“So, Sam and Sandra met each other while they were in the university. He was a very bad influence on her and everyone who loved her told her so, but it seemed that the more she was warned about him, the more she wanted to be with him. He was, and obviously still is a manipulator, but she turned a blind eye to all his faults. Eventually, she began to do drugs with him and it got so bad that she had to be sent to rehab. She barely managed to graduate, but by the time she did, she had managed to get clean, from drugs, at least. However, she still wouldn’t hear jack about how much of a bad influence Sam was on her, much like she keeps doing, even now.I remember the first time I ever met him. She invited him to an already strained dinner to meet our parents, whom we’re not all that close to. This asshole came to dinner high as a kite, and of course, our parents didn’t like him, which was one of the few times they and I ever agreed on something. Sandra didn’t care, of course, but did her b
The months passed very slowly for Ryan, who had finally come to terms with the fact that the twins were gone for good. He threw himself fully into work in a bid not to notice, or rather, dwell on the glaring absence of their happy laughter in the house. It was impossible not to notice it. The house was unbelievably quiet since they left and the only time he was ever happy was when he flew over every weekend to see them. These occasions ended in a lot of crying on Taylor and Tyler’s part, but it was a relief to know that they had not forgotten him.He was also relieved to see that the twins adjusted well to their new home over the months and were also well taken care of by their grandparents. He had no doubt that the fact that a familiar face, in the person of Margie, had to do a lot with their settling in fine. Noah and Anna were cool about the whole thing, and welcomed Ryan into their homes any time he wanted, even when it wasn’t time for him to visit the twins yet. As they pointed o
The atmosphere in Becca’s house was sort of tense as she finished packing up her and Emma’s stuff. She zipped the last bag closed, the sound of the lock seeming very loud and final in her very quiet living room. The silence was broken only by Emma’s contented, soft coos as she rested on Dan’s shoulders and the latter patted her back gently in a bid to get her to sleep. It was working, albeit slowly. Now and then, the little child’s eyes would close, and then they would open again as she fought the insistent call of sleep. Finally, though, she succumbed to it, and only then did Dan pad out of Becca’s living room with the child in his arms, and went to drop her in her room to sleep.He came back to the living room to see that Becca had unzipped the smallest of Emma’s bags again and was slowly unfolding and refolding the clothes in it. This was no surprise. The woman was nervous as hell and was doing everything possible to avoid a confrontation with him, not that he wanted to have one wi
So Becca and Dan came to a sort of truce about their relationship, or more appropriately, their lack of it. In the meantime, they would see what this time off from each other meant for their relationship, after which they would decide where they stood with each other. Becca knew where she stood, or at least, wanted to stand with him. She wanted to continue being friends with benefits, just have amazing sex with him without any strings attached as she had been doing, but that would be a selfish thing to do. They bade themselves subdued goodbyes the next day, each person lost in their thoughts. Dan kissed Emma’s face tenderly, telling the baby how much he was going to miss her as if she understood any of what he was saying. In return, Emma rattled off a lot of things that neither her mother nor Dan understood in baby language, and patted Dan’s cheeks with her strong, but chubby hands.“She’s going to be a very cute talkative, this one,” Dan remarked as he kissed Emma’s forehead and ha
Phone calls from a hospital or even a nursing home, especially ones that came in the wee hours of the night would most often than not, cause panic among the receivers of such calls. Calls like this immediately threw one into a dire state of panic and had a way of causing one’s heart to pound, at least until the cause of the call was ascertained. Ryan for one, with all that he had been through, ever since people around him started dying, starting from his parents, his sister, her husband, and then her two vulnerable babies being hospitalized and at the brink of death, totally hated anything that had to do with hospitals.So when his phone began to ring in the middle of the night, and he saw that the call was coming from the nursing home in which his ex-wife’s aged grandparents lived, his heart started the now familiar pounding that it usually got when he got any calls from a hospital. He had not known Becca’s grandparents for very long, but in the short time that he knew them, they wer
It wasn’t often that anything terrified Becca. In fact, throughout her entire life, she could think of only one time when she had been this terrified and badly shaken up, and that was that awful day when she was nineteen and had come home to find her brother, Toby, unconscious with his legs swollen. That had been the beginning of a nightmare that had led her to Peter, her ex-boyfriend who had ruined her marriage with Ryan in the end, but it had also saved her brother’s life, and for that, she was eternally grateful.So petrified was she that she remained frozen to the spot in which she was standing currently, even though her instinct and everything in her, was urging her to run, run, run and never look back. Now she knew exactly why people who found themselves in dangerous situations froze. Before now, she had found it weird to think that some people, instead of fleeing the second they were threatened by something dangerous, froze instead, but now, she understood perfectly. She willed
Although Ryan tried his best to prolong his stay on the off chance that Becca would come, he had run out of things to say to Mrs. Laura. It probably wasn't a good idea for him to keep talking to her, even though left to her, she would have happily talked until she dropped. It wasn’t as though he didn’t want to talk to her, but she was only just recuperating, and she needed her rest. After some time, he asked her about Becca and if she was coming to see her, but the woman had shaken her head.“No, she hasn’t. I don’t like her traveling all that distance just to see me, you know. She tries to do so very often, but I know how difficult it is, especially with the b...” She trailed off, glancing unsurely at Ryan, and then glancing away guiltily, not finishing her sentence.“Especially with the what, Mrs. Laura?” Ryan asked, sensing that what she had been about to say was serious.“Especially with the busyness of her schedule, of course. You still love her, don’t you, Ryan?”Ryan averted his
A long time passed by before Toby came back, or maybe it just seemed that way to Becca because of the situation. In her irrational mind, she kept imagining Toby appearing with Ryan behind him like a god of war, demanding that she release his daughter to him immediately, and banishing her to a lifetime of not seeing her daughter.“He’s gone,” Toby told her, seating down heavily beside her. He looked very sad, and Becca knew that he felt sorry for Ryan, which would have been strange, but the truth was that she had somehow felt sorry for him too. He had this sad and lonely look about him that seriously contrasted with the powerful and proud Ryan that she used to know. However, she was taking no chances.“Are you sure about that?” She inquired of Toby immediately, staring into his face as though if she stared long enough into it, she would see the answer to all the questions that plagued her. She kept glancing at the corridor, almost half expecting Ryan to step out from behind it.“Yes, I