The Humdrum Life of a Hero

Chapter 16

"The only movie that has been watched in this house is literally The Avengers," I say as I hand Jay the remote. "I have not seen a different movie in so long, I forgot that they still made them."

He laughs, and then grips my ankle that is laying in his lap at the other end of the couch with a smile. "Well, then allow me to reintroduce you to the world of cinema."

He flips through the channels. First the basic ones, and then the movie channels, which I honestly did not know we had. They're probably not worth the amount of money we pay for them because obviously we never use them.

"Yes! Perfect!" Jay exclaims as he settles on some movie called "Pitch Perfect."

"I take it it's good?" I glance down the couch at him. His hair has finally grown back to the point where it curls over the top of his ears again, and I can barely stop myself from leaning forward to run my fingers through his golden locks.

Still staring at the side of his head, I notice a scar running along the underside of his jaw all the way behind his ear. And before I realize what I'm doing, I'm closing the space between us, placing my fingers along his scar. "What happened?"

He turns his head, causing my fingers to end up under his chin. I remove my fingers, but not before I let them linger for a few seconds too many. I can feel his breath on my fleeting fingers when he says, "I was three, I think. My parents had taken me out to the construction site where our house was being built, and within the eight seconds they took their eyes off of me, I had climbed up on top of a pane of glass set across two sawhorses. I crawled my way to the middle of the glass, and when the glass began to crack, I fell to the floor with it and a chunk of it sliced my jaw pretty good."

Nick and Connor have had some nasty incidents involving bodily injuries, but not one of those injuries compares to literally falling through a glass window. He gives me a lop-sided smile when the pained expression flashes across my face, "No worries, though. They fixed me up at the hospital with some stitches, and I got ice cream afterwards."

"Do stitches hurt?" I ask. Tony had them when he busted his lip on the banister when he was in the third grade. I remember being dragged to the hospital and having to lug around one of two infant carseats, but I don't remember much else, including whether or not Tony wailed like a baby.

"I mean they're not pleasant," his hand creeps slightly under my pant leg, making me wish I had shaved my legs this morning, "But they numbed it, and I was only three so I hardly remember it."

"Do you remember the flavor of ice cream you got that day?"

"Of course. Couldn't forget it if I tried," he laughs and continues, "It was double chocolate chip, and I got two scoops in a waffle cone."

"Can't remember pain, but you can remember a waffle cone," I kiddingly scoff at him. "You never cease to amaze me, Keely."

Our conversation dies as the movie begins. Musical numbers and witty dialogue keep my attention for the next two hours, and before I know it, the credits are rolling and on the other side of the window is complete darkness.

Jay shifts and faces me. "So, what'd you think?"

"It was very entertaining. A nice change of pace from The Avengers."

"I thought it'd be the right transition back into the cinematic universe. See, Pitch Perfect is not just a movie about singing, it's a movie about redemption. The Barden Bellas were as disgraced as a President found to be screwing a porn star, but when the somewhat gruff Beca played by the charming Anna Kendrick comes along, they go from disgraced to being the top team in the United States," he addresses.