Missing Pieces

Chapter 22

Clemont had always had a nervous mumbling habit. In fact all of us, Bonnie, Clemont and I, had our own special nervous habits. Bonnie's seemed to change more the older she got. At one point she was able to just run and escape to her room. But she got older and would need to leave the house more. She enjoyed pokemon grooming whenever she had the chance and would practice on her dolls. But being out of the house more sometimes meant she couldn't style a plush's fur. So she'd fidget and fiddle with her own hair, sometimes to a rather great degree. Once, her nerves had gotten to her so badly that her hair fidgeting had gotten to a new all time high. And unfortunately, while trying to deal with those nerves, she managed to get a hold of someone's scissors. The result? She wore a hat for several months whenever she left the house.

My nervous habit didn't change much as I got older I was told. It mostly involved writing, which helped me release stress, which quickly devolved into doodling on myself, which my mother didn't approve of. The doodles to her seemed "unladylike", and I understood where she was coming from. Whenever I had finished I would look at the arm I had coated in blacks, blues, and reds from my pens and grimace at the sight. I never really did it because I liked the look. Tattoos weren't something I ever really wanted to get. I did it because for some reason afterwards my mind would feel so much clearer and lighter.

Clemont, even though he really was the quirkiest of the three of us, had the most normal nervous habit: Nervous mumbling. He would speedily mumble and mutter under his breath, almost like he was trying to keep pace with his raging thoughts. Though, he didn't just do it when he was nervous. When he was angry, excited, even when he was sad (though those mumbles weren't as quick), the trait seemed to shine through.

He stared at the ground as we both walked back, the only sound besides his quiet mumbles being the heels of our shoes click clacking across the pavement. I took slower deeper breaths because the thick atmosphere of was getting to be a bit much for me.

I felt like I needed to say something. Anything to get rid of this tense feeling and suffocating silence.

I open my mouth to speak hoping my brain some kind of words tumbling out that make a little cohesive sense but before I could Clemont quickly asked, "He's going tonight?"

I could ask which he Clemont was talking about and where he was insinuating this "he" was going but he knew I was smarter than that. I nodded slowly.

"He asked you to come with him, didn't he?" Clemont asked, the question sounding less like a question and more like he was reaffirming a fact.

"Well um- n-not exactly..."

In all honesty I was the one who shouted about wanting to go with him. He might've brought it up but he hadn't really outright asked me, so it wasn't a lie.

Unfortunately, thinking of the situation made a pink blush start reappearing on my cheeks, and gave my adoptive blond brother the wrong idea.

He gripped the straps of his bag tighter as his voice got lower and more sinister. Or maybe not sinister. Protective? Concerned even?

"He's using you Serena"

Those four words were enough to make me stop in my tracks.

Apparently Clemont noticed the absence of my shoes clicking on the pavement along with his since he stopped and turned to me, his expression riddled with hate, though not toward me, and undeniable worry.

"I know you don't like to think of him like that, but..." Clemont sighed pausing to close his eyes tightly and pinch the bridge of his nose. "Think about this. He left you with a false sense of hope years ago when you really needed him. Now he's suddenly back having not even attempted to apologize in that amount of time and you're just...fine with that?!"