Bitter Blood (BBi)

Chapter 4: Roomie

Chapter Four
Roomie

"What..." I stutter. "What are you doing here?"

Avery barks out a laugh. "I've been gone for all this time and that's the best you can come up with? Can I at least get a hug?"

She opens her arms and I find myself walking into them, my mouth still hanging open in astonishment.

When we pull apart she looks around me and inside the house. "Can I come in?"

"Y-yeah." I step aside and open the door for her.

She walks in, drops her handbag on the coffee table and plunks herself down on the couch. I close the front door and turn around to lock it again. For a moment I linger in front of the worn wood, staring at it's hues and rivets, before I take a deep breath and turn around to face her.

"So... how have you been?" she asks.

I continue staring, my mind not quite processing what I'm seeing. It's like my brain is walking two steps behind my body, observing from a distance as the world moves on without it.

"How have I been?" I ask incredulously. "How have I been?"

I clench my teeth and ball my hands into fists. Anger builds higher and higher like a rising wave threatening to break. And then it does.

“You were gone for four years!" I shout. "There were police investigations, newspaper articles, missing person searches! People were looking for you, Avery! Where the hell have you been?"

She lets out a deep breath in an even deeper sigh and looks down at her knees.

"I've..." she stops to lick her lips. "I needed to get away. That's all."

"You needed to get away." The words feel wrong in my mouth, much like they should in hers. "From what? Your home? Your school? Your family?"

She abruptly shoots up. I notice she's pressing two clenched fists to either side of her.

"You don't know anything about my family." she spits the word family like it leaves a bad taste on her tongue. She snatches her bag up from the coffee table and brushes past me as she heads to the door. After she opens it she looks over her shoulder at me.

"A lot of things changed, Parker.” she says. “Including me."

And then she's gone and only the ringing of the slammed door reminds me that she was ever there at all.

-
-

That night as I lay in bed with Blue curled up beside me, my thoughts can't help but wander to Avery.

For me, four years has felt more like four hundred. What could she have done in all that time? Walked around the country? Cured cancer? And why had it taken her so long before she finally decided “Hey! Maybe it's time I went back to my home town and told everyone that I'm not missing and I'm not dead!”

But through my anger and increasing confusion, I'm filled with guilt.

We had spent ten minutes in the same room before her appearance resulted in me screaming at her. What if she's gone again? This time for good?

Finally admitting that tonight I won't be getting any more sleep, I roll out of bed and walk downstairs. In the lounge room, my mobile phone sits on the coffee table. The ancient contact list still contains Avery's old number.

Back when she had first vanished I had called that number over a thousand times. Each day, letting it ring till it hit the message bank and then promising to call her again tomorrow.

I never got a call back.

I pick it up and stare down at the simple blank surface. What if...

I'm punching in the numbers before I can even finish the thought.

I lift it to my ear. One ring. Two rings. Three rings.

"Come on," I whisper.

Four rings. Five rings. Six rings.

"Hello, you have reached the message bank of 0-4-1-5-3-"

I hang up before the monotone female voice can finish.

I immediately click Avery's contact name, scroll down to delete and watch it disappear from the list.

After I've tossed it onto the table I sit back on the couch, my insides gnawing at me, filling me with shame. I have no way of contacting her, of asking her to come back. I might have just made the biggest screw up of my life. You'd think I'd be happy. Overjoyed, crying, relieved. I was and I am. But in that moment, the strength of my built up anger pushed it all aside.

"Crap," I curse to the empty living room.

I let my head fall back against the couch and close my eyes. I here the patter of feet against wood before I see Blue entering the room.

But when he rounds the edge of the couch and pops into my line of sight, a startled gasp escapes me.

He's almost doubled in size, the cute black kitten now the size of a fully grown cat. His small and chubby features have been replaced with the strong set of a male's build. He stands confident on his four legs, no longer that uncertain, wobbly infant.

"What on earth happened to you?” I exclaim as he sits back on his haunches and absently begins to lick his front paw.