Winter Tales

Chapter 7 - Rules

++Jordan's POV++

"Oompf!"

I am forcefully woken up by a weight landing on top of me.

"Get up, Jordan!" Lily's exuberant voice penetrates the fog in my mind.

I groan and turn to the side to bury my face in the pillow. This causes the weight on me to shift and Lily shrieks as she almost falls off the bed.

"Hey! You gotta get up. We leave in an hour!" she demands, readjusting herself on my stomach.

Her small hand starts patting the side of my face while the other finds its way into my tousled hair.

"Lily," I mutter while trying to squirm away from her touch without having to move too much.

"Jordy," she mocks me, now pulling slightly at my hair.

"Oh my god, Lily, can you stop that?" I complain, reaching up to push her hands off me.

"Nope," she replies, popping her p. "I need you to get up, like, right now."

"What time is it?"

"Time to get up," she sasses.

Underneath my closed eye lids I roll my eyes. She has definitely been corrupted by the twins. I feel her weight shift on me and her hands finally let go of my head only to curl around my bicep. Now she is pulling at my arm. I open my right eye and see her kneeling on the bed trying to pull me up. The mere thought is hilarious, as she is not going to achieve anything if I don't want her to.

"Come on, why are you so lazy?" she huffs. "Oh, I know! How was Tanya?"

The way she says her name almost makes me laugh. She is definitely way too sarcastic for an eight-year-old. I wonder where she has got that from.

"She's fine," I reply.

"Did you stay out late? Why didn't you sleep in our room? Will you see her again? Are you hung over?" my darling sister fires questions at me in quick succession.

When I got home last night, I found Alex and Lily cuddled up in my bed, deep asleep. The iPad was placed on the bedside table. Josh heard me come in and he quickly pulled me outside the room. He said he found them like this when he got home shortly before midnight. I had agreed to let him and Luke take the car back to the cabin, saying that I would take a taxi.

He told me that he didn't have the heart to wake him up since he thought that Alex deserved a good night's sleep for a change. Hence, my choices were to either squeeze myself into the bunk bed in our shared bedroom – Lily had claimed the top bunk for herself, of course – or I could just take Alex' room instead. I settled on the latter, because I didn't fancy folding myself onto one of the narrow single beds. It was a tight fit for Josh, too, but the guy is almost three inches shorter than me, so he can make do. Also, it was very generous of my twin to not just claim Alex' room for himself when he got home and found it empty.

"Depends on your point of view. Because you and Alex were already there. Probably. And no," I reply, trying to answer all of Lily's questions at once.

Thankfully, the fog in my brain is slowly but surely starting to vanish.

"Huh?"

Ha, got you. I beat you at your own game.

"Don't worry about it."

I shift around and finally pull myself up in a sitting position. I find Lily looking at me with an expectant expression on her cute face. Before I know what is happening, she throws herself at me and wraps her arms around my neck. I instinctively sling my arms around her small body and cuddle her for a few seconds.