Finding Home | Finders Keepers #1✔️

Twenty-One - A Pizza Night Birthday

The sound of the wheels sliding across the road when dad immediately turned the car around was deafening.

The sight of mom's and dad's eyes full of fear were heart-shattering.

The cries that I made countless time were left unnoticed by my dad's focus on slamming his elbows on the windows, trying to get out.

The faces of mom and dad lying on a cold table, lifeless made my heart and my soul break.

Gone were their smiles, their laughter, their voices, their eyes that were full of life, and their hugs and kisses that were full of warmth.

"Henry, look out!"

My eyes open, feeling the pounding of my hear in my chest hard, hearing the ringing in my ears, and seeing the drips of water that fell onto my hand. My fingers tangles onto my hair, pulling on each strand, making my scalp hurt.

I didn't mind it. It made me feel good, made me feel alive.

More importantly, it made me feel awake. Like I was living in reality.

The sad reality of it was that I don't even have them anymore.

As I was finally satisfied from the pain I was feeling in my scalp, I take a look around on my surroundings. Big television, furnished wooden cabinets, calming olive green walls, king sized bed, and some foam around the floor where Zach and Kevin slept while Alison slept on the middle of the bed, giving Caroline and I the space on each end.

I'm here for a sleepover in my baggy shirt and short shorts. I'm no longer back there, no longer experiencing what happened.

Yet, no matter how much I lied to myself of not experiencing the pain, it never made me believe it.

Standing from the bed, I raise the blanket back to Alison, tip-toeing around Zach and Kevin, careful not to wake them up. As I reach for the door handle, I slowly open it, giving myself a slight space for me to slip pass through.

The house was quiet. We had successfully slept while Luke's loud music was on, but now, in two-seventeen in the morning (as said by their wall clock in the middle), the music was no longer playing. Must be because Luke and his companion finally got tired and slept.

As I walk down the stairs, I try to catch my breathing from waking up almost going into hyperventilation, knowing that there's no one that could do it for me but me. My eyes close, placing my head down, as I walk past the living room, going straight the kitchen, thankful that I was the type of person to know my way around a place once I saw it.

"What's with you?"

I snap my head up, my eyes opening to confirm who it was.

Luke sat on the chair by the counter of the kitchen, holding up a mug of a juice, wearing nothing but jersey shorts.

But all I saw was his blue eyes that are expressionless, the ones I saw in him from the first day. His smirk was back, and the annoyance I was feeling was magnified a hundred times now that I realized that his disheveled look and tired expression was from just having sex with someone next his sister's room, where I was.

Ignoring him, I walk past him, and open the glass container they placed their mugs in and grab one, turning the faucet on, drinking the water to wake me up even more.