Les Belles: Growing Pains

Chapter Five

Several days later, the Lebellen family was allowed to visit Theodore. As they sat in the waiting room together, however, no onlooker ever would have guessed they were a family. Heather sat in her chair, leaning her cheek into her palm and nervously scrolling through Instagram on her phone. Douglas was checking his email for work, constantly adjusting the tie around his neck. Ellen kept wiping imaginary dust off her pants and checking her watch. Lily Parker was there too, a pretty young girl with strawberry blonde hair and a freckles face. She looked just like Theodore's type, especially with the book in her lap that she couldn't seem to focus on. 

And sitting across from them was Lux, wearing her leather jacket and fiddling with the piercings up her cartilages. Douglas had voiced his disapproval of them several times over the past few days, making Lux more and more excited to tell him about her tattoos. 

The door opened and a nurse walked in. They all stood up hurriedly, rushing to follow her to Theodore's room. 

Once they were outside the door, Lily rifled through her bag and procured a book. It was the same one that Lux had brought him from France, and Lux could see that the pages were already worn. 

"He asked for it specially," Lily said when she caught Lux looking. She nodded in response. 

"So how long have you two been together?" Lux asked. Lily blushed. 

"Three years." She sighed dreamily. "He's just...the sweetest thing, you know? He loved everything so much." 

"Yeah, sounds like Theo," Lux replied quietly, allowing her family and Lily to enter Theodore's hospital room before her. Lily rushes to Theodore's side immediately. 

"Hey, you," Theo said, laughing at her weakly. She gave him the book with a puppy dog smile. 

Heather came around his other side. "How are you feeling?"

"Like shit," he said. Ellen shot him a glare. "Sorry, Ma."

Ellen clasped her hands together. "I've just been praying that you'll be alright. Just goes to show how much talking to God really pays off."

Lux was sure Theodore's "miraculous" survival had more to do with the skill of the surgeons and less to do with God, but she linked hands with Theodore and Heather and pretended to pray to Lord Jesus anyway. This was what she hated the most about her parents- their constant justification of everything with God. Lux hadn't once stepped foot in a church with the intent to worship since she left them. Not that she really worshiped as a teenager.

Lily had agreed to stay at the hospital with Theodore while the rest of them went home. Douglas wandered off to have a chat with the head of the hospital in order to make Theodore more comfortable (despite Theodore's protests) and Ellen and Heather went to the cafeteria to have lunch. Lux went back into the lobby to rejoin Blaise and Jade. 

"How was he?" Blaise asked as she sat down next to him.

"Good," Lux answered. "Very cheery, just tired. Doctor said he should be heading home in a few days." Lux paused and looked at Jade, who was staring at her phone. "Hey, is that my old necklace?" 

Jade looked down at the star pendant laying at her collarbone. "Oh, yeah. I took it from your bathroom. Where did you get it?"

"I stole it from my aunt's friend," Lux answered casually. Jade gaped and laughed. Lux shrugged. "What can I say? She took it off and finders keepers."

Blaise chuckled at her. He still hadn't told her about the awkward interaction between him and Douglas at breakfast their first morning at the Lebellen house. He didn't know how to bring it up, and he knew once he did, Lux would be furious. They still had two full weeks left in New York, both of which contained holidays. He didn't want to unintentionally start a fight that would end up hurting Lux in the end. 

She always said that her father was the flippant and insensitive one. Blaise had always imagined Lux's parents as one unit, but he was starting to understand that wasn't true. They were different demons made to punish different crimes. 

Ellen was a master manipulator. Blaise had watched her smile warmly at Jade and help her heap food onto her plate only to cast her disgusted looks when Jade wasn't paying attention. Blaise wasn't sure that anything Ellen said was genuine. 

Douglas, on the other hand, didn't bother with all the smoke and mirrors. He said things as he felt them, and didn't once ask for forgiveness or give an apology. Blaise was just lucky he hadn't said anything outrightly racist to either Jade or himself yet. How the two of them managed to raise good-natured Theodore or sweet Heather was beyond Blaise. He guessed that Lux's early involvement had some influence. 

"Let's walk around the city," Lux proposed suddenly, standing to her feet. "Hospitals are depressing and I want to feel like I'm not in a suburb for a hot second."

"A-woman to that, Maman," Jade cheered, grabbing Lux's arm on one side and Blaise's on the other. Together, the three of them exited the hospital and walked out into open, if polluted, air. As they practically skipped down the street, shouting rude things to people in French and Arabic with happy smiles, (Hey, Mario, nice mustache! at a large man carrying a large duffel bag. Pull up your pants, you're not an underwear model, at a young man with his trousers practically at his ankles. Wipe that scowl off your face, white woman! You look like you're thinking of the Mexicans, you racist fuck, which was, of course, yelled by Blaise, after noticing a woman wearing a very familiar red cap, but he kept on such a charming smile that the woman just grinned) and giggling when people waved back at them, confused. 

For a moment, Lux forgot that they weren't in Europe. She forgot that she had a big, beautiful prison to return to at the end of the day. She forgot everything expect for the girl tucked under her arm and the goofy man holding her hand, distracting a cat caller by yelling at him in Arabic while his victim scuttled off. That was what Jade and Blaise and everyone else she had met in Europe had done for her- made her forget how painful her past was, but still made sure that she was proud of her survival enough to make it apart of who she was. Lux wasn't sure she'd ever be able to repay her chosen family for that.