Interlude

black and bitter

When I got home that evening, all I heard was the last words of a message being left on our answering machine. Knowing that it was too late for me to pick up and feeling totally beat from my two meetings today, I easily let it go and hung up my coat near the door.

It was late; later than I had expected, at the very least, and I wondered where Kairi was with a tight feeling in my chest. She was always coming home later and later, never telling me ahead of time, never calling me to let me know. It was aggravating and more than a little worrying.

With socked feet, I padded over to our fridge and groaned when I realized how empty it was. Almost as empty as my stomach. Kairi had shirked her grocery chores. Again. How is it that I could uphold all my laundry and bathroom chores while balancing weird work hours and she couldn't even keep our kitchen tidy, let alone filled with food?

Ugh. That girl, sometimes.

Shaking the milk carton and finding how close it was to being finished, I shrugged and swiped it from its spot. The expiration date claimed that it was still good and a mixture of exasperation and annoyance swept through me as I began to drink, straight from the carton. Did it taste a little funny? Hmm... maybe. Oh well.

I was all alone, with no idea where my girlfriend was, with no idea if she was with somebody or not, exhausted from work, without dinner, and drinking from our milk carton as if I were some uncivilized slouch or something. Not exactly the scenario I wanted to come home to.

Taking the milk carton with me, I exited our pathetic kitchen and made a seat for myself on our couch by pushing away all the magazines and TV guides. Blankly sitting there for a few minutes, just idly gulping some milk, I finally remembered the tail end of the message I had walked in to. Reaching over to play our messages, I settled in, ready to hear something urgent but not really expecting anything of the sort.

"You have 2 new messages."

I licked my lips for excess milk.

"Hey, Riku, honey, it's your Mommy. I just wanted to let you know that I am not at all happy with you! You promised me, before you moved in with Kairi, that you would visit at least twice a month. We don't live that far away from one another and it's honestly not that difficult to get a bus if you needed to... and here I haven't seen you in three months – three, Riku, count them, that's 12 weeks, 84 days, 2061 hours, however you want to put it!

"-pause-

"On another note, I hope everything's alright, dear, and that things with Kairi are going well. She's such a sweet girl! Do I see a proposal in sight?

"-laugh-

"Anyway, Riku, you better call back and tell me how you are. And for goodness sake, get your puny butt back here for a visit! Alright, love you! Stay safe!"

Making a face, I deleted the message. I just hadn't felt like visiting my parents recently. Parents... well, parents have that odd quirk of theirs that just made them know stuff. Secrets that you just want to keep close to your chest, huddled near your heart, lest they explode.

Although, my parents aren't exactly the best at reading me. My mom tends to notice if there is so much as a flux in my sleeping habits, but she often jumps to inane and completely wrong conclusions as to the reasons why. My dad, on the other hand, has the perception of a caveman and rarely notices any changes in me without my mother's prodding. Once he does see the difference, however, his theories are usually all on the mark.

Either way, I didn't have any intention of going home for them to double-team me. As long as no one else mentions my unhappiness (unhappiness? what unhappiness?), then I could just continue on with my life without everything crashing down around me.

I took a vicious sip of milk as the next message began to play.

"Um... hi. Kairi, it's Henry. I... I just... man, okay, this is really hard to say. I- I found out t-today that... well, I have HIV. I... dunno how that happened, but the doctors think I've had it for a while. Um, babe, I just... just thought you should, y'know, be made aware, so that you can, um, get checked also. Last weekend was wicked and I know that we, ah, used protection, but I just... better safe than sorry, eh? Um, it'd probably be better to, er, to, you know, not call me back. You were awesome, though, so, ah, good times, right? Al-alright, um, bye."

Thunk.

Maybe... maybe that milk was spoilt after all.

So... not really an update. I'm sorry. I don't expect any of you previous readers to even check this entry, considering how long I've left this alone. And it wasn't even that popular to begin with. I've kind of hit a roadblock... I see that I can make this much longer (which is an extremely scary prospect for me, since I've never finished any long sort of story) or I can try to wrap this up in a few more chapters...

Problem is, I'm unsure how to wrap it up quickly and cleanly. Oh boy.

Anyway, this was supposed to be Riku's flashback at the beginning of Ch3 but... well, I decided to make it an interlude all on its own. Ch3... -sigh- is being unfairly difficult. Not to mention that I've been REALLY busy these last couple of months (we just had an English project where we read 6 books in 6 weeks, completing a writing project for each due every Tuesday).

If you dropped in, then thanks a lot. I really appreciate it! And if you could drop me a line, that would also be amazing. Later, guys!

incessant insanity