A/N: OK, so we get to know more about Riku's family life and his opinion of Olette in this chapter. So, yes, finally I put the connection of Olette into this story. Well, not finally, it's only chapter 2 after all.
Chapter 2: 7:50 AM, Monday
Beep, beep, beep! The alarm on his digital clock sounds off instead of Mom's voice. Probably because she trusts that he can wake himself up. Yeah, it's great to have someone who has faith in you. But, when it comes to waking yourself up...Well, it's not fun.
Ultimately, Riku ended up getting six hours of sleep, nowhere near enough hours to sleep through. His eyelids still feel heavy, and there's that Monday morning urge to fall back asleep, fake sick, and skip school. He wishes, just so he can miss out on that math test.
"Riku," Mom decides to call out after all. "Time to get up, sweetie."
OK, OK, but he doesn't have to like it. Not by a long shot. Very gradually, he gets up from bed in what feels like slow-motion. Can't do this...God, it needs to be Saturday again so he can sleep til ten. Blearily, he opens his closet and reaches inside to pick out a shirt. He's not particular about what it looks like, as long as it covers him. Such a lazy guy philosophy, but hey, it's morning. He deserves points for effort at any rate. Right before he goes downstairs, he grabs his gray hoodie from off the floor. These spring mornings are too cool to suit him.
By the time he gets to the kitchen, he notices Mom and Joel together at the table, finishing off the bacon, eggs, and toast she's cooked. Yep, a Joel in the house not a Dad. Dad ran off a long time ago, when Riku was around four or five. Quite a traumatizing experience if he remembers correctly. And he should be able to, considering it's not an everyday occurrence. With suitcases in hand, Dad left the house with barely a goodbye to his son, who remained in shock a week after that. Mom had had him stay home for a few days from preschool just to recover. She met Joel four years later, marrying a year after that.
Joel is OK. He's nice, and he's actually a pretty decent surrogate dad.
"Outdone yourself cooking breakfast again, Rachel," Joel compliments just as Riku invades the pantry to grab a couple Pop-Tarts, breakfast of champions. Or at the very least, tired teenagers desperate for a sugar high to stay awake on.
"Morning, Riku." Joel offers a smile.
He barely smiles back. "Hey, Joel."
It would be way more convenient if his stepdad is his real dad. That way, it wouldn't feel like they live on two separate planets sometimes. That's the trade-off for having Joel in this family. All in all, he's just some random guy.
He's done the whole playing catch with a baseball and the same thing with a football deal. The thing is, Riku is not that much into sports other than skateboarding these days. It's been that way since he was nine. Joel can really fail in relating to him.
Then again, he works in accounting. Of course they don't see eye to eye.
Joel then tacks on, "I've been telling your mom what an amazing cook she is."
"Oh, stop it." Mom blushes slightly. "It's not like I'm on the Food Network or anything like that. You better hurry up, Riku, you got about twenty minutes."
"Yeah, yeah," he murmurs distractedly, popping the Pop-Tarts into the toaster. They're strawberry, his favorite. Well, actually, he's not sure if he has a favorite. He doesn't eat Pop-Tarts for breakfast for enjoyment purposes, just for survival purposes. In reality, they're too sweet to be that appetizing. Either that or he should eat the s'mores flavored ones again. Whatever, they're quick and easy so he can get up close to eight o' clock without breakfast being too much of a hassle. Besides, he only lives a few blocks away from the high school anyway. Just another reason to be lazy.
"Did you get enough sleep last night?" Joel asks, curious in his fatherly way.
Riku nods, impatiently waiting for his Pop-Tarts to finish toasting. In thirty more seconds, they pop out like a spring. He holds back a yawn as he takes them out, puts them on a plate. A typical morning in his house, how boring. Mom and Joel act like they're the perfect couple like something off scripted TV shows. Everything seems to work out for them, even when they're doing something as simple as eating breakfast before he gets up. Their relationship is too perfect. It bothers him, probably because this has meant that he's had to rely on a different man to raise him. Let's face it, it gets complicated. His feelings on the matter do. There might still be a vacancy inside for the man who is really Dad.
Draining the last of his coffee in his cup, Joel puts it in the sink, adjusting his tie to prepare for another fun day in the accounting world.
"I'm off to work. See you later, honey." He kisses Mon on the corner of her mouth. Sick. Does this have to be in front of the seventeen-year-old kid? Cool it, Riku admonishes himself, you're just moody because it's Monday. Joel doesn't deserve this crap. No, if anything, he should be grateful to him for consistently sticking around in his life. In both their lives.
Joel, meanwhile, pats Riku's shoulder. "Have a good day, Riku."
"You too," he manages to mumble, making his stepdad grin just a bit wider, enough to cause him to relax his tense shoulders. Oh, now he remembers why this isn't so terrible. Joel's a genuine guy, a nice guy. He's off in a mood then after all, one of his why-the-heck-is-my-real-dad-not-around moods. Yeah, it's been thirteen years, but that sort of thing has its impact on a kid. When you're abandoned (not just ditched), it can get to you every now and then. Like that itch you can't scratch. You can, enough to move on for the time being, but it can come back with a vengeance. And really, why think about Dad any more? He calls once or twice a month and sends him cards with money on Christmas and his birthday.
Honestly, if Dad didn't do that or pay child support, Riku wouldn't have known the bastard existed. Oh, he remarried ('course, he would, too) to some blonde bimbo named Janet. Janet from Florida, land of sunshine, orange trees, and Disney World. Apparently, dear old Dad felt he needed an upgrade: from reliable SUV Mom to the Ferrari blonde. What really sets Riku on edge, though, what really gets him pissed off is that Dad and Janet from Florida have two kids together. Gracie and Jeremy—the girl is eleven and the boy is eight. He wishes they weren't real sometimes.
God, no wonder he shoves all this info out of his mind as much as possible.
The worst part is that his dad, The Bastard, seems to be a relatively nice guy as well. Riku can't hate him at all, as much as he has tried in the past, simply for that reason. If Dad had been a jerk entirely, then he could find that excuse. However, Dad is a kind guy who at least has called his sometimes resentful, sometimes heartbroken son. He's been a great father for his two kids, the half-siblings Riku is unsure about meeting. To be honest, he doubts he ever will, even when Gracie and Jeremy get to be in their teens, too. As for the divorce of his parents, well, that was the only time Dad had come back here.
He had the common decency to end things the way they inevitably had to, nothing sloppy about it. With this new family he has now, the one he's tried harder with, he hasn't up and left the two kids. Riku's seen photos of the two of them, basically the kind of kids you see in the sample photo when you buy a new picture frame. They're perfect with their light blond-brown hair and vivid blue eyes. Yeah, both of them managed to get Dad's eyes. And the blonde bimbo's, but who cares about her?
So, Dad has pretty much moved on from his old life, the life that used to have all three of them in the picture. This time around, he stays with his second family. Which sucks, because Riku remembers how he left his dad out in kindergarten drawings of his family: just him and Mom.
Finishing up his warm, almost sickly sweet strawberry Pop-Tarts, Riku goes up to the bathroom to brush his teeth. Not a big fan of his teeth, he could tell people that much. They're somewhat crooked to him, so he refrains from grinning on school picture days. Heck, he's surprised if he does smile properly in yearbook pictures any more. The lights are too bright, the guy taking the pictures too artistic (why else does he make kids move to match his vision?), and he can't help but feel self-conscious. It's just crooked teeth, though. Why should they worry him?
As for his hair, he never runs a comb through it in the mornings. As far as he's concerned, it's fine as is, the exact shape it's in from when he gets up.
Yeah, he may have grown it long, something his mom doesn't care too much for, but he washes it. Uses Herbal Essences, a girly shampoo, but it is effective.
So, that's it for morning personal hygiene. Time to get moving and get to stupid school, where he will most likely flunk that math test. He apathetically goes down the stairs with his khaki bookbag, because he could care less about today. His mind runs on auto pilot as he passes Mom, who wishes him a good day and good luck on that math test. He'll need the luck, but it might not be enough.
In a less than enthusiastic mood, he gets on his bike to ride the four blocks to school. He doesn't have a car, not yet anyway, just his license. However, Mom has hinted not so subtly that he could get one for his eighteenth birthday. But, that's eleven months yet—his birthday was just this past March, last month. Speaking of which, Dad had sent him a card with money but also, shockingly, a letter. It said that he hoped Riku had a great birthday and that he was getting along OK in school.
Yeah, he is, thanks for the concern, Dad. Dad also mentioned how he'd been doing (a couple paragraphs of that, blah-blah) and suggested that Riku should come down to Florida in the summer. Oh, hell no, like that's gonna happen.
The second bell rings by the time he walks inside the school building, fairly good timing considering he'd had to put his bike in the bike rack. It's still the you-better-hurry-up-and-get-to-class bell, meaning he only has five minutes. Heck with it, he's made it on time before with two or three minutes left to go. As he walks along at an easy stride toward his locker, he sees faces. Some girls standing around talking, chewing gum, with their faces wearing an excessive amount of make-up and their jean cut-off shorts dangerously short. Hitched up any higher, and Riku might glimpse some parts he'd rather not see. He prefers to preserve his innocence in that respect, even if freshman year health class took some of it away.
Why do girls want to show so much of themselves in public? Personally, he's all for leaving a lot to the imagination. He likes mystery in a girl, a girl who wouldn't make it seem obvious. A girl who would refuse to have her shorts up high to within an inch of exposing her hips. Riku shakes his head at all these classless girls before he reaches his locker at last. There're other faces he casually notices during his locker pit stop, people from his grade. He doesn't acknowledge them due to him somewhat being a stranger in a strange land.
They don't say hi to him, most of them. And, he thinks with a pang as he evenly strides toward his first class, neither does she.
Yep, there's Olette, that one special, un-slutty girl walking down the hall in the opposite direction. Riku guesses she has an excuse for not saying hi: she's smart but honestly, really shy. He's shy around girls too, so they're pretty much evenly matched. But, God, she's so stunning. Obviously, he appreciates it when girls (some of them anyway) wear little make-up.
She never wears any, and that's a natural beauty he can admire. They share one of their usual moments, eyes locking in a tender stare, neither one of them saying anything. Not even hi. Riku continues on to Spanish class.
A/N: I would like to think there are teen guys out there who appreciate girls for personality and not solely based on looks. In this way, maybe I'm looking at the glass a little too half full. At the same time, though, I know there are guys out there like this, though they're few and far between. Most of them at that age would go for a girl who wears hardly anything at all during the summer, spring, and maybe fall months.
However, let's say that what occurred in Riku's early life has made him a bit more mature than most. I guess. XD