“Guys, it’s getting late. I thought that maybe you want to go sleep…?” Delia had appeared at the kitchen door. She was peering in, one hand on the door frame, the other gripping a blanket.
“Yeah, that’s a good idea. It's going to be a long day tomorrow,” Liam said. We got up and pushed our chairs back, saying our goodbyes. Yes, I was exhausted, but I felt like an intruder here in this stranger’s house and the feeling seemed to loosen when I was around Liam.
“Hey, don’t worry, there’s nothing like a good night of sleep to make things okay,” Delia said when we were going up the stairs. She had turned to us, her smile inviting.
“Thanks,” I said, smiling back. We walked pass a bunch of closed doors. All white and flat, they looked identical, with nothing to hint at what was behind. The hallway was leading to another set of stairs, where Liam’s room was, but just before that, Delia stopped in front of a door.
“That’s my room, and there,” she pointed to another one, a few doors down. “Is the bathroom.”
She opened her door, letting us in. Her walls were painted a bright golden yellow, compared to Liam’s that had been a light brown. There was a mirror on the wall just beside the door, and tons of photos where clipped there. The bed was pushed to the far wall, taking most of the place in the little room.
“There’s not much space, but when you’re twenty living under the same roof, sometimes you have to give that up,” she said, laughing. “There’s stuff you guys can probably fit in, in the third drawer,” she pointed to the little closet beside her. She opened it, and roamed through it, getting two t-shirts and pair of shorts, giving them to us.
“Thanks. I love your room,” I heard Rose say, beside me. Delia turned around, pleased.
“Thank you, I love it too. I always thought that yellow is a great color and it seems to make me happy. Hey, do you mind if I change here? We’re all girls, and well…”
“No, it’s not a problem,” I laughed.
“And it must be hard to have bathroom time here,” Rose said, laughing too. Delia turned around, her back to us, giving us some kind of privacy. I did the same, turning toward the wall that was covered in pictures.
“Well it’s not that horrible. We have four bathrooms, one on every level. We mostly use the one closer to our room, so we’re about six to seven…” she stopped there, maybe she was waiting for us to say something, or maybe she was just thinking, I didn’t know. “Okay, well like that it sounds pretty bad, but really, we learned to work around it,” she said, laughing again. Her laughter was a little bit high pitched, like I had expected. With her small body and her pixie like face, she didn’t look like the evil monster we thought about at the first mention of werewolves.
We changed fast and when I was finished, I went to see the many pictures that were glued to the wall. They were practically all of the same persons in different places: four girls, including Delia, and three guys. Her friends. There was one of the girls in bikinis, in a pool. Another one taken at a party, and on the couch, in the car, in a park… A picture attracted my eyes, just on the border of the mirror. It was a picture of Delia, the arm of an average height guy around her. The two of them were smiling broadly, gazing in each other's eyes.
“That’s my boyfriend,” Delia said, she had appeared beside me, making me jump in surprise. “Well he was.” The intonation on the last word made me look at her. She was still looking at the picture.
“His name is Brett.” That’s all she said.
“What happened?” Rose asked, forming with her lips what I had thought. She had come up beside us, her fingers trailing lightly on the pictures.
“We broke up when I changed. I came to live here and he was always angry at everyone. I guess he was scared that somebody here would steal his girl. I just couldn’t handle it anymore,” she said lightly.
“Oh, I’m sorry.” I was still looking at her, searching for some emotion.
“Don’t be, he was really a pain in the ass. I couldn’t even talk to anybody here when he was around, I hated it.”
“And you wouldn’t be with him,” Rose didn’t make any sense. Why would she be with him? She had just said that they weren’t together anymore… And then it did. She was pointing to another photograph, this one, a little bit farther from us.
This one was of a Delia and a guy, someone I had seen from downstairs at the reunion, laughing hard on the front porch of this house. When I turned once again to Delia for some information, I saw a small smile glued on her lips.
“We’re not together.”
“Just really good friends?” I asked, laughing. The two other girls joined in.
“What is this? All about Delia’s relationships show?” she laughed. “It’s complicated.”
“You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want too,” Rose said, turning back to the room.
“No it’s fine, it’s been a while since I got to talk like that with friends, but we might want to get ready and take over the bathroom before anybody else decides the same.” At that, she opened the door and walked slowly to the bathroom door, knocking softly on it. We followed her outside, waiting beside her.
“No one in there. So who’s first? Rose?” My friend nodded swiftly and locked the door behind her. Just at that moment, footsteps on the stairs made us both look in that direction. Liam and Ben appeared at the top of them a couple of seconds later.
“Hey.” Ben’s face enlighten with a smile directed at me. Liam was beside him, looking at Delia. They approached, stopping right by our side.
“Waiting for the bathroom?” Liam’s voice was strained. We nodded in unison and stood awkwardly for a few seconds.
“We better go, it’s getting late…” Liam’s words faded out progressively. Ben’s arms were around me in no time, pulling me in a hug.
“Sweet dreams,” he whispered to me and then turned to Delia, smiling. Liam was next, waiting for space to come up beside me. His arms were firm, keeping me safely against his chest. I also noticed that his hug lasted a little bit longer than Ben’s.
“’Night.” At that, the bathroom door opened, letting out Rose. She stopped in her tracks, surprised at the little group that had formed in the hallway.
“Oh, hi,” she said. The guys gave their hugs and then they disappeared at a corner. Delia was looking at us, smiling.
“Brothers,” I rolled my eyes. A head popped from the corner the guys had gone.
“See you guys in the morning,” Ben said, “and I heard you, Alicia.” He smiled one more time before going for good. We all laughed when he was out of earshot. Finally, Delia broke the trance.
“You look a lot like him, you know,”
“No I don’t... I actually think we’re contraries,” I said, laughing again. Me, looking like Ben? No it was impossible. He was so handsome and tall and... Everything. I was just an average girl, with a normal life- well at least until the past month or so.
“Alicia, humble Alicia...” Rose whispered. I was going to retort but Delia pushed me in the bathroom, cutting off whatever I was going to say. She closed the door behind me, yelling for me to hurry up and then I heard the two of them explode in laughter. I rolled my eyes to my reflection in the mirror.
I could still hear them behind the door, talking like normal teenage girls. Their talking wasn’t interesting me though, and I decided that I should maybe hurry up, like Delia had said. We were all exhausted from the long day. I brushed my teeth with the spare tooth brush Delia had pointed to us earlier, and studied myself in the mirror a few seconds before opening the door to let Delia inside.
“You can go in my room, get ready for the night. There’s some blankets in my top left drawer and you two can go on the bed, I’ll take the floor,” she said with a smile before she closed the door once again, disappearing inside.
I turned to Rose, shrugging. We went back to her room, closing the blinds on the window.
“I really love her room. Do you think my parents would let me paint my room yellow?” Rose asked, getting out a mountain of blankets out of a drawer, like Delia had said.
“I don’t know... depends on the yellow I guess?” I said, laughing at her. She made a face, turning to me and showing me her tongue. She came around and sat on the bed, falling backwards on it.
“Why am I so tired? It’s not like we ran a marathon or something? We weren’t even the ones to fight today,” She said, looking at the ceiling.
“You're right, we didn’t fight, like everyone else, but it was an emotional day...” I drifted off when the door opened to let Delia in.
“Yeah, Alicia’s right. You did just learn that werewolves existed,” she said, looking passed me to Rose giving her an amused look. She dropped besides the bed, falling in the pile of blankets Rose had taken out for her. She stayed there for a while, looking blankly at the ceiling. In the silence, I heard her sigh. She got up once again, to turn out the lights and then pick out her way back to her spot on the floor.
“Okay, you guys need to tell me what’s going on with those guys,” she said when we were all comfortable in out blankets.
It was dark in the room, so dark I could barely see my hand in front if my eyes. The only thing that was more or less visible was Rose’s limp form beside me. But then again, she looked like a pile of rags, a heap of blond, white and black.
“What do you mean?” I asked, turning to the side of the bed, where Delia must have been.
“Well… It’s pretty obvious that there’s something going on between Liam and you, if you ask me.”
“I’ve been killing myself trying to tell her that, they seem like they’re the only ones who’s not in on it though,” Rose said, beside me. Like a private joke that everyone understands, apart from the two persons they’re laughing about, I thought to myself.
“What? No! There’s nothing between us. Really.”
“Sure doesn’t look like it. Wanting to protect you from this psycho wolf today and even after that, I should add, only hinted at something more than just friendship…” Delia’s voice softened at the end. I opened my mouth and then closed it. Their minds were set on it already; anything I said wouldn’t change that. They waited for me to say something, silence creeping around us. They’re going to wait a while; the voice in my head was high, almost pleading for me to keep my mouth shut.
“Oh, Alicia. We didn’t mean to piss you off, really. We just want details. We don’t understand why you guys are acting like this…” Rose’s voice was soft, comforting.
“Acting like what? Acting like fucking third grade kids? I honestly don’t know myself. You should go ask Liam, I would certainly like to know what he has to say,” the words gushed out my mouth, flying across the room. They bounced on the walls, threatening to fall on me again. Finally Delia said something.
“I didn’t…”
“Sorry, I know you didn’t. I just… I’m just tired of it all. I hate it. I hate guys. They’re so hot and cold, it’s impossible to know what they want.”
“Tell me about it,” Rose said, her voice bitter. I looked at her, my questioning gaze searching the darkness.
“I figured there was something there too. Ben’s…”
“Ben’s just like all the others. Nothing special there,” Rose interrupted Delia.
“Yeah, but he didn’t kiss you the way Liam did. He didn’t tell you he loves you and then act like you had the plague the day after,” I said, turning on my back, gazing at the blank ceiling. “Am I right?” I clamped my lips shut. That wasn’t necessary.
“No… And I’m sorry Liam did this and he hurt you. But the way he looks at you tells something else entirely. Everybody can see it, even Lisa. And let’s face it; it’s exactly why she broke up with him all those times. Well the first couple times it was because the way you looked at him… but since the concert, he’s got it bad,”
“You guys have so much drama, it’s like Jersey Shore live,” Delia said before bursting in laughter. We all laughed, bringing down the tension in the room.
“The lives of teenagers…” I sighed. “I bet your life’s not much different than ours?”
“Stop trying to change the subject,” Rose said accusingly, but a second later she laughed, showing us she was only kidding.
“Probably not, actually. But it’s still less complicated with so much more guys here. Let’s just say that guys have a tendency to lightened the mood, and it helps a lot,” Delia said.
“Uh, it seems an awful lot complicated with that guy though...”
“Rose...” I warned her. If Delia didn’t want to talk about it, we wouldn’t be forcing her.
“No it’s fine. And it is, but aren’t all relationships complicated?” asked Delia. “We like each other; he just never came around to make it official... It’s stupid really, but well our lives are a little bit different than yours, most of our kind tend to die young, and finding love isn’t in our priorities.” It was silent for a moment, and my eyelids became more and more heavy when Rose beside me stirred, propping her head on her hand. Her next words were muffled in my head, I couldn’t understand well through the dense fog surrounding my thoughts.
“He’s gonna come around, both of them will.”
---> 
looking forward to reading more
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