Returning Red

#43: The Truce.

all is well that ends well

Austin

Personal advice: Ever get assigned to babysit a bunch of kids? Go to the beach. Babysitting and sandcastles happen hand in hand. 

I tried to be good at this. How hard can pinning a red toy flag to the tower of a sandcastle really be? Pretty hard. I ended up destroying Shay's 47-minute-old castle when I attempted to pin it with a flag. Her sandcastle was now in a collected heap and her face was how I remembered Tinker Bell's face would turn when she was pissed. Meh, that GIF never gets old. 

I tried apologizing for the massacre but she shut me up with a statement that made my ego ache a little. She said and I quote, "Izz would've never broken my castle," and as much as I second her statement, it hurt a little. My five-year-old niece thinks I'm incapable of making a sandcastle and I have no comeback for it. 

She slapped my hand away when I tried to help. Lily probably felt a little pity in her rock-solid heart, which is why she accompanied us and started helping Shay build it all again. Now I have two little girls giving my death glares as they fix a sandcastle I sabotaged. 

"Aren't you a business tycoon?" Lily asked me as she shaped her part of the castle into a converging tower. I fold my lips and give her a nod. This is the first time she's initiated a conversation with me and I have a feeling I'll ruin it if I open my mouth. She scoffs a hurting chuckle as she glances at me. "What's the point? You can't even make a sandcastle." 

Didn't need the opening of my mouth to ruin it, my presence alone was enough. 

I let out a shaky breath and force my lips to curl upwards. If she was a little older and wasn't so important, I'd be flipping her right about now. I brush my thumb over my lower lip to distract my mind from that thought. 

"He taught me how to make them," I gasp when Shay backed my leftover dignity in spite of all the shade she was throwing at me. She stopped digging mud when I lightly pinched her cheek as an acknowledgment. "But he also broke them." 

Huh, lasted long enough. I should've expected that. 

"Alright, it was a sandcastle, we can build it up again," I said as I dug up my own share of mud and began adding it to Shay's pile. She was molding up accessories. 

Lily stopped shaping the tower but her eyes didn't tear away from it. I knew I was in for a treat with her next set of words. "You also broke some things in life that can't be built up again." 

She was a thirteen-year-old girl, but she was stepping into territories that I wasn't willing to take shit upon. "Lily, don't get into that, please." 

I know she knew things about the past. Her reaction was validated because all she was doing was backing Izz up. I didn't know the kind of relationship they shared until I saw her running inside the room yesterday. She didn't waste a moment before falling into Izz's arms and crying it out. 

Lily suffered a lot at a very young age. When I learned about her father's death following her mother's, I was heartbroken myself. I didn't know how a child could perceive such traumatic deaths. But the way she's groomed herself, it's spectacular. 

I can point out evident areas where Izz has rubbed off on her. For starters, using sarcasm as a shield for a defense mechanism is something I'm all too familiar with. Not showing extremes of emotions, expressing least of the feelings until absolutely necessary, and most of all, having the most secluded group of people she's close to makes me think of the past.  

"You broke her heart. You hurt her." She muttered under her breath but loud enough for me to hear. "You left her alone. You never loved her." 

Shay stopped making her figures and her eyes slowly lifted up to me. Lily's words weren't coded words, they were pretty out there. Shay understood what she meant and I wasn't liking this one bit. When Grace told me how much Lily dislikes me, I never thought it was this serious.