Asymptote (bxb)

Chapter 21: Curiosity

"Can you pick me up after lacrosse?" Gemma asked, and I nearly answered before I looked up to see her on the phone to Hayden, directly across from me at the table. I shot a look to Mom and she shot one back to me. Whenever Gemma was home, she was on the phone or on facetime with Hayden. It had started off cute but by now it had gotten to the point of genuinely ridiculous and annoying. As if they didn't see each other every day at school and after school.

Or maybe I was just being bitter and cynical. It was Friday, and I hadn't seen Cian at all this week. We had a few phone calls after we talked from the hospital on Tuesday and had set plans for tonight that I was desperately looking forward to. But I also knew I had a lot to do this weekend. I needed to just apply to something, anything before I missed the deadline for post-secondary applications. I also needed to hit up the rec centre and practice before soccer try outs next week, because I couldn't imagine the embarrassment of being on the team for 3 years and not making it on for my final year. Or even worse, being a sub. Then after soccer try outs would be the last week of school before the winter break, and then after the break came exams. Just thinking about it made my stomach churn in an uncomfortable way.

Cian had said we would submit my applications before we did anything else tonight, even if that took all night or all weekend. You just have to take it one day at a time, he had said.

"Were you and Dad like this?" I asked my mother, nodding towards the Rom-Com in the making across from me, and Gemma rolled her eyes and left the table, dishes spread for someone else to clean up.

"Gosh no," she laughed, grabbing Gemma's dishes before I could. "I rejected your father 5 times before we ever even went out."

My father came up from his office in the basement just then and smiled playfully at my mother.

"I wasn't even sure she liked me until we were married." He did that thing where he tucked her hair behind her ear and if this was a Rom-Com it would have been swoon-worthy but considering these were my middle-aged parents, I had to give them the obligatory:

"Gross, get a room." Though I smirked as I grabbed my dishes and placed them in the dishwasher.

"Our room is this entire house, and we have the mortgage to prove it."

"Well maybe if some people weren't taking elaborate vacations, you could have paid it off by now," I said, meaning it as a joke but knowing I was encroaching on a dangerous territory.

"You shush, don't take my Aruba plans away," my mother replied, smacking me with the dish towel she had in her hands from drying Gemma's dishes. I didn't understand what the point of the dishwasher was when it was a constant race to get it in the dishwasher before my mother just took it and washed it in the sink.

"We have the rest of our lives to pay off the mortgage, but I don't really want to bring my walker to the beach when I'm 80," my father retorted.

"Fair enough." And with that I turned the corner to the basement stairs and went down to my bedroom to change into my uniform for school. I'd learned from previous experience that when you have to wear the same thing every day it is best to change after eating. It took going to school with coffee-stained pants 3 days in one week to learn that lesson. It was the absolute mortification when Lake asked me what size pants I wear and told me that he had an extra pair in his locker for me "just in case" that made me evaluate my standards. For the record, I had only spilled coffee on myself two times that week. I had just stayed over at Miles' one of the nights, and there was no way I could wear his pants without suspicion, considering he was about 5 inches taller than me. There was a reason I played soccer and not basketball. Gemma got the height, Riley got the intelligence, and I got the perfect teeth. Which thinking about it, really wasn't anything to brag about considering both Riley and Gemma also had perfect teeth courtesy of a couple thousand dollars' worth of braces. Money couldn't buy me intelligence or height.