Battle of the Captains

support systems

I was in the middle of Call of Duty against Kain, who'd claimed that he could never be beaten, when I heard the doorbell ring. I ignored it at first; expecting that one of my brothers would get up and check for who was at the door by the time the doorbell rang a second time.

No such luck.

"Will someone get the door?" I asked.

I got no reply.

Kyle's ears were covered with headphones, watching some lame YouTube video on a channel that he'd discovered and become obsessed with so he obviously heard nothing. I wanted to remove his headphones and scream at his ear just to annoy him but I figured that I shouldn't bother because he wasn't even allowed to open the door for anyone. Kaden was too engrossed with whatever he was doing on his phone to notice me shooting daggers at him and Keith was taking a call on the side with who I presumed to be his girlfriend that I had yet to discover more about.

Sighing, I paused the game and threw the controller on Kain's lap. "Okay, I'll get it. Is anyone expecting someone?"

I'd sent messages to all possible visitors for me, telling them that I would dedicate the day to spending some time with my family, though so far, we'd done more video games than actual bonding.

I swung the door open and nearly slammed it shut as quickly as I did.

"What are you doing here?"

"Hey, how's your head?"

"It's fine. The nurse said that it wasn't anything serious. What are you doing here?" I repeated.

Austin held up a couple of his Math books and the bag of his laptop. "We have work to do, remember?"

He sounded way too serious, way too un-Austin. Austin wasn't by any means irresponsible because if he was, he wouldn't have been appointed as captain, but he wasn't exactly the kind of guy who would jump at the opportunity to do school work either.

"But I texted you," I said. "Twice."

"No, you didn't."

"I did," I said. I held out my hand. "Give me your phone."

He hesitated before handing it over to me and the first thing I did was go straight to his messages.

One thing was for sure, this guy texted way too many people, mainly girls. About five messages on the top of the inbox were unread from the day before. The messages were mostly the same but from different girls, asking to hangout or for help with school.

Did he actually go out with all these girls?

"You know, we're not dating yet so you have no right to check my texts."

"Maybe you should check your texts. Do you even use your phone?"

I scrolled down looking for my name or even my message. I was a hundred percent sure I'd sent a text.

"You don't want to do that."

Why not?

I found my name, seven messages from the first one. Unread. I opened my mouth to yell at him or something then the small devil emoticon next to my last name caught my eye.

"Cute."

"I know. I thought so too."

I clicked on my message before shoving the phone at his face.

"Oh, that message. I guess I forgot."

Forgot, my butt. I slapped the phone at his face, making him stumble back a bit. "My brothers are back. Can we do it another day? Please?"