Blind Love (Edited)

Chapter 13: "Double Date"

Bryan and Landon were in the kitchen making breakfast. They had already made scrambled eggs, sausage and a salad. Laura and Lance were still asleep. Bryan and Landon didn't blame them. Bryan woke Landon up at 5 in the morning so that they could go jogging around the neighborhood. Out of all the things that Landon loved the most was run. He was pretty good at it too. He would run around the field every day, making sure that he had someone by his side. It was a way to get better at running and to catch up with his uncle. It was a win-win situation. It went either way.

"Do you think they'll come down soon?" Bryan asked Landon. It was already eight in the morning.

"They usually come down at eight thirty. It's their usual time. Be patient, Uncle. They'll be down soon." he answered, feeling a lot more like a father than a nephew.

"Okay. Yeah, you're right. One of the things I did not get and your mother did, was patience. I am not as patient as your mother is."

"And yet, you were extremely patient with me the first few months after the accident."

"It was the only time that I was actually patient. I don't know. I think something must have kicked in for me to react like that."

"You're a natural father, Uncle. You need to form a family, find a girl and marry her, then have kids. You would be a great father. Very patient with your kids and your wife, but not with everything else." Landon chuckled. He could kind of imagine his uncle's face in his head. It was then that he realized that he didn't know what his uncle actually looked like. The last time Landon had seen Bryan was a year before the accident. Bryan had only been 9 then. Bryan was the only friend that he had had throughout the whole process. It was Bryan who had been his best friend, the one that didn't judge him. Landon remembered Bryan's face back then and wondered if Bryan still looked the same. For a boy of ten years of age, Bryan was pretty mature. Even people who knew him hadn't known that he was ten at the time of the crash. Laura was 19 years older than Bryan. Bryan was a miracle child. Her Mom had gotten pregnant at a young age and after Laura's birth, it was predicted that Laura and Bryan's mother would not be able to endure it and that either her or the baby would die or both. Laura's mother was thirty-five when she had Bryan. Laura was already nineteen. Both Emily, Lauren's mother, and Bryan were fine. Ever since then, Emily became an even more devout Catholic than she had ever been in her whole life. She thanked God for saving her child for saving her as well. When Laura would carry Bryan, people would think that it was her son. Laura loved the expression on their faces when she told them that the child she held in her arms was actually her brother. It made her laugh afterwards.

Bryan looked at his nephew and remembered the last time he had seen Landon. They had played tag with a bunch of other people. Of course, Bryan had to babysit Landon. He was only three but Bryan was nine. Even when they were six years apart, Landon had always understood Bryan. Landon was definitely more mature than he was for his age. Bryan took great affection to the young boy. They had such a strong connection that at one point , they had been inseparable. It wasn't understood by many, but it was their thing: to hang out under the trees and just roll around the dirt.

Bryan wondered what Landon was thinking about. Over the years, Landon had learned to keep his emotions to himself. When you looked at his face, it looked like an emotional face. The only thing that gave him away were his eyes. The eyes didn't lie and this was the only way that Bryan could really figure out how Landon was feeling. Bryan vouched that if he ever met someone who could make Landon bring his emotional walls down, he would make sure that the two of them were married. Bryan's theory that the only person who could do it would be a girl whom Landon really liked, a girl who would let him feel so safe that he let his walls down. It was something Bryan had yet to see.