Mr. Iero

Chapter 9

My cousin looked at me in awe.  "Why do you like him, then?" she asked.

"Um."  I looked at her for two seconds.  "He's hot and drives a cool car," I said as convincingly as possible.

She raised her eyebrows at me.  "Oh.  Can I see a picture of him?" she requested.

Before I could come up with some stupid excuse for not being able to take a picture with him, my sister Lili saved the day by coming into the bedroom without knocking and running into Sarah's arms.  Sarah giggled and started playing around in the room with my sister, completely dropping the conversation we had just had.  Thank god.

A while later, everyone was called into the kitchen to start taking food out to the dining room table so that we could eat.  Everyone rushed in and grabbed a tray of food and went back out, but before I could grab a hold of anything, my aunt got my attention.

"Could you pass me that bottle of wine there?" she requested.  She had already sounded drunk, but I nodded and handed her the bottle that was a few feet away from me.  "Have you ever had this type of wine, Ash?" she asked.

I turned around with a bowl of potatoes in my hands and shook my head.  "I'm seventeen, Aunt Janet."

She poured a bit of the wine into her glass and smiled.  "Aw it's okay, sweetie.  It's just a sip," she held up the glass to my face.

I knew that I definitely should not have been drinking that; I was pregnant, for crying out loud.  "I have a bit of a headache right now," I lied.  "Maybe that wouldn't be best for me."

"Of course not," she said.  "The wine would help."

Right then my mom walking back into the kitchen, giving my aunt an annoyed look.  "Janet, what are you doing?" she asked as if she'd done this a thousand times before, which she had.

"Nothing, nothing," she said, turning around to walk out of the kitchen.  "Your daughter's too perfect to listen to me anyways."

My mom looked at me and I gave her a weak smile, knowing that at the moment I was absolutely not perfect.

The next morning was Christmas morning.  It wasn't snowing, as usual.  It was kind of gross and mucky out.  Lili, of course, woke up everyone in the house at seven by jumping on our beds while shouting stuff about Christmas and Santa and presents.

Pretty soon everyone was downstairs sitting in the living room around the Christmas tree.  Lili opened her presents, which mostly consisted of dolls, clothes, and picture books.  Sarah got some clothes and some CD's.  I had only asked for money, seeing that I'd probably be using it towards gas for my car or eventually for a living, breathing child.

Oh my god I'm growing up.

We stayed at my grandparents' for a few hours before saying our goodbyes and travelling back home.  On the way home, I was texting Frank a bit more.  He said that he had nothing to do today and invited me to spend an hour or so at his house.  Of course I said yes.

After the four hours it took to get back home, I unpacked my bag of clothes and then grabbed the keys to my car.  "I'm going to the bank to put in this check and then I'm going to a friend's," I told my parents, referring to the money I got for Christmas.

"Well wait," my mom stopped me.  "How long will you be out for? I wanted the family to go to church at five."

I groaned.  "Mom, no one wants to go to church.  Lili's probably exhausted from the car ride, and I was going to spend an hour or more with Hallie."  That was all true...except for the last part.

"Well I want to go to church," my mom argued.  "Doesn't what I care about matter in this house anymore?" she said.

"Honey," my dad interjected.  "Maybe we can go to the eight o'clock service instead.  Does that sound good?" he asked me.  I sighed and nodded, knowing that there was no other way of getting out of this.  "Okay, go," he said with a smile.  I smiled back and went out the door.  My dad was always understanding and supportive, so that was cool.  I was really hoping that he'd help me out whenever I decided to tell him about the pregnancy.

After going to the bank, I was on my way to Frank's house.  I realized that I hadn't gotten him anything for Christmas, so I decided that I had to at least get him a card.

I stopped at a CVS and picked up a Christmas card - not too formal, but not too familiar - and added a "Dear Frank," and "-Ashley."

The drive to Frank's was a few minutes longer than usual, but that's just because of the ice on the roads.  When I got to his front door, I didn't bother knocking before entering.  I had visited him enough that he said it didn't matter if I knocked or not.  He also wasn't able to hear me knock half the time, so I was just saving time.

When I walked in, Frank was sitting on his living room couch reading a book.  "Hey," I said, sitting down on the couch next to him.

"Oh, hey," he said, offering me a smile while he put his book down.  I looked down at the book to see that it was one of the books from the Harry Potter series.  I would've taken the chance to talk to him about the series, but I wasn't really familiar with it.

"Merry Christmas," I said, taking the risky move to give him a side-hug.

Frank let out a low chuckle and put one of his arms around my waist for a few seconds.  "You, too."

I looked around his living room and noticed that there was no Christmas tree.  Was he not Christian? Now I felt like an idiot for saying 'Merry Christmas.'  "Did you do anything for the holidays?" I asked, trying to avoid specifically Christmas.

"Not much," he said in a bored way.  "My mom came over yesterday, left some time this morning.  She got me this little..." he picked up a small leather notebook to show me what he was referring to.  "-thing," he said as he tossed it back onto his coffee table.

"Why don't you have a Christmas tree?" I asked, now assuming that he did, in fact, celebrate Christmas.

Frank shrugged.  "I'm not that big into getting into the spirit, you know? Christmas fucking sucks."

I nodded, understanding his point.  He didn't explain why he thought that, but the holidays could be stressful at times.

And Jesus Christ, the way he said 'fuck' was hot.  Wait, what was I saying? That was ridiculous and inappropriate.  He was my teacher; I couldn't say that anything about him was hot.  Well, I had done much worse than think of him as hot before, so I didn't think that this would be much for a problem.

I didn't realize how long I'd been trapped in my thoughts until I noticed Frank looking at me in a confused way.  I decided that now it would be a nice gesture to give him that card to make up for the awkward silence, maybe just to reassure him that Christmas wasn't always that bad.

I reached into my purse to grab the card, when I heard the front door open.  Both Frank and I shifted our gazes over there to see a woman with short, brown hair walking in and taking her jacket off.  "Oh, babe," she said in a confused manor when she saw us.  "I didn't think you'd be busy."