Chapter the Twenty-Second
In which Help is sought
Delia was in her room reading when she heard the knock on the door. "Come in."
"Hiding out?" Alexander poked his head in the door, came in and took the empty seat across from Delia, who was in her reading area. Like Alexander's reading area in his room, it had two chairs, a throw rug, a table, and bookshelves and was arranged around their fireplaces. However, he had given up being on his own to come and speak to her.
"Hardly, I just don't want to see people right now." She was sitting upside down in her chair so that her legs were where her back normally went, her head resting on the ottoman, but she righted herself and put her book on the table.
"Do you want to see me?" There was genuine concern in his voice that his sister wanted to be left alone.
"For starters, you're not people and I always want to see you." She smiled at him.
"I'm glad and I always want to see you too." He smiled back.
"So, now that the daily meeting of the Thorn mutual admiration society has gotten underway, is there something specific you wanted to talk to me about, or just some general loitering?"
"Just general loitering, I guess." Alexander got up and began browsing Delia's bookshelf, which was unnecessary since many of the books that she had, he had also.
There was silence in the room as Delia let her brother alone for a while, until curiosity got the better of her. "I get the feeling that you what to discuss something, but you're putting it off."
With a smirk, he turned to look at her. "Whatever gave you that idea?"
"Call it female intuition, call it 'us' intuition, call it picking up the same book and reading the inside cover six times, whatever works for you."
"Can I talk to you about something?" He sat again.
"You can talk to me about anything."
"I know, but this might actually be trickier than confiding in you that I hate Satan and don't want to be the Antichrist."
"That's saying something, but it doesn't matter; tell me."
Alexander was silent for a while, but then he inhaled deeply and then exhaled. "I like a girl and I don't know what to do about it."
Delia stared at her brother. Again, silence filled the room.
"What?"
"Nothing, I just...wow...a girl...okay...I thought I knew everything about you. How did this one get past me?"
"I've been playing it pretty close to the chest and I haven't liked this girl, you know, like, like like, for that long."
"I see." Delia sat quietly.
"I don't know what I should do."
She shook her head. "I don't understand."
"Should I tell her? If I tell her and she doesn't like me back in the same way, I don't know what to do about it."
"Alexander, I can't tell you that, that's something that you have to work out for yourself. I can help you figure it out, but I can't give you a definitive yes or no answer. Who is she?"
"I'd rather not say."
"Do I know her?"
"Again, I'd rather not say."
"Okay...does father know?"
"No, I wanted to talk to you first."
She got up, went to her desk and got two pieces of paper from one drawer and two pencils from another and Alexander let out a groan. "Not a pros and cons list."
"So you don't want my help then, because I will do all I can to help you come to a conclusion about what to do. I will also sit here and let you bitch to me, or you can tell me how cute she is, but I won't tell you what to do." Delia took her seat and put the paper and pencils on the table.
She stared at him and at times like these, he understood how she had earned the epithet Junior. "Okay, a pros and cons list it is."
Delia divided up the paper into two columns, one for pro and one for con. "We'll start with a pro. You need to come up with ten items on the pro side before we move on to the cons."
But Alexander only sat in silence.
"Well, come up with something."
"I can't. All I can keep thinking is what if I tell her and she doesn't feel the same way?"
She sighed and put a dash in the pro side and wrote, she'll know how I feel and she might feel the same way. She looked at her brother and smiled. "The longer you take to come up with pros, the more of them you have to have before you can come up with a con."
Alexander didn't bother asking if she were serious. "Can we split up what you first wrote into two separate points?"
Delia read it and erased what she written and did as Alexander asked.
"Okay, if I tell her, it will all be out in the open. I'll be relieved."
She wrote that.
"If she says she likes me it will all be over. If she says she doesn't like me, I can try to move on to another girl." He counted the choices off on his fingers.
Delia wrote down what he had said and then tisk-tisked her brother, throwing in a finger wag for good measure. "How fickle, the girl doesn't like you and you're ready to move on to another."
"Okay, is that enough to move to the cons yet?"
"Nope." Delia looked down at the paper as Cecile knocked on her bedroom door. "Come in."
"I'm off to the city. Would anybody care to come with me?"
Both Thorns declined her offer.
Alexander smiled and got up. "Cecile, why don't you have lunch while you're out? I'll make lunch for Delia and me."
Cecile smiled back at Alexander, that vacant smile that people returned to him when his subtle attempts at manipulating them worked. "Okay, I'll be home by three or so."
"Oh, Damien wants more pistachio ice-cream." Delia shuddered at the thought of it.
"It's pistachio ice-cream, not ground toads." Alexander looked at his sister.
"Says you."
"Ice cream and vanilla custard are both already on my list. The cleaners should be done soon downstairs. I'll see you both later." Cecile shut the door behind her.
Alexander turned to Delia, who held up her hand to indicate that she still remembered where they were in the conversation before Cecile had come in. "Five more and then we can move on. Should I have asked Cecile? She's a girl, well, a woman, I'm sure she could have added her opinion to the matter."
"No."
"Okay."
Delia and Alexander kept going until both columns were filled; there were noticeably more items in the con's column. "Okay, tell me how you feel about her, or how she makes you feel."
"I don't know..."
"If you can't tell me, then how are you going to tell her? I won't make fun of you...I'll tell your friends and let them do that for me." Delia smiled mischievously at her brother. "That was a joke. She's going to want you to get all sappy over her and tell her all about how her blonde hair shines like moonlight and her eyes have the color of the sky and crap like that." She was poised with the pencil in her hand.
Alexander paused for a moment. "She's smart and not I know the capitals of the world smart, but genuinely intelligent. She's funny, she makes me laugh. I have fun with her, I like spending time with her. I make food and bring it to school for her and I love watching her eat it; she looks at the food the way I want her to look at me. I love cooking, but I especially love cooking for her. I look forward to spending time with her and when we're apart, I think about being with her. The best moment of my day is when I first see her, my chest hurts and I want to touch her. Just sitting with her and not doing anything...that's perfection. I'm afraid that she likes some other boy, or that she won't like me back; I don't know what I'm going to do if that's the case. Hey, you didn't write down anything."
Delia sat there, her pencil in hand, but had not written what her brother had said. "Xander..."
"What?"
"That was intense. I thought I'd hear about her hair, or how she fills out a sweater, but...does she know who you are?"
"Yes."
Delia's eyes widened. "Okay, seriously, who is she, because I don't know of any girl our age who knows that you're the Antichrist-to-be."
Alexander shrugged. "I don't know what to tell you, she knows who I am and I am not yet prepared to divulge who she is."
She put down the pencil. "I understand why you don't want to tell her, but think about it, if she likes you back..." She smiled.
"Would you want to know if a boy liked you?"
"I don't like any boys."
"That's not what I asked. Would you want Aaron to tell you that he likes you? Assuming that he hasn't already."
"No, he hasn't told me that he likes me and yes, I'd want someone to tell me."
"Why?"
"So that I could tell him that I don't like him back and that he should move on to someone else."
"That's it? What if it was a boy that you liked?"
"Then, yes, I'd want to know so I could tell him that I felt the same way about him."
Alexander sat back in the chair and looked at the time on her alarm clock; it was ten-forty and the cleaners had left the house. "Wanna go downstairs and get an earlier start on lunch?"
"Sure." They made their way to the kitchen with the dogs trailing behind them.
"So, what do you want?"
Delia thought about it. "I was going to ask for burgers and fries, but since we're talking about grown-up things, make me something sophisticated to go with my grape soda."
Alexander laughed and then looked at her and nodded, deciding what he would make her for lunch. "Okay."
"So, what does she look like?"
Alexander turned to face Delia. "Well, she sort of has a head in this area here, and two arms that kind of come out from her body..." he moved aside as a spatula came flying at him.
"You know, you're lucky I love you and that your my brother because right about now, I'm at my wits end with all your mysterious girl bullshit."
In response, Xander blew a kiss back to his sister and then began preparing lunch and Delia watched her brother move around the kitchen as if he had been born in one.
It was forty-five minutes later when Delia set the table in the formal dining room. She broke out the crystal goblets and the china, but used the second best flatware since she didn't want to polish the silver. She also grabbed the champagne bucket, put in some ice, added four cans of ginger ale and brought it back to the dining room. Once all the food was brought to the table, Alexander held out Delia's chair for her and the two of them sat and ate.
He had used some of the marinated beef that was being used for dinner that night, had added Swiss cheese and had put everything on thick slices of sourdough bread and had put them in the toaster oven. He had also prepared potato wedges and once they had come out of the deep fryer, he had dredged them in spices.
Delia picked up the first half of her sandwich and took a bite. It was perfect. She chewed and closed her eyes, savoring the tang of the spicy mustard that Alexander had added to give it some kick. When she opened her eyes again, he was staring at her.
"Anna's right about something."
"What's that?"
"You are going to make some woman very happy one day."
Alexander kept looking at her, but then went back to eating and as they ate, they spoke of other things apart from Alexander's dilemma and enjoyed the meal and each other's company.
At one point, Delia picked up her can of ginger ale, shook it, discovered it was empty and reached into the champagne bucket to get another soda when she felt Alexander's hand on hers; both of them had tried to grab the same can of soda, but she had gotten to it first.
"To the victor go the..." Delia had looked up at Xander to gloat over her minor triumph, but stopped talking when she saw his face.
AUTHOR'S NOTE
TO BE ON THE SAFE SIDE, FROM HERE ON IN, THE STORY WILL BE RATED M
