How Jesse Got His Karma

twenty-four

I was sitting at the counter in my kitchen the next morning scrolling through my messages and doing some quick online research when Cyrus walked down the steps eyeing me closely, squinting his eyes at me, and rubbing his hands over his eyes dramatically shaking his head

"Do my eyes deceive me...or is Jesse actually..in front of me right now?"

"I live here," I roll my eyes

"Really? I wouldn't know," He says walking down the last step and coming towards me, "I haven't seen you in this house in the daytime at least. You always creep in late at night."

"Well, I'm sorry, dad. I'll try to keep my curfew next time."

"I don't care about what time you come in. I just wanna know what you're doing when you're not here."

"Well, if it was important wouldn't you think I'd let you know?" I ask trying to reason with him so he leaves me alone.

"No. I think you wouldn't." he shakes his head and laughs, "You didn't even tell me your last name until the third grade."

I forgot about that. I shrug my shoulders and go back to looking at my phone before he snatches it out of my hand forcing me to look at him again and I almost groan before he decided to speak,

"You want to know what I think?" he starts but I cut him off

"No, because I genuinely do not care."

Ignoring me he continues and says, "I think you've been hanging around with that little partner of yours." he starts to nod his head as if he's connecting the dots, "The girl that should've been... you know," he pauses and starts to put his fingers in quotation marks, " D-Word by now"

"I'm not hanging around with anyone. Nicholas and I have been doing some damage control all week, tightening up security, Cyrus."

"Um. No." We hear Simp coming from down the same steps that Cyrus sauntered down here from before he began his interrogation.

"You and Nicholas were in fact not together because he came here sometime during the week asking for you. You know, so you guys could do exactly what you said. Apparently every time he called you it went straight to voicemail." Simp stands on the last step staring at us, mainly me, and crosses his arms before placing them on his hips walking towards us and standing next to Cyrus on the other side of the counter.

Cyrus looks at him, taking this in since it is apparently new information for him, "Oh, so now you're putting your phone on 'Do Not Disturb'? You're a sly, sly man Jesse Duran." he says causing me to groan softly to myself and lower my head so I'm facing the white marble table in between us.

"You want to tell us where you really were now?" Simp says again.

"I was out."

"You were out doing what?" he presses