too scared at that time. And tears started streaming from my eyes.

There were very absurd times when I couldn’t control my eye balls from taking bath, like when I read The Truth About Not Loving Miranda, when I saw Titanic, or when I lost in ‘little princess spring dance competition’ in which I danced on my milkshake brings all the boys to the yard.
Sometimes I still wonder why I lost. I bet it was all fixed!

“Hey, Lianna?” Brandon’s voice became very tender and soft. “Hey I –I am sorry. I know I shouldn’t have yelled like that on you. At least not after what all you are doing for Me.” he very awkwardly tapped my back and then hesitantly hugged me. I could make out his helplessness and guilt. But I didn’t hesitate for a second and hugged him tightly.
“What happened? Is it because of something I said?” if I wouldn’t have been so occupied with my nightmarish thought; I would have found this side of Brandon Grate very surprising.
“A bad Dream.” I said while sniffing on his shoulder. There was this little problem with me, may be many people have this problem. My nosey material starts flowing before my tears come out.
“What am I suppose to do now?” he whispered. It was two a.m.; there was nothing that could be done. He held me for a while.“Okay! Get up. We are going out.”
“What?” I cleaned my nose with the sleeves of my night suit.
I still remember a few weeks ago it was me running out of my house at mid-night because of this ass of a man but today he seemed so different.

So much better.

This time it was Brandon who was looking after me. I guess, living with him wasn’t that bad, or maybe he was trying to change.
He must be trying so hard because he really was good at time like right now.
We were walking silently on the pavement. None of us tried to start a conversation. There were times he would ask me whether I was feeling better or not. But I was in mood to have solitude. He must have sensed it, which is why he didn’t push me. I was surprised when I saw we were in front of Flamingo, the only shop opened at every hour.

“You know about this place?” I asked him in amazement. He nodded as if it was no big deal. “No, I mean it’s not that famous. Rich don’t come here. You know what I mean right?” I wasn’t able to phrase what I wanted to say. I don’t know why but sometimes I felt it so hard to keep my view in front of other people. Either I ended offending them or I ended by confusing them.
He rolled his eyes and led me inside. “You can try explaining it later.”
We were sitting on the seat near the window face to face. I was the one eating the hot chocolate. He was just sitting there watching here and there.

After looking at his undone hair, weary eyes, I felt bad for pulling him out at such an hour.
He was already trying to do a lot for me. The day I showed him my house his reaction was lame. That was definitely something I was expecting out of Brandon Grate.




“You live here?” that was a very disgusting expression I saw on his face.
“Yup. You can stay here but there’s one problem… actually few problems.”
“What?”
“No extra bed so you have to sleep on floor. I have two kittens currently living at my parent’s house. I’m planning to get them back soon. There are fixed timings for hot water, that is five to six in the morning and if you are planning to stay longer here you will have to share the expenses with me.” he was giving me a very lame look as if he didn’t know what I was talking about. I shrugged at his response. “We both are unemployed.”
“Though none of these suit my requirement, I have no choice but to adjust even under these poor conditions. But I can’t cope with the cat thing even if I try. I’m allergic to them.”
“But they are just kittens, look at them.” I pointed at the photo frame, similar to the one I usually kept with me at my offices.  “They are so cute. I really can’t throw them away.” I was literally pleading. It was my house if I remember correctly, then why the hell was I asking for his permission. “They will not go anywhere, and that’s final.”
“Fine just keep them away from me.” Brandon and I finally came to an agreement after intensive deliberation.
I didn’t feel good to see him shivering on the cold floor so I suggested another arrangement.

“So you want  to sleep with me, huh?” but some things never change.
These were the things that assured me of my sanity. He was the same jerk after all. “No you pervert! I was just offering you half of the bed but, Guess what?  You don’t deserve it.” I yelled at him and hid my face under the cover to hide my embarrassment. ‘Sleep with him? Hell no.’ I shook my head and mentally slapped myself.

But he did come anyway and crawled next to me.

I had series of interviews lined up. I had to attend three job interviews in a row. I came home exhausted, but it wasn’t that bad when I came home. Due to some unknown reason that small apartment felt like home now. Brandon was in kitchen cooking something.
“hey! What are you doing?”
“Ohh! You’re home. I thought, I could use some time at home, cook something.” And he shrugged.
“You know how to cook?” I didn’t know even C of cooking.
“Yeah, I know how to prepare ready to cook sealed food.” At this my orbs widened to the size of a football. There was only one place were he could have found money.
“How much did you spend?” I asked while trying to recover from the shock.
“What?” he was confused.
“I asked how much did you spend on this?” I was extremely angry now. We were already out of money.
“I don’t know.  I used the money kept in that jar.” He had no clue what he had done.
“Are you out of your mind?” I yelled at him. “That was the money I had saved for the third installment of Knowing Miranda series! How could you do this to me? I have no money left, no job and now I have lost all my saving.” Then my eyes went in direction of the spoiled kitchen. “And now guess what! We are out of grocery. No food now.”
“We do have food. I made it myself.” Brandon said in a monotone trying to ignore me as if I was some nagging housewife.
“Yeah! But we have food only for today. And you must have just boiled some packet and you call that cooking.” I was spiting mean words at him and throwing things from here to there.
I was filled with anger. I went straight to bed throwing my heels and purse on the floor. “Great! Unemployment wasn’t enough, now poverty.”

“Stop yelling like that! And what are you doing?” he pointed at my jacket and shoes on floor. “For your kind information, I had to clean this house like thrice to get the germs off this place.”
I ignored his blotter and lied on back. I felt something sticky on my hair, I pulled it. “BRANDON! What-is-this-doing- on-my-bed?” fury inside me was boiling like lava. I pointed at the peanut butter sandwich.
“You stupid lady, I was supposed to eat that. It was the last one left.” He cried like a young boy. Those were the last words I heard from him before banging the washroom door, cursing him on my way. I took shower to wash the peanut butter and anger off my body.

But even after all that, he did look after me when I felt low that day.

“Lianna?!” Brandon snapped me out of my reverie or dream or whatever it was.
I immediately responded, “What?” a bit shaken from my flashback.
“Nothing.” He turned his gaze outside the window. I was enjoying the solitude of late night, but Brandon’s voice didn’t seem like an interruption. “My grandmother used to work here. My grandparents met outside this shop. Nana used to bring me here when I was small but when my mother… when she passed away Nana wasn’t healthy anymore. I still come here sometimes.” That was very strange of Brandon to share something so personal with me. I was taken aback by this.
“Ohh!” I didn’t know what to say, or how to feel about this. This was so unexpected and confusing. I took another spoon of hot chocolate in my mouth. There was another minutes of silence.

Suddenly I felt this urge to share something personal with Brandon.

“My Bosses haunt me in my dreams, every single person under whom I’ve ever worked. That is why I usually wake up screaming, rotate on bed, do tap dance on your head, throw you off bed, and other bad things I do to you in my sleep.” Slowly a smile formed on Brandon’s face which was so much communicable. He looked like a young boy when he laughed whole-heartedly.

And we both laughed. That is how another trouble-some day ended.
But in the end we both found a friend in each other.

                                        Copyright©2014Aranasmith
                                                           Wattpad