“Amy, come on.” Chris sighed.
I cut him a dark look. “Don’t you start. Did you pay for that beer?” My eyes flicked towards his empty glass on the bar. Chris’s eyes darkened as if what I had said had cut him to the bone. I regretted the words as soon as they’d flown venomously from my mouth. Without breaking his eyes from mine, Chris stood, dug into his back pocket and flipped out a twenty, slamming it on the bar.
“Keep the change, I’m hitting the sack. Gotta get up and earn my keep.” He started for the door.
“Chris, you don’t have to do a day shift,” I called after him.
He turned to me, my blood running cold at his stare. “What alternative is there, Amy? Families stick together, don’t they?” he said icily before leaving the room.
Chapter Twenty-One
After slipping Chris’s twenty-dollar bill into an envelope and writing ‘Don’t be a dick’ on it, I tiptoed up the hall and slid it under his door.
After our rather heated exchange I had time to think it over and let it seep in just how relieved I was that Chris was here. I knew he wouldn’t have hesitated the moment Sean called him; he had always been loyal like that. Sure, he had the tendency to be hard on people, but it was only because he expected the best. Chris always put in a hundred and ten percent so I couldn’t fault him for expecting a lot from others, too. It would be a massive contrast between Chris being here to help compared to the likes of Matt the Rat.
I cursed as a floorboard creaked underfoot as I made my escape down the darkened hallway. The hall was suddenly illuminated with light as a door opened behind me. Chris stood there, shirtless, with his electric toothbrush in hand, frowning at my ‘deer in the headlights’ stance.
He held up his hand as if telling me to wait a sec, disappeared from the doorway and I heard a gargle and spit, and he then reappeared, wiping the excess toothpaste off his lips with the back of his hand.
“You going to bed?” he asked.
Way to go, Captain Obvious.
I chose against the sarcastic response and just nodded.
Chris leaned against the door frame. “So, do you think they’ll really sell?” His eyes were serious, but they had softened. Maybe he was tired, like me.
“I honestly don’t know.”
Chris didn’t reply. Instead, he looked off into the swirl of the ’70s carpet, thoughtfully, as if he wasn’t entirely present in the here and now.
After a while he broke the silence. “Do you want them to?”
“No.” My response was immediate, certain.
Chris broke into a slow smile, for the first time all night. “Okay. Then let’s do this.”
I didn’t know entirely what ‘this’ meant, but by the wicked glimmer in his eyes it seemed it meant he and I were in this together, and for the first time in a long time I felt part of the family again.
“Okay,” I agreed, smiling back. It was almost like a mutual truce and, as I noticed the glint of humour in Chris’s eyes, I relaxed. But then that same smile slid away as he stepped back into his room, the sound of paper crinkling under his bare foot.
Uh-oh!
Chris frowned, lifted up his foot and tilted his head sideways. “Don’t. Be. A. Dick?” he read aloud.
“GOODNIGHT!” I quickly backed away, quickstepping my way to my room, and slammed the door.
***
I sat bolt upright in bed as incessant pounding on my door threatened to break it from its hinges.
“Wakey-wakey!” Chris yelled.
Did he seriously just say wakey-wakey? Dork!
“Come on, get up, Amy! You didn’t think you could sleep in just because I was here, did you?” he called, his footsteps receding down the hallway and away from my door.
I rubbed at my eyes. What time was it? Heaven forbid I sleep in on a Sunday during my holidays. Oh, the horror! But he had a point, I guess: just because he was here to help out didn’t mean that I would … Holy hell, it was six a.m.! Was he freaking insane?
I threw myself back onto the bed and tucked myself into the doona like a cocoon. Chris, I love you, but seriously… No way!
I stirred again later at a softer knock and as I peeked one eye reluctantly open I saw piercing sunlight pushing its way through the cracks of my curtain. I would have mistaken it as a rather unlike-Chris awakening but then his voice called through the door.
“Amy, you better get up, there is someone here to see you.” For a moment I thought perhaps it was a dream, but then of course I knew it wasn’t as the door opened and Chris turfed my hairbrush at me from my dressing table.
“Up!”
Luckily for him the brush missed, but it didn’t stop my dramatics.