Her Strength, His Weakness

• Chapter Thirteen •

We all decided that my house would be the best place for our movie night, because I have enough space to fit all eight of us on the couches. Willow and dad were at Wil's weekend dance competition, so only my mom would be home tonight, which meant we'd have the place mostly to ourselves. Ethan has another date so he can't come, but Erin is brining her boyfriend with her. We've all met him before, except the guys, so it won't be wierd.

Caitlyn and I went to the store this afternoon to buy snacks for tonight. We bought two bags of chips, three chocolate bars and four bags of assorted jelly sweets. The boys were on drink duty and Alice and Erin were going to buy similar things to us.

Everyone agreed to bring a movie that they wanted to watch and we decided that we would choose the best four by vote.

Our first movie was planned to start at five o'clock.

Just before four thirty, Caitlyn and I went upstairs to gather some blankets and pillows from the spare room. We took them all downstairs and placed them around the couches and on the floor.

The door bell rang, interrupting my blanket work, so I ran to open the door. When I opened I gasped at the sight I saw before me.

"Oh my shit! Archer, what happened?" I said though my hands that covered my mouth.

Archer had cuts and forming bruises on his face. There was till some blood oozing for a few of the cuts. I hated those guys for hurting Archer like this.

He smiled weakly at me. "I'm good, Blondie. You should see the other guys."

"Other GUYS? There was more than one?" I asked. Dah, of course there was more than one, if it was only one guy, then Archer would be okay.

I pulled him inside and shut the door.

"Caitlyn, I'm going upstairs. Let the others in when you hear the door." I called out as I pulled Archer upstairs to the bathroom.

After we were inside, I shut the door and moved him to sit on the basin. He obeyed my instructions to sit still and don't complain.

I took a look at his face. It was bad. He had cuts on his left eyebrow, his lip, his nose and huge forming bruises on his left eye and cheek. I reached out to touch the bruise, but he flinched in pain.

"Archer, what happened? You never loose a fight."

He looked at the floor, but then back up at me. I reached for the first aid kit and opened it up, exposing its contents.

"I went the the grocery store to get  stuff for tonight, but when I got out of my car I was jumped. Four guys, they said that they were there to 'teach me a lesson'. That sound familiar?" He said. "Three of them were friends with the guy who cornered you the other day and he was the fourth. He wanted to prove a point or something. The bastard didn't even attempt to take a shot at me, he just laughed as he watched the others do it."

"Oh Archer." I sympathized as I began to clean up his face.

"Sorry that I didn't get a chance to buy drinks." He said in attempt to lighten the mood.

I giggled at his words and I ran an alcohol swab along his cut above his eye. Archer gently grabbed my arm and brought it down from his face and held it on his lap.

"Blondie. I'm okay." He said softly locking eyes with me.

"Just let me clean you up, okay?" I said. "It's all I can do to help, so let me have this."

"Okay." He said. "And just so that you know, I knocked two of them out." He said.

I giggled again. "I have no doubt."