Laugh Until You Cry

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“Stella,” Somebody begins to shake me awake the next morning. “You have to wake up, Stell.”

“No I don’t,” I mumble into the pillow.

“Yes, you do,” He laughs- it’s Andrew and he has a hand on my shoulder. My back is a little sore from sleeping on the floor in his room but other than that, I was surprisingly comfortable. Andrew tried to let me take the bed but I’d feel too guilty if I took his bed away from him and I didn’t want to sleep down on couch in fear of somebody else walking in on me sleeping. It freaks me out to know that people can see me sleep because I know that I snore sometimes and it’s just ugly. Andrew’s obviously seen me sleeping before though so it doesn’t bother me, which is why I wanted to sleep in his room last night, just not in his bed. He gave me a pillow and an extra blanket to sleep with and with that, I was fine.

“Why?” I whine, feeling my sleepiness begin to fade a little bit so I turn around and open my eyes, seeing Andrew hovering over top of me, crouched beside me.

I hear him chuckle a little bit before responding. “Breakfast is almost ready.”

“Pancakes?”

“Yes, there are pancakes,” He assures me, which is a huge motivation for me to get up. His mom makes really amazing pancakes so he doesn’t have to ask me again to wake up with that promise of pancakes. I sit up and run my fingers through my hair before looking up at him.

“You better not be lying,” I warn him.

He chuckles again and helps me to my feet. “I’m not lying. My mom made pancakes. You have time to take a shower if you want before we go downstairs.”

“Yeah, I want to do that,” I nod. “Shower, pancakes, and then we need to talk. Like, a real conversation that doesn’t end in either yelling or kissing.”

“Okay. But would it really be terrible if we kissed a little?” He jokes with a cheeky grin.

I softly shove his shoulder. “You’re such an idiot.”

He just laughs as I gather an outfit from my suitcase and leave the room to go across the hallway and into the bathroom to take a quick shower before facing the day.

When I get back into Andrew’s room, I’m wearing a black maxi skirt and a pink blouse. I knock on his door just in case he’s getting dressed and when he calls from the other side that I can come in, I open the door and walk inside. I’m stopped cold in my tracks when I look up and see that Andrew is sitting on his bed texting somebody, which would be completely normal if he had a shirt on.

“You’re an ass,” I mumble under my breath as I toss my pajamas into my suitcase and then turn around so that I can’t see him anymore.

“What?” He wonders in confusion. “What’d I do?”

“You just are,” I huff. “Are you ready to go downstairs now?”

“Yeah, give me a sec,” He says and then I hear rustling around as he stands up from the bed and, I assume, puts a shirt on. I wait patiently looking the other way because I know- and he knows too- that I turn to goop whenever he doesn’t have a shirt on because his torso is just so nice to look at. However, I don’t want to look at it right now because it’d be so unfair to look at it but not be allowed to touch it.

“That was definitely not nice,” I mumble as we leave his room and go downstairs.

He laughs a little bit from behind me. “I still don’t know what I did.”

“Yes you do,” I sigh but that’s the end of the conversation since we enter the kitchen where Marie, Lucas, and their father, Cole, are sitting around a large dining room table.