Man of the Year (Drake Story)

Chapter Elleve

A pain swam over me once we got back to the mansion, once I saw it with my own two eyes again. The pain of what had just happened and the aching in my feet - it all flooded onto me at once. I didn’t mind much. It was better to feel something, anything, than to be in a headlock and just seconds away from death like I was an hour ago.

Belphoebe apologized to me throughout the walk home. She told me that she was so, so sorry. She begged me to forgive her, and when I told her that I did, she begged me to stop lying to her. She was right. I didn’t forgive her for doing what she did. Not yet. The anger still remained, and probably would remain until after the pain in my neck ceased itself.

But I knew I would forgive her when I cooled down. Sure, she used my compassion for her almost-death experience to drag me out to help her with her murder mission and didn’t even have the common courtesy to tell me anything about it, but we were friends at the end of the day. I couldn’t break our friendship over something so small as my life almost being taken away from me.

“I forgive you.” I told her, with the hugest grin I could manage.

“That’s more like it,” She smiled. “That’s more believable.” Belphoebe kissed my cheek softly and skipped into the house, leaving me behind the threshold wondering why I was cursed to receive kisses from the women around me.

I followed her inside. Drake clearly wasn’t home yet, if he ever was going to come home, because the servants were still treating me like a god. Even the tall one who yelled at me in the mini-mansion refilled my orange juice and added two extra blocks of ice. The house was empty besides Jessie, the servants, Belphoebe and I. Keziah and the other newbies went out to some kind of club, and Haley told me that I shouldn’t feel left out since the club seemed to be poor in the first place. I told her that I wouldn’t have felt left out if it were the top club in the city. Nothing really mattered to me in that moment, at least not the little things.

I sat on the couch in the living room for a long time. The sun had already set, but something I didn’t get to see often was the moonrise. To see the sky get darker and darker, until finally there was nothing but blackness and stars and that big, beautiful moon. I learned that I liked it better than the sunrise. Night time was better than day, under any and all circumstances. I fell asleep on that couch, dreaming of the moon and what it would be like if it was night time all the time.

It was bliss.

                                                         * * *

“Good morning, Master Aubrey.”

Thirty-two times. I heard that line thirty-two times since I woke up ten minutes ago.

The other new tenants of the mansion were still asleep, probably hungover from their wild clubbing last night. The only one awake, of course, was Belphoebe. She was always the first to wake. I waited for my three-minute interval before going into her room that morning, unannounced and uninvited. I closed the door behind me before she could protest.

“Hey,” She smiled, covering her bare legs with her sheets.

“Good morning.” I paused. I didn’t exactly know how to ask for what I wanted, or what it was that I came for. But I needed it soon. Now. “How’ve you been?”

“I’ve been fine, which you already knew.” Belphoebe laughed. I did my best to copy her chuckle.

“Yeah...I knew that.” I murmured. “Hey, can I ask you a favor?”

“What is it?”

“Can you share with me whatever you know?”

Belphoebe sat up straighter in her bed. “What do you mean?”