There's only one thing I really hate, and that's the realisation that you've reached this point in your life where the people you know start inviting you along someplace more out of habit and guilt than any real great desire to be around you.
I've made being the third wheel into some kind of art-form, and I seem to find an increasing amount of my time is spent politely not glowering when the resident couples do couple-y, intimate things right in front of me. During that moment where you can't excuse yourself and go elsewhere because they invited you along to, ostensibly, spend time with you, I really do have to start wondering when it was that I became so damn good at making things happen for other people and so unutterably crap at making them happen for myself.
Some days, as I trip over yet another adoring, kissing, whispering couple swapping saliva on the couch, I have to remember that I'm something like 90% of the reason that everybody here got someone else, and I really have to ask what it was that I got in return for my efforts. That is, beyond a lingering sense of discomfort and the dubious sensation of being an interloper into an endless stream of intimate scenes that I somehow always wind up feeling guilty for interrupting. Even when they downright forced me to go someplace, it's hard to shake the sense that you're really not required to be an observer and should, in all truth, be somewhere else entirely.
You see, I am many things; I am mutant, I am Rogue, I am grand-master third wheel, involuntary love-doctor, recently the subject of increasing amount of pity-based invitations and, at heart, desperately sick of being single.
I should start, I guess, at the beginning. Back when Scott and Jean had been the mansion's only proper couple.
Back when it was all about Bobby.
Bobby was not my boyfriend. I don't think anyone actually believes me when I say that, but it's true.
In all honesty, dating him was a little too incestuous for my personal liking, and even he seemed fairly certain that we'd make better friends than we ever would lovers. A handful of brief, perfunctory peck-on-the-cheek kisses aside, it was pretty obvious that it was a too much like kissing my brother so that kind of thing mostly got relegated to birthdays, Christmases and all those times in between when a purely platonic smooch was considered to be in order.
Kitty, on the other hand, spent a good few months pretty much hating the crap out of me. In all fairness she hid it well, and it wasn't until Bobby and I made a very definite declaration that we were friends and nothing more that I really started to notice the way she was behaving. Like she wanted to crawl off into a gutter and die each time she saw us together, but just couldn't quite seem to stop staring first.
The human capacity for self-torture amazes me to this day. That she watched us for months, completely under the mistaken impression that we were in a relationship, and that she never once said a word still astounds me. All that time she just about managed to hide the fact that the one thing she desperately wanted was the one thing she thought I had. The one thing she figured she'd never be able to get. It seems everyone was pretty convinced that Bobby and I were a sure thing and that our friendship had been so thoroughly misconstrued came as a surprisingly big shock to everyone else.
I loved Bobby, but like a brother. Kitty on the other hand, just plain flat-out loved him and it was the moment I finally realised this fact that, I think, my fate was sealed.
That was the point I made my greatest triumph and, perhaps my greatest mistake.
I meddled.
I meddled in the way only a completely-impartial observer ever possibly could, because I told them the truth about each other.
I told Kitty that Bobby was single, and I told Bobby that Kitty was just as crazy about him as it's possible to get. And then I told both of them they were stupid if they didn't go and do something about it right this second now.
So they did, and it was good.
And then Jubilee started complaining, but I'll get to that.
Kitty and Bobby did like all new couples do. They demonstrated their affection openly, publicly and, most of all, frequently. It's cute people say, and it is up to a point. Then it's just nauseating and ever so slightly annoying. Especially when you're trying to watch TV and all you hear is 'slurp, slurp, smooch' from the other side of the room. Not to mention the whole set-up got amazingly awkward now and then, when they blocked up doorways for some tonsil-hockey or stopped suddenly in the middle of the mall because they just couldn't go another step without sucking a bit little more face.
Added to that, Ororo and Kurt had finally made a step towards wedded bliss, once more in part due to my meddling intentions. As an impartial observer, their own obliviousness was driving me insane, and after much internal grumbling that Xavier should just send them away on some extended mission somewhere alone together, he actually did. I honestly don't know if he was picking up my thoughts or if their coy denials were annoying him too, but away from the watchful eyes of the student body I guess mutual longing became finally great satisfaction, and so upon their return the mansion began positively oozing with saccharine sentiment.
Jubilee as I said was the first one to crack, complaining to me time and time again about the sickening display that turned the rec-room into the 'make-out snogging noisily room', and there were times I was sadly forced to agree with her. That's pretty much how my friendship with Jubilee developed in the first place, to be honest. We grew close in adversity, I guess, laughing and bitching and building castles in the sky where we could be cynical and jaded and single and own lots of cats or whatever. Jubilee relayed with relish frequent stories of how she aimed to become a crazy deranged cat-lady some day, living out her old age in the crumbling remains of the mansion, a mad old spinster with a fat ginger tom that insisted on being called The Colonel.
She was, it must be admitted, utterly convinced that this was her fate. And she took it with amazingly good-humour on the most part. Aside from the odd bitch session about the ever-sickening Kitty and Iceman that a momentary flash of jealousy could bring, she became for a while my closest source of comfort purely because of her lack of faith in the relationship game.
Jubilee was not ugly. She was a beautiful girl. But her features were unique, far from the all-American dream-girl, and her personality was of the kind of robust nature that did not become the demure shrinking violet she assumed all men must somehow desire. In her mind these things combined and doubled and slapped her firmly in the "love-less" category, unencumbered by the "effort and expense" of relationships. Her words, not mine.
I guess my next mistake in this saga was an innocent one. I believed her. Then I introduced her to Becca, the woman who ran the accessory store in the mall.
That connection came about purely because I bought a lot of gloves on a pretty regular basis and, as these things do, repeat custom leads to conversation which in turn leads to a tenuous sort of friendship and eventually the revelation that we were both mutants. Jubilee just happened to be tagging along with me on one otherwise innocuous day and the offhand introduction led to a new shop on Jubilee's continual mall-cruising, and a new place for her to stop and shoot the breeze.
It was on one of those many visits that Jubilee's assertion about perpetual spinster-hood came up and Becca decided to take a surprisingly pro-active role in the shattering of that assumption. Because it was through Becca that Jubilee met Remy, the semi-infamous ragin' Cajun, all-around bad boy and, luckily for him, a whole lot sweeter than his reputation let on. He was a man with space in his heart for a firecracker, and boy, did he ever find one.
I'd never seen her so happy, and I was genuinely pleased for her...
Oh crap, who am I kidding? I was pissed and more than a little bit hurt that my safety-net had been whisked away. We grew close through the mutual support offered by knowing that we were both decidedly not alone in our single status. Her certainty that love would never find her had been, I think, a comfort of sorts to me. A balm to soften the fact that I too had intense doubts as to the likelihood of any kind of meaningful relationship ever actually happening. Half the time I had doubts about anyone getting near enough to even want to be with me at all. Her frankness on the subject had always meant I didn't have to face my own doubts, and the moment that was gone I started to realise just how much that oft-threatened solitude frightened me.
And just how much I started to resent other people for having what I wanted.
The problem was compounded when I finally mastered my powers. An event part luck and part gut-slogging hard work, it was obviously a fantastic thing to happen. One of the best. But it was a problem because after that I didn't even have my skin left as a scapegoat. Any sense of blame left in the self-pity was finally, totally and completely all mine.
Jubilee's conviction, once so much a source of comfort, now began to echo unpleasantly over my head. A girl so convinced beyond all doubt that she would never find love had finally found it while I, quietly hopeful that maybe some day it would work out for me, had definitely not. It was a blow to the ego, yes, but also a blow to confidence. Maybe her conviction had somehow become a truth in my mind, but suddenly the "unlovable" became substantially more loveable than me. If there are plenty of fish in the sea I suddenly realised that, compared to her now free-spawning salmon, I was the green algae scum clinging to the bottom of the pond.
I looked around me and saw clearly for the first time that every single person in my immediate social circle was living their life now happily entwined in the arms of a lover. All except me.
It wasn't a happy time.
I'll give them their dues though. They tried to be thoughtful... but the relationships I'd had with these people had been forced to alter as their priorities shifted. I could no longer wage fantasy wars against lovers with a bitter Jubilee. Nor could I hang out with Bobby with such ease now Kitty was glued permanently into his lap. Those moments were gone. What we'd once had was lost, grown and changed into something else as they'd grown and changed into different people. It was only me who'd stayed the same, and it was round about then that I realised staying the same in an ever-changing world pretty much meant you got forgotten. Invited and then ignored. I found in the most ironic twist of all though, that my responsibility in starting these relationships somehow also landed me with the responsibility of fixing them too.
Why Kitty came to me with muttered, awkward questions about sex will perpetually be a mystery. I knew less about it than she did, but somehow in her eyes being able to say "penis" without blushing qualified me as a guru. So regardless of my own feelings on the matter, feelings I guess I must have been hiding a lot better than I thought I was, it was me they came to for an ear to bend or a shoulder to cry on in the ups and downs of young love. Someone to complain to when anniversaries were forgotten and photographs of old girlfriends were found under the bed. Someone to whisper excited details to after a sweet surprise from a loved one or, God forbid, graphic details about sex-lives. I sat through it all, with very little choice on the matter.
If I may allow myself a moment of self-pity now. (One of far too many, I'm sorry to say.) It was wearing. Not just the constant denial of my own hurt, but above everything else it served to highlight with sheer abundance the one thing that began to ceaselessly feel like it was missing from my life.
Love. Company. Companionship. Whatever you wanted to call it. Even simple physical contact began to glow in sharp relief, burning brighter and hotter inside me and illuminating a desperately painful need for the one thing I somehow knew I was never going to have. So they would invite me along because that's what friends do, and I'd have to sit and watch them kiss and cuddle and whisper intimate endearments... and every caress was like a knife in my guts. Every sweet murmur left me frozen in paralysed longing without anyone to keep me warm. I took to staying out of the way as a matter of my own self-preservation, and what was worse was that they didn't seem to understand why I'd withdrawn quite so hard. I guess to them maybe nothing had changed, but to me...
To me, everything was different.
But from darkness, they say, comes light. However in my darkness, Logan came home.
I'm really not convinced that he helped.
Logan returning was not exactly an auspicious event in the Mansion's calendar. He came and went with alacrity, kind of like the flu but more prevalent and a whole lot hairier. He still called me Kid and I still tried to grab at least a small percentage of his time now and then and he was, at least, one of the few things around the mansion that hadn't been bitten by a nauseating case of romance. Aside from what other people thought, I did not exactly have a crush on the man either. A crush is ultimately one of those sudden physical desires, the kind of thing that fades in the light of day. Now don't get me wrong, Logan was hot and I could hardly fail to notice that... but I also quite liked him as well. He was an interesting person, and after the first flush of hero-worshipping admiration had calmed it was that, more than his sheer growly-stalking sex persona, that made me seek his company. I liked him a lot, and on his part he pretty much tolerated me. He didn't actively shoo me away but he was distant at times, and strangely sullen with a determination that pretty much ensured I knew precisely when he didn't want to be bothered. His personality could be mercurial at best, downright miserable at worst, but at least he tried to lend a sympathetic ear when he could, teenage self-absorption and dramas included.
I never troubled him with the obsessed, moping, lack-of-a-relationship rant though. That one felt a little too private and a touch too raw to share with him, and there wasn't anything he could do about it anyway so I kept it tightly to my chest. I think he figured there was something wrong though. I'd never been the most sociable person on the planet for obvious reasons, but even despite my now non-lethal status I was becoming decidedly reclusive and he actually made the effort to come and seek me out instead of waiting for me to come to him this time around.
He sat heavily on the end of my bed and I sighed, feeling it dip beneath his weight. It was almost an alien sensation, and that it was Logan just made it feel sweeter. The weight of a man on the end of your bed is different to that of a woman, and it sparked off a sudden feeling of longing inside me. A feeling in response to him that I knew from long ago would be ultimately fruitless, so I pushed it down. He could have been anyone and that need still would have been there.
He looked at me carefully before speaking. "What are you doing?"
I glanced at the book in my lap, then stared back at him. "Playing the tuba," I said and he rolled his eyes.
"Seriously, Marie. I've only seen you come out of your room for meal times lately, what's goin' on?"
I shrugged. "I'm avoiding the love-in downstairs. There's only so much schmoopey I can take."
He frowned and opened his mouth to say something but I interrupted. "And if you tell me I'll feel different when I have a boyfriend of my own, so help me I'm going to smack you. Hearing that day in and day out is almost as annoying as the endless wet kissing noises coming from the rec-room."
He shut his mouth and gave a noncommittal grunt but the twitch of his face said that I'd got a point. The sound effects really were very, very annoying. I was suddenly amused by the notion that Logan could become my new Jubilee but I didn't think he'd appreciate the sentiment, so I just smiled at him as he stared thoughtfully at the floor.
"Weren't you going out with that Ice kid at one time?"
"Bobby?"
He grunted.
"Jesus, no. It'd be like dating my brother."
He looked at me like he was expecting some kind of elaboration on that.
"It's creepy," I said. "Don't you think it's creepy? It's like some bizarre, incestuous love-in down there. I don't want to date anyone at this school, it's just too weird."
His forehead creased a little. "No one at all?"
I shook my head. "Absolutely no one. If I'd wanted to kiss my brothers, I coulda' done that at home, sugar..." I pasted on the accent thicker than the frosting on one of Jubilee's birthday cakes cause it usually got a smile out of him, but for whatever reason it didn't this time.
In fact he didn't reply at all, only looked at his hands and the silence passed for a moment as I waited to see if he had anything else to say. Apparently he didn't and eventually he just got up to leave. Logan seemed a little disappointed though, as if he had a question he wanted to ask but didn't quite know how to go about it. You know that feeling, when the right situation to slip it in naturally just hadn't happened. Like a stuttering schoolboy wanting to ask out the girl only not knowing how and the notion amused me. Yet another part of my overactive imagination and though he cleared his throat a couple of times he still said nothing. Logan was not a one to suffer tact when a blunt, direct enquiry would work just as well. I knew I could ask him anything, and I assumed he thought the same about me. So I didn't push.
He paused at the doorway and opened his mouth to speak and then closed it again, walking away with a frown and an almost imperceptible shake of his head. I heard his door open and close and then there was silence. Whatever it was, he didn't say, so it can't have been important and he left the mansion again shortly after.
"You really don't want to hear about any of this, do you?"
I blinked, startled by Jubilee's sudden change of conversation topic. "Huh?"
She had, I think, been talking about Remy but to be honest I hadn't been listening. On the most part I just let her ramble because I didn't have an opinion on the matter.
"You!" she exclaimed. "I'm standing here rambling about how great my boyfriend is and you're just kind of glazing over. I went way TMI again, didn't I?"
She had. Definitely too much. But I shook my head.
"No, no... you know you can tell me whatever."
"You looked bored as fuck."
I smiled. "I wasn't bored, Jubes. I was just sitting here quietly hating your guts, that's all."
I laughed, said it like a joke, but some little part of me genuinely did despise her at that point and I think she knew that. She heaved a deep sigh and flopped down beside me.
Ah, my self-pity must be showing today. I should try to keep it better hidden.
"You'll find someone too, y'know," she said.
I couldn't help the derisive snort that escaped. She always did have a knack for hitting on the one particular nerve I was trying to avoid. If you don't want to talk about something you can guarantee Jubilee will find out. "I don't exactly see a queue forming at the door here, thank you. I shouldn't get too carried away."
She shrugged and I shook my head. I really didn't want to be having this conversation. It felt awkward and uncomfortable inside of me like indigestion, swelling in the way little things do when you're the only person who thinks it's a big deal.
"I'll help you find one," she offered and I rolled my eyes. Like boyfriends are shoes or sale-price handbags. I could see that ending oh-so-spectacularly...
"Whatever. Doesn't matter." Indifference usually worked wonders at deflating any of Jubilee's sudden notions but apparently even that tried and true method was failing me today.
"I mean," she said, "You have to like someone don't you? There's lots of guys around here, not all of them are idiots."
I raised an eyebrow at her and she pouted at me. "OK, so most of them are idiots. But it was worth a shot." Silence for a moment, then, "At least Logan'll be back again at some point."
I grunted in affirmation. He did always come back eventually. At least that fact always remained static.
"Not that I miss his charming personality or anything," she said, "But at least he's not quite such a miserable asshole when he hangs around with you. God, you shoulda' seen him that time he came back and you were out on that field-trip with McCoy. Was glad to see the back of him, the sour bastard..."
I wondered briefly why she cared either way, but she didn't stop to explain, levering herself up and wandering away in search of better entertainment.
I shrugged to myself. Not that it made a lot of difference.
I was, by nature, a girl very much given to fantasy. It was probably my favourite pastime for a great number of years, and it had always been without doubt the most secret and ultimately futile of guilty pleasures.
I think it was the secrecy that appealed the most though. When every relationship I encountered was played out on a public stage as the unremorseful source of my discomfiture, it was always nice to be able to retreat into the back of my own mind and play pretend for a little while. Public intimacies will only take you so far. What I fantasised in the darkness as I slipped into bed were the private things, or at least how I imagined that it should be. Not the sex, exactly, though it would make an occasional appearance, but the smaller moments between lovers. The weight of an arm draped over you as you sleep, or the warmth of someone breathing steadily against your neck at night. Anything from a male voice whispering in the darkness to the press of a bare, hard chest against my back. They were inconsequential things, but probably the things I wanted more than anything else. They were a representation of intimacy, and a level of connection I'd never had the chance to feel.
If occasionally the voice that whispered goodnight and the lips that pressed against my skin happened to belong to Logan, then... well, I tried not to think about it too much. He was hot and I'm only human, it didn't mean anything.
On a conscious level, one of the many things I knew was that I was of absolutely no romantic interest to Logan what so ever. I had him in my head, I knew exactly how he felt and I was ok with that. He was, for me, a depiction of the unattainable. Like a movie star to a thirteen year old girl as far as a relationship went. Nice to pretend about but it was never going to happen. I'd known that pretty much from the outset and during the day I tended not to even think about it. It just 'was', it always had been, and there was no way to change it. He was Logan, I was the Kid, and together we existed in a state of mutual friendship and absolutely nothing else. At night, however, when fantasy took over from reality? That was a different story. I could admit that maybe Logan was like my guiltiest secret. Ultimately futile to even consider in himself, but it was almost as if his attributes had become some kind of yardstick to measure other people by. I didn't want Logan because that was impossible, so maybe I could take his essence and find it in someone else? Most of the time it didn't make a lot of difference but every now and then it would go and throw a monumental spanner in the works of my existence.
"I been looking out for a boyfriend for Rogue," declared Remy one lunchtime and it took most of my effort not to first snort soup all over the table and then desperately sink through the floor at the mere notion of it. If there's one thing worse than being pathetic it's having everyone else know exactly how pathetic you really are. But somewhere just a little bit worse than that is the idea of needing other people to go out and actively hunt for someone willing to date you because you're so evidently incapable of doing it for yourself. Jubilee shot me an apologetic look, but I don't think Remy actually noticed.
"We should all take you to 'dis club I know. I can introduce you to anyone you like, chere, everyone knows Remy and Remy knows absolutely everyone worth knowing."
I'm not sure if it showed on my face but the horror inside at the mere thought of it lurched sharply into my throat. Not that I doubted Remy's ability to hook me up with someone from his undoubtedly huge social circle, but it was the kind of people he knew that frightened me. The kind of people willing to 'hook up' with me, I feared, would not be the kind of people I actually wanted to date.
"What kind o' boy you lookin' for?" he asked, staring at me across the table. I felt like a bunny in the headlights of an oncoming truck; two cotton-tailed second away from something I didn't want to experience. "I assume you thinkin' more about someone a lil' bit alternative, maybe? Someone a lil' different to the crowd? You don' want no preppy, regular borin' old frat boy..."
I shrugged and wished desperately that I was elsewhere. The answer 'could you maybe find me an adult and not a boy?' would have been a bad one... especially when said to a boy who evidently didn't appreciate there was a difference, so I didn't say it. And the answer 'could you get me someone like Logan?' would have been equally open to misinterpretation. I didn't want them knowing my secret fantasies. Hell I didn't even want to acknowledge them myself half the time. And besides, there was no one else like Logan, no matter how much I wished there was. I choked instead, looking desperately anywhere but at Remy. "I don't know, I... "
"Rogue really doesn't like clubs."
I let out a breath I hadn't even been aware I was holding. Thank you, Jubilee. She was right, I did hate clubs, but I was hating this idea a whole lot more. The setting was just an added deterrent.
Remy waved his hand dismissively though. "It'll be fun. You can sit dere, and I'll bring people past, and you can point out the ones dat you like..."
He was... trying... I guess. The guy was sweet to be offering, but God, I could feel humiliation coiling tightly inside of me just at the notion of it. At the assumption that I could make my decisions about dating someone just by a conveyor-belt selection of faces. The notion that what they thought I wanted was a boy like Bobby and Remy for some aimlessly immature dalliance that ultimately led to nowhere was actually, genuinely frightening to me.
Not that I was specifically looking for the ultimate in commitment either, I wasn't ready for white picket fences quite yet. But I wanted a connection of some kind. Something a little more meaningful than a fumbled fuck in the back of some guy's car. It was just a feeling I was trying to find; Something I knew I would recognise when I found it.
I realised right then that these people had absolutely no idea what it was that I wanted.
"So what kind of guy are you looking for, chere, you never answered de question..."
But the sad thing was that apparently I didn't really know what I wanted either.
I knew what I didn't want, though.
Someone once said that the more lost you are, the more you have to look forward to. It's a roundabout way of saying that from here, things can only get better. Evidently I wasn't quite lost enough yet.
There comes a stage in a situation like this were the endless changes and shifts between friends and lovers forces you to look around you for one brief moment and ask yourself that ultimate question of "What if?".
No matter how fleeting the thought or how ridiculous the concept would be in real life terms, it becomes very easy to cast a theoretical eye over the men you happen to know and let yourself take a moment of indulgence in weighing up their potential. There were some for whom the idea was ludicrous, (the Professor may be single, but I am SO not going there) but there were a handful of people that, while I would not actively pursue them, I think I could have been persuaded to at least give something a try if, and only if, they'd said something first.
None of them ever actually did though, so it remained a hypothetical list. They were acquaintances rather than friends; Out of my immediate social circle and well into their own, and Pitor was one of those people. We had absolutely nothing in common at all, but he was funny in a Russian sort of a way and unfailingly willing to fill a few empty hours with mindless chatter about whatever it was that went on in his life. He was just that kind of a guy. We weren't especially close but with him it didn't matter who you were, he just liked to talk and I admit now that I really had a kind of theoretical crush on him.
If he'd ever actually asked me out I probably would have said yes, but he didn't, so that's how it stayed.
He did sometimes invite me along to grab takeout with him though, if he got hungry mid-way through a conversation (an event which happened rather a lot, I must say. Big guy, big metabolism) and it was during one of those little trips out that Logan decided to make another return to mansion life. We arrived back at around the same time as he pulled his bike back into the garage, and I didn't notice him first off because I was too busy flicking noodles at Petey and trying to make them stick to his forehead. But Logan had a weird look on his face when I finally did notice him. Part pissy, part... ok, all pissy. It was the look that said he didn't want to be bothered because something was irritating him, so I gave him a brief hello and left him in the garage to stew about whatever it was that was causing such evident annoyance. Burrs on his butt, saddle sore, bug-splatter on his forehead, really who knew? It's not like Logan actually needed an excuse to be bad-tempered. He barely even acknowledged our presence in all truth, he was too busy yanking angrily at the straps on his saddle-bags. Obviously something was not all rosy in the world of the Wolverine, so I went to hang out with Pete a little while more and then eventually made my way to my room.
When I got back however, Logan was there. Which was somewhat of a surprise.
He was half-sprawled on the end of the bed, disdainfully flicking through one of the film magazines he'd picked off my floor.
"Oh, hey. Good trip?" The innocuous greeting of a girl not even slightly warmed by the sight of a man draped on her bed. Really. (And some day I thought, I really must stop torturing myself with wanting what will never happen. He made my heart beat too fast and I knew that it was stupid.)
He glanced up at me, grunted a noncommittal "Mph" and flipped another page.
It was an unsurprisingly Logan-ish response and the little flicker of fantasy faltered and died once again, like they always unfailingly did.
I pursed my lips slightly and shrugged, dropping my jacket over the back of a chair before kicking off my shoes.
"So where'd you go this time?"
He looked at me and scowled, the look that says it's not important where he went and the whole experience sucked anyway. Apparently he was mister incommunicative right at that moment. I rolled my eyes and sighed. I really wasn't in the mood for guessing the reason for Logan's mood, and I didn't especially feel like sympathising him out of it either. Not when I had enough of my own reasons to be miserable.
"Was there something specific you wanted, Logan? Or did you just come by to read old back-issues of Empire and grunt at me?"
He tossed the magazine back onto the floor and sighed slowly, almost visibly rolling the thoughts around his head before finally speaking.
"You seemed... kinda' weird before I left."
"Oh." I shrugged and didn't really look at him. "It was nothing. Life and times of a histrionic, mutant drama queen. I'm fine."
He grunted again, quietly this time, and I could feel his eyes boring into me.
"You were out with that Russian kid earlier," he stated and I couldn't help smiling just a little. Petey had been picking stuck noodles off the ceiling when I left.
"Yeah," I replied. "He took me out for junk food."
He sat there silently for a moment, a pensive look upon his face before his shoulders sagged just the tiniest fraction.
"That's great, Kid."
He got up and left and I sighed slowly, inhaling whispers of the scent he'd left lingering in the air.
He really did smell good.