Third Love's The Charm [PUBLISHED]

Chapter Twenty: Marble Floors

"Okay, talk!" I demanded, my arms crossing in front of my chest as I glared at the suspect in question, "What did you do?"

The whistle sat there on my desk, unmoving because you know, it's not sentient.

Great, I have completely lost it. I was interrogating a freaking inanimate object in the middle of my bedroom.

Leon Colten was somebody who hated my guts. Well, I think he did. In my defense, he shot daggers through his eyes whenever I would even go near him so it wasn't my fault that I started to think that way. In fact, I thought he had been actively avoiding me ever since I met him.

When Pat asked me out, I was actually terrified what it would be like since his best friend didn't like me. While Leon did have this permanent face of contempt whenever I was present, he didn't do or say anything bad.

So just imagine my shock at the chain of events that happened since that second Pat broke up with me. Sure, any decent person would pull someone away from jumping off a damn building but he actually stayed with me and became a shoulder to lean on.

I was too busy dwelling on the break up, my fight with Zoey, and figuring out how the hell did I end up in a weird timeline. It on was only this very day did it manage to sink in how differently I looked at Leon right now.

And here I was blaming the whistle as if it was the culprit to this whole mess.

I snatched it and allowed it to dangle right in front of my face, staring at it with all the concentration in the world.

Then I saw it.

I squinted my eyes so hard to identify the extremely tiny engravings just above the hole.

A.B.C.

Yay, the alphabet. Now what?

I would have thought the initials would actually mean something. Or at least prove my theory that the whistle took part in bringing me to the past.

There must be something more to this.

Hold on, mom owns a magnifying glass. I never questioned why because let's be honest, I've got my impulsive shopping habits from her.

Since she wasn't home yet, I could easily sneak into her room, look at the whistle with it, put I back, then pretend like nothing happened.

Sounds like a nice, reasonable plan.

One tiny problem, I haven't been in her room since Pat's birthday. You know, the last straw on our already toxic relationship that finally broke the camel's back. It was the day I learned about what really happened to my dad. It made me miss my own boyfriend's party and it was just downhill from there.

All I wanted was to borrow a nice pair of earrings because I wanted to look good for my boyfriend, but what I found was far worse than what I was expecting. Well, that could have been my punishment for meddling and look into her things without permission.

I wonder if it was still at the same spot in this exact moment.

It's alright, Avery. You had every right to know about it, it wasn't your fault that you found it.

With the whistle still in my hand, I walked out of my room and made my way towards mom's. Slowly opening the door, I cringed slightly when it did a slight creaking noise as if somebody else was inside my house that could catch me.

I was alone.

It was still how I remembered it. A queen bed smacked in the middle, one bedside table on each side. One was obviously mom's and the other used to belong to dad. Mom did a good job of cleaning every part of this house to make sure that I wasn't reminded every five seconds of him. There were little things and trinkets that brought back memories of him, but it wasn't so out in the open. She knew how painful it was for me so constantly think of him so she did what every good mother would.