Birdie

3. The Fairy

                  

The house was a modest one, not a starter home, but nowhere near a mansion. Just right. Four beds, three and a half baths. Simple. The off-white paint was peeling, and within the next few weeks, Chance would have to get up on the roof and replace the sandy shutters, they were more than just a little weathered. They were old as fuck. The shutters needed to be restored back to their original navy color-not that much darker than Carmen's uniform.

Carmen.

The angst that had been building up ebbed away as one second faded into two, and then a minute, and finally ten, leaving behind a pulsating aggravation that made itself home at the back of his skull, pounding a beat that was turning to pain. But pain was better than pure rage.

Said rage was brought upon seeing a white jeep parked right behind his mother's mini Cooper. The owner of that jeep was a fairy like creature by the name of Raegan who happened to be Chance's god damned sister in law. Seeing that vehicle had him wanting to pull out of the gravel driveway and go back home. Sit on the couch, and stare at an empty wall. Look at a coffee mug. Eat a bug. Hell, anything but be where he currently was.

But the thought of Carmen had made that hatred slide away into a migraine, which was saying a lot.

He didn't have to square his shoulders, he wouldn't plaster on a smile. The vein under his right eye was beating the tempo of his headache, and everyone in that house would know why.

Hands clenched into large fists that he buried into his pockets, Chance made sure that his face held no expression, and he walked up the sidewalk, took on the four cement steps, and unlocked the screen door with the key he'd had since he was fifteen.

In the entrance, the tennis shoes came off, even though they were practically brand new, and before greeting anyone, made a left off the entrance and ducked into the bathroom nestled under the steps, washing his hands for a minute straight before rinsing and drying. He flicked the light off, kicked the door shut with the heel of his size fourteen and a half foot. It slammed shut.

"Is that my sweet Robbie?"

The voice of a woman that could only be described as an angel. Chance crossed the hall that turned into another short hall before branching out into the living room from the right side, and Mayra Hayborn-Seams was standing right in front of him, at five and a half feet that she somehow managed to manipulate with only her personality, sometimes transforming into a seven foot monster. But today, today she was human, and a beautiful, smiling one at that. Her eyes wrinkled in the corners, and she had freckles. Her raven hair only had a few strands of thunder in them, you wouldn't think that she was almost fifty eight years old. Chance had her eyes, those same round, overly expressive puppy dog eyes that kept the both of them out of trouble most of the time. But that's where the similarities ended. She had a heart-shaped face, and her lower lip was plumper than her upper. Carmen had told Chance many times that he had lips that many women would envy. She had a cleft chin that she passed down to both of her sons, and that was Chance's favorite characteristic on his mother's face.

She was smiling at him, and then pulling him roughly into her arms, squeezing him so roughly that he lost his breath for a moment. The hugs had been like that since he was a boy, but they were hers, and when Chance was six, he had asked her why she hugged so hard, why she patted his back or bum so hard when she was comforting him, why when she kissed him, her lips were so hard on his forehead.

She had clucked him right in the center of that forehead, and responded and that sweet voice of hers, "Because I love hard, baby. I have to be rough, that way you, Morgan, and Daddy know that I love you."