When Everything Changes

Chapter 4

I'm sitting at the kitchen island of my old house. Mom is trying, and failing, to cook an omelette.

"Babe, I thought I told you to leave the cooking to me," I hear my dad say as he walks into the kitchen. "I mean, really. The way you're cooking those eggs, it should be considered egg-icide." He laughs as the omelette begins to burn and smoke begins filling the kitchen.

"Oh, ha. Ha. You've got jokes this morning. I didn't hear you complaining last night when I made lasagna?" Mom said, waving her spatula at my dad.

I couldn't help chiming in. "You mean the frozen lasagna? And didn't you almost burn the house down because you forgot to turn off the oven?"

"Oh! I guess comedy runs in the family then!" She said, turning her eggy spatula wrath on me now. "Burn the house down, you're both so dramatic." She says, smiling.

"It's in the genes, Lil." My dad winks at me.

I wake at that wink with a hollow feeling in my chest. A dream. Of a nice, regular morning. One that seemed so insignificant at the time, but now one that bears so much weight.

I think back to that part of the dream. My dad winking at me.

While I may look exactly like my mom, everything else comes from my dad. If I'm mom's miniature doll in looks, then I'm dad's mini-me in personality. We were always joking with each other, shooting one-liners back and forth. I fell in love with art because of him. My dad was a painter, the most creative person I've ever met. There wasn't a problem he couldn't solve with his outside-the-box thinking. There wasn't a single thing I couldn't talk to him about. He was the first person I went to for advice, even over my mom most of the time. It's not that I didn't trust her, I did. My dad and I were just the same person. Literally. I knew he'd always be there when I needed him. Both of them.

Until the day I lost them. Both of them.

I sit up, trying to shake out the melancholy I'm feeling from the dream.

I still need to get dressed. And I didn't exactly "freshen up" like Desiree suggested. Hopefully no one notices my lack of deodorant.

I hear a knock on the door. Assuming it's Desiree again, I rush to open the door and greet... 

Not Desiree.

Instead, it's a stranger. Someone who looks to be my age, maybe a little older.

A very tall, very cute stranger.

A very tall, very cute stranger, staring at my chest with a large smirk plastered across his face.

Oh, shit. I wrap my arms around my chest, realizing I'm standing in nothing but the small, black Nike shorts and a sports bra I was wearing under my hoodie earlier. Glaring at the stranger, I ask accusingly "Excuse me? Didn't your mother ever teach you not to stare at a girl's chest, perv?" The stranger laughs then, low and sexy. Sexy perv.

Uh, did I just think sexy?

"Sexy perv? I kind of like that." The stranger says, now staring at my shorts. I gasp, running to get the hoodie from the floor. I'm mortified, did I really say that out loud?

"Oh, yeah. What's the saying? 'Hate to see you go...'" He trails off suggestively. I whirl around, covering myself with the blanket, ready to give this pervert a piece of my mind, but he interrupts me. "Honestly, that hoodie's not doing you any favors either. Now I'm just imagining you naked under it." He finally stares at my face, willing me to say something, but I'm speechless. Nobody's ever talked to me like that. Shaking my head out of a daze, I square up against him.

"Who the hell do you think you are? You can't just harass a girl like this. Oh, but people like you think you can just get away with it though, right?" I start, feeling hot. From anger, embarrassment, and... something else?

His eyes flash at that, stony, but sparkling. A little familiar. Do I know this guy? No, there's no way I'd forget meeting someone this sexy. Ugh, there I go again with that word. Stop it Alyce, I mentally scold myself.

"People like me, huh?" He says, not trying to hide how offended he is. "I don't think you've met many people like me, babe. If you had, they would've told you that ain't a girl's body. You're all woman now, aren't you." He said, giving me a once-over, his cocky attitude returning.

Now? What was that supposed to mean.

And baby? Did he just call me baby? "Look dude, I'm not your 'baby,' and I have a boyfriend. So you're getting nowhere here. And even if I were available, I don't go for creeps like you. I have standards. As in 'don't fall for the cliche player bad boy' standards.'" I cross my arms, glaring up at him.

He flashes me a sarcastic smile then, turning away to walk down the staircase. "I don't know about that, Aly. You always had a soft spot for this cliche player bad boy."

My mouth forms a small O as I hear the nickname I haven't heard since I was a kid. The nickname I've only ever let one person call me.

He stops at the top step before turning back to look at me, the cocky smirk back on his face. I stare into his eyes, eyes I can't believe I didn't recognize, as he asks "So you have a boyfriend now. Didn't you once tell me you'd save that card for me?"

He leaves and I stand there stunned. The special guest Desiree was talking about was Xavier McLeod.