Chapter Twenty-six
Claire
I let out a groan of frustration as I threw myself back into the couch. I was at home in my living room, with my laptop open in front of me on the low coffee table. I’d been looking online for jobs, and a while back I found a good lead, and applied. I just got back a reply.
It was a bit soon to be getting a reply. If it took a couple weeks to a month, I would feel better about my chances of getting the job. When I saw I’d gotten a reply already, I knew it was bad before I opened it, and sure enough, it was a rejection.
“Fuck,” I muttered to myself. “What am I going to do?”
It was a bit early to be getting too panicked over this, but I couldn’t not worry about it, either. I’d gotten my paycheck for my last month of work at the company. I didn’t miss how I didn’t get any commission out of the job I had been working on with Simon, even though I’d done considerable work on it. I at least got paid for all the overtime I’d pulled. I couldn’t go back there and complain or they’d just slap me with a lawsuit.
I did have some savings, so it wasn’t like I was going to be immediately bankrupt, but the longer it took for me to find a new job, the worse it would be for me. I bought my apartment at the right time, and got a good deal for it. I’d been paying it off by not overspending for the last four years, so the money I had in savings was only so much. I could keep feeding Rogue and myself for a while, so it wasn’t an immediate problem, but it made me antsy not to have work. Not to mention, there were plenty of other bills to take care of each month. I gave it a few months before it became a real strain.
That’s only an estimate, though. Of course it’s an immediate problem, if I’m not careful, Rogue and I might end up going hungry before too long.
There was always Mom. I knew she wouldn’t mind helping us with funds if we really needed it, but I didn’t feel right about it. Especially when she still had Richard to worry about. Insurance was covering for his treatments, but money hadn't been coming in since she didn’t work, and it kept being used up since Richard stopped working.
“Things…are looking bad,” I muttered to myself, staring at my ceiling.
I blinked, then rolled my head on the couch to look at the table. My phone lay there next to the computer. I thought about reaching for it, but didn’t have anyone to call. Rogue was in his room, and Mom didn’t want to speak to me. And, I obviously didn’t have friends. I was trying to save face about the problems I was facing, but there was no one to do it for, so I couldn’t even pretend to have any sort of confidence.
When was the last time we visited Richard? A week ago? Two?
Something was going on, and Mom was keeping quiet about it. Every time I called, she refused to allow us to go and visit Richard. Of course, it wasn’t like we needed her permission or anything. Especially Rogue, because he was the man’s son in the first place. But we were all going along with what she wanted, even though it didn’t make much sense.
As I stared at it, my phone started to ring and I scrambled for it, almost dropping it onto the floor by accident. I answered quickly and put it to my ear.
“Hello?” I said breathlessly. I listened in anticipation, only for it to die quickly as I cut off the call. “Fucking telemarketer,” I growled in frustration, tossing myself back onto the couch.
I’d thought it was a reply, but it was just another disappointment.
Then I heard a door open up in the apartment, and I froze, then raised my head up to look over the back of the couch.
Rogue had come out of his room at last. He was in an old pair of cotton track pants and a t-shirt, his hair sticking up in all directions as he scratched his fingers through it. He’d obviously just pulled himself from bed, and I wondered if he’d been sleeping all this time.
“Hey,” I called tentatively.
He glanced over at me, though I wondered if he was even looking at me. His lips quirked up in a tiny smile, then he looked away as he walked into the kitchen.
“Hey, Claire,” he called behind him, his voice listless. “What do you want to have for lunch?”
“Whatever’s available,” I said cautiously, getting up to go join him in the kitchen. “Food stock in the house has gotten really low, so I’ll be heading out to the supermarket in the next few days, maybe.”
Rogue hummed, but didn’t say a thing. It was sort of expected, though.
Since Mom started refusing to let us see Richard, it felt to me as if Rogue was withdrawing into himself. When I first got out of work, he was almost ecstatic, even though he tried to hide it. He spent every day in my room with me when we were at home, and we slept together every night.
At some point, though, he’d started going to his own room and not coming out, and besides calling him out to cook, nothing I said would catch his attention. It wasn’t like I didn’t know how to cook myself, I’d been living alone for a while, so of course I knew how to look after myself, but if it got him out of his room, then I was going to give it to him.
“Have you talked to your mom yet?” Rogue asked, standing at the counter, cutting up some ingredients.
“Um, no,” I murmured.
Even when I called, she didn’t pick up. I knew phones weren’t allowed at the hospital, so that was a no-brainer. But when I called her early in the morning, or late at night, or at lunch, whenever I called, she didn’t seem to have time. Sometimes I got lucky, sometimes not, so besides communicating via text that took ages for her to reply, we hadn't actually talked in some time.
“Oh,” Rogue said, then kept quiet.
Time passed like that, with him cooking, and me watching him cook. He obviously didn’t want to talk, and I didn’t know how to converse with this cold, reserved side of him, so the air between us often got awkward just like this lately.
I would think of something to say, and he would give a short reply, then we’d be quiet for a length of time before one of us thought of something to say. Or, no one thought of anything, and he finished cooking.
Once he’d finished cooking, Rogue served himself, then left to go back to his room for me to serve my own food. This time, when he was about to leave the kitchen, I spoke up.
“Why don’t we eat together at the dining table today?” I asked. “I hope you don’t mind keeping me company?”
My voice was hopeful, but I didn’t actually think he would say yes. He stopped long enough to look at me, a distracted smile on his face.
“It’s fine. I’d like to be alone for a while.”
Then he took his food and left.
I almost cursed behind him, but decided to keep my mouth shut.
Shit.
Things were falling apart rather quickly. A little too quickly.
With a sigh, I went and served my own plate. If there was one thing I couldn’t complain about, it was the fact that Rogue really was a good cook. Even with how distracted he looked lately, the flavor of anything he made never fell flat. I kind of envied him for that, because when I wasn’t paying enough attention when I cooked, I could make a mess. Sometimes, even when paying full attention, I couldn’t get the same results.
I just wished he wasn’t still ignoring me.
I ate alone at my dining table, and it reminded me so much of when I was still living on my own. It made me feel like a sad kind of person, to not even have friends. There had been people I could still call before, but they were now my former work colleagues. They would all still be at work at this time on a weekday, and they wouldn’t associate with me now, anyway, after I’d left work. I’d spent too much time on work to build any other longstanding relationships. Even the friends I’d had back in high school, then college, had all moved on and I never talked to them after graduation.
There was Rogue, but he was clearly keeping his feelings to himself. Even when I tried to have a conversation between us, he wouldn’t take the bait.
It was a family of four, down to three with Richard in the hospital, but no one was talking to each other about what was really going on.
Thinking it through, it was just like when I was a kid, when Dad was still around and everything wasn’t okay, and it was easy to tell because the atmosphere at home was just too fake. We all said nothing, then it was just me and Mom, and we moved on like nothing had happened at all.