Unravelling

Chapter 10 - Overnight Guests

The sound of someone rummaging around the house wakes me up. I pull the blanket a bit tighter around my shoulders and try to get my bearings without opening my eyes just yet.

Slowly, my mind reminds me that I am not in my bed. Actually, it is not just my mind, but also the sensation of what I am lying on. I sluggishly extend my hand and, sure enough, it connects with the back of – a sofa. This is when I remember that I insisted on staying at Josh's last night and that I ended up sleeping on the couch.

Jordan had tried to convince me that I could share the guest bed with him but one look at his exhausted expression made me realise that it would be rather selfish of me to claim part of the bed to myself. He deserved to have a good night's sleep after the strain of his last tour. The fact that he hadn't fought me on it had been proof enough that he was beat.

The clatter of something heavy against steel followed by a subdued curse startles me and forces me to open my eyes. I find Josh standing in the open plan kitchen with his back to me. He turns towards me when I shuffle around underneath my blanket.

"Sorry," he half-whispers, "I didn't want to wake you up. Go back to sleep."

He gives me an apologetic smile. I yawn in reply.

"What time is it?" I whisper back and immediately wonder why I do that.

There is nobody else in the room that I could disturb by talking.

"What's the time?" I repeat in a normal voice.

"It's half past seven," he replies.

He walks to the fridge and pulls out a container with as strangely coloured liquid in it. It is sort of greenish brownish and looks disgusting. After grabbing a glass from the shelf, he pours the gooey stuff into it. I almost choke just watching him, and when he takes a drink from it I actually gag.

"What is that?" I ask incredulously.

"It's a power smoothie," he replies simply, as if it is the most normal thing in the world that he would drink something like this early in the morning – or anytime at all.

Actually, I shouldn't be surprised by this. Alex does similarly weird stuff. He probably got him into it, or maybe even Sam. They are the only other people I can think of in our family who would drink such disgusting looking stuff voluntarily.

"It looks gross," I remark with a shudder.

"You wanna try?" he asks in a teasing tone, walking towards me with the half-full glass still in his hand.

"Stay away from me with that!" I exclaim.

I sit up and scramble into the corner of the sofa furthest away from him. Josh laughs and sits down on the coffee table in front of me.

"Shh, the others are still asleep," he reminds me.

"What you doing up already?" I want to know, not taking my eyes off the smoothie in his hand, as if it would somehow attack me if I wasn't careful.

"I'm going for a run."

"But it's the weekend."

This for me is reason enough not to get out of bed too early. Actually, I am quite surprised by how awake I feel, despite it still being early. I do quick maths in my head and figure out that I must have been asleep for about nine and half hours. That is normally enough for me, during the week. But I have a habit of staying in bed until around 10am on the weekends – unless somebody forces me to get up, which usually isn't met by much understanding from my part.

Most of my brothers – minus the fitness obsessed ones like Sam and Alex – feel the same. It would never even occur to any of the teens to show their face before eleven o'clock at the earliest. I am totally on board with that.