Chapter 10 – The Games That Play Us

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"I'll go get him," Luka said, gently placing his hand on her shoulder before following Alex out of the door. Hearing the door shut behind him, he glanced down the sidewalk at his left side, and that's when he saw Alex perched on the curb. The car in front of him was a midnight blue Honda Civic, settling dramatically low to the ground.

Luka made the short walk down the walkway, and his tall frame soon created a heavy and dark shadow over Alex. With his arms folded and resting against his knees, his bottom lip angrily pushed out, and his eyes boring holes into the vehicle in front of him, Alex's back seemed to straighten in an attempt to threaten Luka away. But Luka didn't see this as a threat; he merely saw it as a distant release of anger.

"Alex," Luka said gently, sitting down beside Alex on the curb. The trip to the ground caused for Luka's knees to scream out in pain as the joints creaked too close together, but the pain fled as soon as he relaxed against the concrete beneath him. "Do you understand what we just told you?" he asked, his eyes asking Alex the same question.

"Of course I understand. I'm not stupid, Luka. You screwed my mom, and now she's going to have a baby," Alex replied bitterly, staring deep into the color of blue paint on the car.

"I don't quite understand what you just said. How did I screw your mom?" he asked, his eyes narrowed in obvious confusion. Sometimes, the American language could be so confusing to him, and right now Alex needed to explain what he had just said.

"You know? Screw. Sex," Alex said, finally looking at Luka in disbelief. Did Luka really not understand? Was Luka really that retarded to the English language?

"It's so much more than that," Luka said, shaking his head in discontent with the bitter words that Alex had spoken. "I don't know how guys that have dated your mom have treated you, Alex. But I love you, and I think of you as someone that I could be a father to if you let me," he added. He felt the need to defend his unspoken feelings to Alex, and that was why they were being revealed.

"I already have a dad. I wanted you to be my friend not my dad, not my mom's boyfriend, and not the dad of some new baby that's screwing up my life," Alex said, angrily narrowing his eyes at Luka. He stared at Alex, forming and reforming the words in his head. Alex could treat Luka as bad as he wanted right now, because he knew that it was hard, but he was not going to treat Sam this way, and he was going to tell him that.

"You know what, Alex? We're going to play a game. You pretend to be happy for your mom, make this is as easy as possible for her, and I'll pretend that you never said those things, Alex. Because I know that you don't really mean them. You get in there and pretend to be happy for her, and if I see her being treated the way that you just treated her, the way that you treated me, I will issue you some kind of punishment," he said shaking his head.

Alex's eyes were open wide at Luka. He didn't think that Luka would ever get mad at him like that; he didn't think that Luka would ever get on to him like that. He didn't know what to do. Did he understand that Luka was just looking out for his feelings or his future regrets? He still wanted him and Luka to be friends.

"Go," Luka said, pointing back to the door of Ike's. Alex pursed his lips together, and he placed his feet on the ground. He stood from the sidewalk, and he walked back into Ike's, Luka slowly following behind.

Sam was sitting at the table, her hand to her forehead and her elbow crushing into the table. He wanted brush his fingertips across her cheek or press his lips to hers to make it all better. But in the time that they'd been together, he'd learned that didn't necessarily work as well as they both wanted it to.

"Oh good. You're back," she said looking at Alex. She stood up abruptly and pulled him in for a tight hug. Alex was taken aback, his arms slowly wrapping around his mom off of Luka's desperate look.

He didn't want to hurt Luka, but he was upset. He understood exactly what Luka had meant. As long as he treated his mother like he was happy about it, happy for her, he could take anything he wanted to out on Luka. One of them was going to suffer, not purposefully, but he didn't really want to jeopardize his friendship with Luka.

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Luka walked into the bathroom, clad in a pair of green scrubs after getting called into the nightshift, to the shower running and Sam behind the blurry door. He glanced back at the open door, and reached out to shut it before she caught his eyes from the other side of the bathroom. The steam climbing out of the top of the shower suddenly flooded the bathroom with the door closed.

"There's a beautiful woman in my bathroom," he smiled, twisting the lock and pulling his scrub top off over his head as the dew from the steam plastered to his head.

"There's a beautiful woman in your bathroom? I thought it was her bathroom too," he heard her voice quietly call out and echo around the bathroom.

"Oh, sure. She can have anything she wants," he kicked off his shoes and disposed them into the corner beside the base of the sink cabinet. He smirked, crossing his arms and leaning back against the counter. He had learned his lesson after the one time; always make it home with caffeine in his system.

"Then why are you still out there