Sweet and Sour
The two simple doorbell tones ricochet through the chilly air, and I shiver in my woolly sweater, rubbing my hands together for warmth. Please don’t answer the door. Please don’t answer the door. It’s pointless hoping, I know. The door swings open, light cascading onto my frozen figure.
“Riley! Come in, come in! You must be freezing.” Marie ushers me inside with a beaming smile that I find myself returning unconsciously. How can a mother and son be so different? I wonder.
As soon as I got home after school today, my mom decided to spring it upon me that I’d be babysitting tonight for Marie, as a way to make up for my escapade last night. I’ll be meeting and then looking after Alec’s four-year-old sister Millie. I can’t help but be more than the tiniest bit nervous. Kids that young are unpredictable, fragile and brutally honest if they don’t like you. What if she’s a handful? The only experience I’ve had with kids is my brother.
I was hoping that I’d be able to kill two birds with one stone while I was here and talk to Alec, but apparently he’s out. I suppose that makes sense. I’m in this babysitting business alone, and knowing my luck, it’s not going to go well.
“Thank you so much for coming on such short notice!” Marie smiles at me. “You’re a lifesaver. It’s such a shame Alec can’t be here helping you – I get the feeling that you two are getting close. It’s lovely to see him have friends again.”
Again? Marie skips over her confusing remark, and hurries me into the living room to meet the baby I will be sitting.
The adorable little girl, who I haven’t seen since the day they moved in, is sitting in the centre of the rug having a tea party with her dolls. The room is much more established now than when I last saw it – there are cushions on the sofas, flowers on the coffee table and the whole room smells like cinnamon and glows with fairy lights.
“Millie, this is Riley,” Marie says as we step into the living room. Millie looks up immediately, her porcelain face turning rosy and coy as she evaluates me. She tugs at the bottom of her pink dress, hiding her face behind a wall of thick dark ringlets. But I can see that her eyes are the exact colour of her brother’s.
“Hiya,” I greet her softly, walking forward to kneel down beside her tea party. “I like your dress. Did you choose it yourself?”
“Yes,” she replies shyly, her wide eyes peering at me as though measuring me up. “Are you going to look after me? Where’s Alec?”
“If that’s okay with you! And I think Alec’s gone out to buy some new perfume. He’s a bit smelly, isn’t he?” I whisper teasingly.
She giggles, delighted at my joke, her timidity disintegrating almost instantly. She shuffles closer to my side in front of the tea party and offers me an adorable toothy grin, which I gladly return. In my peripheral view, I sense Marie leaving the room quietly. It’s nice to be accepted.
“Do you want to join the tea party?” Millie asks me.
“I’d love to; thank you for inviting me.”
“Would you like some tea?” she asks me in a singsong voice, picking up the teapot and leaning over to pour ‘tea’ in my cup. “This is my best tea set so we need to be careful not to break it.” She leans over to whisper in my ear. “But the tea is only pretend. Mommy says I can’t have real tea or I might get burned.”
I nod understandingly, restraining myself from beaming at her cuteness.
Marie returns to the doorway, chuckling. “Okay, I’m leaving now to go to the dinner party. Riley, Millie’s bedtime is at eight o’clock, but you can push it to eight thirty at the very latest if she’s being a good girl. You can watch TV, films, play. There’s food and drink in the fridge so help yourself.” She checks her watch absent-mindedly. “I should be home by about midnight.”
Millie gets up to charge across the room and hug her mom’s legs. Marie looks down adoringly at her daughter. “Are you going to be okay with Riley, baby? You’ve got to be a good girl for her, remember? When she says you go to bed, you go to bed.”
“Yes.” Millie nods. “We’re going to play princesses next.”
“Of course you are,” Marie says, laughing. “Well, have fun, Riley. Thanks so much for this. My number is on a sticky note on the fridge – call me if you need anything.”
“Got it.” I walk over to Millie’s side, hooking my fingers round her smaller ones. “Have a good time, Marie. I’ll see you later.” Marie gives one last wave, before stepping out of the door and out of sight. I turn to Millie with an excited smile.
“So, what’s your prettiest princess dress like?”
Bang bang bang.
I awake with a start at the sequence of loud noises, shooting up from my curled-up position on the couch. After putting Millie to bed about half an hour ago, I settled down to watch some of the latest Teen Wolf episodes, only I must have drifted off. Marie isn’t due back for a few hours yet, and it sounded to me like Alec was planning on staying the night at his friend’s house. I shake off my blurry stupor, then jump in shock as the loud banging sounds again. By this point I’m beginning to get scared. If it’s a burglar, then I need to protect Millie. I scan the room for a weapon. Something cal I mean, not a toothbrush or something stupid like the victims grab in films. You know, before they get their insides stewed.
The house is deathly silent apart from the noises coming from the window, behind the drapes. I hold a can of body spray in my hand, left by Marie in her rush to leave the house, and step cautiously towards the noise. My heart is in my mouth, my stomach constricting in apprehension. If the burglar does anything, I can spray him in the eyes. I try to comfort myself with my future bravery. Then I knock him out with a frying pan and call the cops. I take a deep breath as the window rattles again; my hands are shaking with nerves. A loud groan sounds from outside, before the snap as the window opens. I brace myself as the drapes shift, as if concealing a body. This is actually happening. There is someone in the house. I raise the frankly useless can of body spray in front of me.
The drapes are pulled aside. “Hello?”
I scream at the sound, spraying the can and closing my eyes. I’m so ridden with panic that my feet are frozen to the floor. A voice curses, and I let out another yelp of fear as they stumble back. I need to call 911 right now. I need to get to Millie.
“Shit, my eyes!” a familiar voice shouts.
My heart stops as I realise who it is.
I open my eyes and, sure enough, Alec is coughing and fanning the air around him blindly, his eyes squinted shut in pain. He hasn’t seen me yet. With a strangled whimper, I catapult up the stairs and into the first room I see, which happens to be Alec’s. What do I do? If he sees me then he’ll know it was me for sure! I curse silently, diving under his bed. His floor is hard and the impact is painful, but I’d rather bruise myself than get killed by Alec. I hold my breath to keep from coughing and think about what to do next. I feel like I’m in a horror movie.
Footsteps up the stairs.
“Whoever you are, you better show your face right now, or I’m calling the cops,” Alec’s voice threatens as he steps onto the landing. “I’ll get your ass landed in jail quicker than you can say ‘guilty’.” I gasp at this, cringing into the hardwood of the floor. He’s going to spot me, it’s inevitable, and this is going to be one awkward conversation.
Any hopes of making up with him are out of the window now.
Slowly, I crawl out from under the bed. This could not get any worse. Why do I get myself into these situations? And more importantly, why did I think hiding under the bed was a good way to resolve this one? I accidentally hit my head on the bureau on my completely ungraceful exit. The action makes a loud bang and I wince, partly from the immense pain and partly from knowing there’s no hope left for me now. I’m basically already dead. No more than a second later, Alec sprints into the room, amazingly with a frying pan held at the ready.
I stumble backwards, but luckily his eyes land on me before any serious damage is done. “Riley?” Alec’s eyes become wide and confused, before hardening over in anger again. “What the hell are you doing in my house?”
“Skipping the pleasantries, I see,” I joke half-heartedly. Alec glares at me in reply, the frying pan still a threat in his hand. “I was babysitting, and there were these noises, and then you burst through the window and I thought you were a burglar so I—”
“Almost blinded me?” Alec finishes angrily. “Jesus, Riley! At least double check it is a burglar before you spring into attack mode! I’m lucky I closed my eyes before too much of those chemicals got in them!” He turns away from me in fury. The muscles are tense in his back, like wires pulled taut underneath his skin. Oh, I’ve really done it this time.
“Well, I figured you’d have a house key on you,” I protest. “Plus, I wasn’t expecting you back this early . . . I thought you were staying with your friends or whatever.” I use Alec’s bed to stand up, wincing at the pain in my knees from throwing myself onto the floor so rapidly. “You misunderstood me earlier, by the way.”
Hearing this, Alec freezes. “What?”
“I didn’t want to walk in with you because I thought it would damage your reputation,” I admit sheepishly. “I didn’t mean it in the way that you think – you didn’t let me finish. I didn’t get a chance to say that it’s probably embarrassing to go into school with me the morning after a party, especially with all the rumours. I don’t care about walking in with you, but then you aren’t an outcast so –”
“Why would you think that?”
“Because I’m lame,” I semi-joke.
“That’s the furthest you can possibly get from the truth.” Alec spins round to face me. All anger seems to have faded from his expression, and instead he just looks vacant. Stoic. The room is dark without the lights on, lit only by the hallway glow. There are shadows in the contours of his face. The intensity of this subject matter crushes me, and I instantly look away and release a breathy laugh.
“Riley, listen to me.”
“What happens if I don’t?” I laugh again, still not facing him.
His hands grip the sides of my jaw and he turns my head to face him. He isn’t taking any of my goofiness right now, it seems.
“Riley, you aren’t an outcast, and I wouldn’t care if you were.”
I remember Marie’s words from earlier.
“Alec, what was your last school like?” I ask quietly. I’m genuinely curious, but also somewhat relieved to think of something to detract the attention from myself.
His answer is curt. “It wasn’t like here,” he replies.
“In what way?”
“Riley.” Alec releases a pained breath. He turns his face away, and I recognise it as something I do when I’m uncomfortable facing a certain topic. “I got in a fight with someone at school and it happened to be the wrong someone. I didn’t have many friends.”
“Who did you get in a fight with?” My voice is soft.
There are rumours that Alec’s been in a fair amount of fights. However, there are also rumours that he’s stolen cars, that he’s a drug dealer and that he’s stabbed someone, so I never really gave anything I heard much merit.
Alec looks at me. “I was an angry kid. My dad had just left, I’d been taken away from my home and my friends to join a different high school a month or so in. I punched a kid in my first week. He was a popular jock-type and his dad wasn’t happy about it – I did some detention service for the school and set off on totally the wrong foot. I never made any friends. I was an actual outcast.”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to offend you when I said that.”
Alec chuckles, running a tired hand over his face. “You think I care what people think of me, Riley? Four years at that school, it toughened me up. I kept in contact with Dyl, Joe and Chase, but every day I felt alone. I was looked at as the angry kid, the kid your parents wouldn’t want you around. If I kept caring what people thought, it would have broken me entirely.”
“It’s strange,” I admit. I sit down on the bed, and stare at my hands, clasping the covers. “Knowing you were like that. It doesn’t add up to the boy I see you as now.”
“People like me here.” Alec shakes his head, sighing. “It’s different. I had established friends already. That doesn’t mean that I give a crap about what people say about me. Walking into the school the morning after a party with a quiet girl – you think I’d care? They can talk all they want. That’s what people do.”
“You and Violet,” I say quietly, “you both have a very similar outlook.”
“You should have the same one.” He still has the same detached expression on his face.
“A girl can dream.”
“Just” – he closes his eyes for a second – “don’t say something like that again. You don’t need to protect me. If I’m doing something, I’m doing it because I want to.”
“Okay. I’m sorry you had to go through that.” I watch my fingers knit together, gather my courage. “What exactly happened with your dad, if you don’t mind me asking?”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
Alec clambers onto the bed beside me, and slowly a hand pulls my chin up to face him.
“Sorry about the body spray too.” I cringe as soon as our eyes meet.
He smiles slightly. “Oh don’t worry, I’ll get you back.”
“No you will not.”
His dimples flash. “Do you feel like a Chinese takeaway? I’m starving.”
“Always.”
It’s a shocking fact, but I’m blushing. Am I flirting with him? I duck my face beneath my hair. When I look back up, Alec is inches away from my face. For a mere millisecond, I think I forget to breathe.
“I knew you couldn’t resist me, Greene,” he says. An arrogant smirk plays out across his lips, and I push him away with a laugh.
“I can’t resist chow mein,” I say. “Get downstairs and order my food.”
He smiles crookedly at me, before skipping out of the room and slapping his palms against his bedroom door as he exits. I take a deep breath as soon as he’s out of the room. Alec actually kind of opened up to me there. It sounds like he’s dealt with a lot over the last few years. Suddenly his whole attitude – the bike, the PDAs with random girls, the pranks. It all fits together a bit more. My heart, it feels warm, and I frown as I recognise the emotion. No, Riley. You can’t allow yourself to feel like this. Not about him, not about anyone. I force myself to think about the girls he flirts with. That’s who he is interested in.
I don’t want to be heartbroken again. I don’t even know if I’m ready for a crush again. My life is a bit of a shambles at the moment.
Taking a deep breath, I stand up from Alec’s bed and pull my sweater sleeves down over my hands. As I step into the glow of the landing, I hear Alec talking downstairs. He must be ordering the takeaway. And yet, as I approach the top steps, I freeze.
“Tiana, I’m really not feeling well,” I hear Alec say.
I peer through the banister rails and watch him lean against the wall with his phone pressed to his ear.
“I really don’t think you should come over. No. No. I’m just going to stay in and get an early night. Maybe another time. Yeah, okay. I’m sorry. Night.” He hangs up.
My heart squeezes in my chest and I sigh.
I’m doomed.
“I want to watch Mean Girls.”
“No way, I refuse to watch that disgrace of a movie. The Avengers is so much cooler.”
“But Regina George is so hot,” Alec whines. “Girls in short skirts, bitching about each other and fighting? That is what they call quality entertainment.” He attempts to use the puppy-dog eyes on me, but I’m too strong for that. I’m basically the Hulk.
“Really?” I drawl sarcastically. “I know a Regina George you could talk to.”
He clocks my meaning straight away. “What is the thing between you two anyway?”
My smile fades. I let myself in for that, dammit.
“Something happened, a long time ago,” I say vaguely. “We just don’t really get on.”
“What happened?” Alec probes.
“Oh, we argued about who took the best topless selfies one time in the bathroom.”
Alec’s head snaps to the side. “What?”
“Yeah, her symmetry is all wrong.” I roll my eyes. “I’m kidding, grasshole.”
“Thanks for the mental image anyway.”
I crinkle my nose, hoping he’s successfully distracted from the initial question.
“Anyway, we obviously can’t decide between these two so let’s watch something else instead,” I say. “What do you suggest?”
“Let’s see how you handle a horror, eh?”
The mere mention of a horror movie brings an amused smile to my lips. Oh, Alec, if only you knew.
“Paranormal Activity? The Conjuring? Carrie?” Alec wriggles his eyebrows at me, and I bite my nails to add to the authenticity of the “nervousness” he expects me to have. Judging by Alec’s victorious smirk, it’s worked. “Or perhaps you’d like some Final Destination?” Ah, the gore. Of course that will terrify me.
Eventually he settles on Scream, thinking that of course the man in the mask brandished so often in Halloween costumes will terrify me. Does he really expect that from me? Throughout the scary movie adverts, Alec keeps sending me sideway glimpses to observe my reactions, and I obligingly pretend to be nervous about them all.
Then the first scene kicks in.
I begin to mouth the lines as the actors say them.
It takes a few seconds for Alec to notice but when he does, his mouth drops open in surprise. I still don’t look at him of course; I’m watching him in my peripheral vision as my lips curve round the familiar lines. But after a few more lines, the temptation is too much to resist.
“Who are you trying to reach?” I quote.
I can’t take it any longer. My composed exterior crumples into giggles at the shock on Alec’s face. Scream is not one of my favourite horror films (I find it a little repetitive and tedious), but I still know it back to front.
“How did you do that?” Alec demands.
“Believe it or not, I’m actually a fan of horror movies. Heaven forbid.”
“Have you watched Paranormal Activity?”
I yawn in reply, and his face moulds into a mask of determination. Now he’s going to try to find a horror movie that I haven’t watched, and good luck to him is all I can say.
“Insidious?”
“I can quote it backwards.”
“Sinister?”
“One of my personal favourites.”
“Saw? The Blair Witch Project?” Detecting my glee, he moans. “You know what? Don’t even answer that. I give up trying. You win.”
I jump up and shake my hips in a boastful victory dance. He can test me on any movies or TV programmes – from horror, to science fiction, to anime. I’m a very cultured dork on that front. A lot of my free time is spent watching things, and gaming online too.
The doorbell rings, interrupting my moment of glory.
“Food’s here,” I say.
Alec rolls his eyes moodily, still upset about my victory, and gets up.
“Don’t answer the door, Alec!” I scream in a high-pitched tone, chuckling at the sight of his raised middle finger. A minute later, he comes back in holding a paper bag of Chinese takeout.
“This is for me, this is for me and this is for . . .” He turns to survey me. “Me as well. So none for you then. What a shame.”
He collapses into the couch next to me with a proud sneer, and I boil over with annoyance as I watch him begin to deliberately eat some of my chow mein. His eyes glint with malevolence. This means war.
First, I attempt to grab the food by reaching across Alec, but obviously fail. So, my next method is somewhat more forceful. Launching myself onto him, I snatch the bag of takeout and successfully pin his hands down. He writhes and struggles beneath me. I’ve trapped him to the couch. Now, sitting on his lap in an awkward slouch, I grab a cushion from beside me and shove it into Alec’s face, muffling his curses and profanities, before leaning back into it. It’s actually quite comfortable.
“You know what I feel like watching? Disney princesses,” I declare deliberately loudly. Instantly, Alec’s hands are unleashed from underneath me, darting towards my sides and tickling me frantically. A cry escapes my lips and I squirm like I’ve just been electrocuted, before hysterics follow. My eyes water with unshed tears of joy. I hate being tickled. Helpless to his merciless fingers, my hold weakens and I go crashing to the floor with Alec following behind.
The bag of takeout is soon forgotten as this morphs into a tickling war. He straddles my legs and attempts to pin my hands, his eyes glinting deviously as he leans forward. “Did you honestly think you’d get away with that, Greene?”
I writhe under his legs, the knowing churn in my stomach telling me that there’s much worse to come and my jaw is already hurting from all the laughing. I don’t understand why we laugh when we’re tickled. It’s not like we enjoy it. Keeping my chin up and maintaining the shred of dignity that I have left, I grumble, “Bite me.”
Alec laughs. “Just tell me where, sunshine.”
Unfortunately, my plan to surprise him and jump back up fails the moment that I hear a new voice coming from the living-room doorway.
“Well, well, well. What have we got here?”
Alec and I spring apart, and I land on the floor with a hard thud. Rubbing my backside, I groan and attempt to shield my face from the chuckling boys in the doorway. Joe and Chase are standing there, laughing their asses off at the two of us.
“Idiots,” Alec groans, leaning back on his elbows. “I thought you guys were my mom.”
“Yeah well, we all know how much you love your mommy, Alec,” Chase teases. “Sorry to disappoint. We brought beer. Can we join?” Both boys look between us in anticipation. I sense Alec’s gaze on my face seeking approval, and I shrug. I am slightly uncomfortable with the idea of being part of a lads’ night, with a group of boys I’m not exactly best friends with, but maybe this will be a good chance to get to know them better. Hopefully my night has just got a bit more interesting.
“Why not?” I say.