Unrequited

Faux Pas - March, 2002

Arianna was at home, enjoying the quiet in the house. John was at B5, working on some project, Sophia and Dylan were at school, and Luc and Allegra were napping. She was using the quiet moments to take some time for herself. She was reading the latest issue of People magazine that had been delivered to their mailbox a little earlier.

John had often teased her about reading that 'tabloid rubbish,' but she enjoyed the magazine. She'd been reading it since she was a teen in the 70s. And besides, she had more than once seen him sneaking off with the latest issue to give it a good perusal. Probably because Amanda had been popping up in it recently.

Amanda had started dating Nick Valensi, the guitarist of the band The Strokes, who was nine years younger than her. They seemed to be getting along really well, and he seemed to be grounding her a bit. She was becoming less and less dramatic and more and more pleasant towards John and Arianna. Maybe all she needed was the right guy to make her happy again. Or maybe when the 'blow job incident' had occurred with John, something had changed in her.

In any case, Amanda had been traveling a lot with Nick while he toured, so Atlanta was often with Arianna and John. Arianna loved having her with them, and Atlanta loved it too. She shared a room with Sophia, and they would hear the two girls in their room giggling and whispering, having girl time. It was really quite wonderful.

Arianna had just taken a sip of her iced tea when Luc appeared, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. She scooped him up and gave him a big kiss on the cheek, hugging him tightly. At two and a half, he was quite chatty and spoke fairly well for his age. And he had John's big, brown eyes and radiant smile, just like Atlanta.

She put him back down, telling him to go and play, so he wandered over to the corner where the toys were kept. A moment later, he was bringing over the bucket of wooden blocks. Lately, he had started to like to build things with his blocks. He would build a child's version of a house or a castle and proudly show whoever was around to look at it. He started quietly building, so Arianna returned to her magazine.

"Hallo, Mummy," she heard, a looked up to see John leaning over the back of the sofa, smiling.

He gave her a full kiss, smirking at her as he stood up. Luc turned and waved to John, who then playfully lumbered over like he was a giant that was going to squash the castle that Luc had built. Luc began to shriek in genuine terror, not wanting his castle knocked over, but he accidentally bumped it with his own knee. He looked on in horror as one wall collapsed in. The others teetered but remained standing.

"Bollocks," Luc said, and John's eyes went wide in shock.

He snorted and bit his lips together to contain his laughter as he looked up at Arianna, who had lowered her magazine. He hoped she had not heard it, but she obviously had.

"What did he say?" Arianna asked, her brow furrowed, unsure if she had just heard their toddler son blurt out the very British curse.

"Blocks," John coolly lied, knowing full well Luc had learned that word from him.

He used it more often around the kids than he realized, he reckoned. Arianna eyed him for a moment, questioning if he was telling the truth, but then shrugged her shoulders and went back to her magazine. Crisis averted, John kissed Luc on top of his head and retreated to the office. Arianna kept reading, and Luc happily rebuilt his work and added to his construction.

When the three older kids came in from school, they were loudly chattering about their lessons, their friends, and the excitement of their day. Arianna quickly got them settled at the kitchen table to do their homework and then began to get the things together to make dinner. The house was quiet again as the kids worked, and Arianna read a recipe from the computer for a new dish she wanted to try. They all heard the blocks crash like the whole building had collapsed, and then...