Chapter 4 - Morning Joy

As I awoke, I could see nothing but darkness save for a tiny amount of light shining through and onto the wall beside me, which was just as well because if I closed my eyes, I still saw the same sight. The first thing that drifted its way into my ears was a sort of scratching sound and it sounded like it was coming from outside my bedroom door. I knew this sound like I knew my own voice and I smiled upon hearing it. Letting out a small chuckle, I sat up, struggled out of bed, walked over to my bedroom door and opened it silently, for I thought that at least one of my siblings was asleep.

Just as I expected, the family dog, Buddy, wriggled his little body through the gap in my door, jumped up onto my bed and curled up on the mattress where I had literally just been lying. I sighed, closed up my door and shook my head at him.

"You little monster." I said, smiling. I walked over to my bed, sat down on the edge and stroked Buddy's head. "Is it nice and warm there?"

Buddy simply just stared back at me before closing his eyes and basking in my warmth. I moved further into my bed, gently pushing Buddy aside and eventually, he got the message that I wanted to lie back and get warm again and he leant next to me instead. As I felt his small, comforting body up against mine, part of me felt a little bit sad. Why? Because I was momentarily thinking about the previous night. I felt that now was an impeccable time to talk to my dog, (which was as crazy as it sounded) hoping that I would feel better.

"Hey, Buddy Boy," I said. "I wonder if you plan on getting a girlfriend. Sometimes it's fun and you can have great times together and you feel like nothing can tear you apart, but sometimes you can get these really bad feelings."

I must've triggered Buddy by saying something (which I didn't know what) because he whimpered, snuggled up closer and gave me the look that asked, "What kind of feelings, Larry?"

I smiled at his kindness, but sighed at what I was going to say next. "Feelings that make you feel like your relationship isn't going to last very long. I had that feeling last night when me and Caitlin were on call. She kept on talking about this dude she met online about two hours before we called and…she seemed very optimistic when talking about him. I know she said to me that she wasn't stupid enough to fall for a dude who flirted and liked her, but…guys are like wizards these days. They're very powerful and they can cast spells on women that make them forget about their current boyfriends." I hugged Buddy closer. "I really don't want that to happen to her. She really is my life and my saviour and she's like the other half that pieces together who I am. I don't want to lose her."

Buddy whimpered again and he must've known I was worried out of my mind because he climbed up onto my chest and gave me a comforting lick. It sort of shocked me that he was actually quite heavy despite being a small dog, however, I could still understand that he was trying to comfort me.

"You're such a silly boy, you know that?" I smiled. Buddy crawled off my chest (thankfully) and he rolled upside down on my bed, spreading his back legs apart and his paws in the air. I supposed that he was trying to make me laugh and it had that very effect on me. In fact, I laughed so much that I leant back in bed, my alarm clock inadvertently drifting into my view.

09:12 am

Oh damn. Normally on weekends, I was supposed to be downstairs for breakfast at nine o'clock, but instead, I had spent so much time with Buddy that I had completely lost track. Well, I had a perfectly thought through excuse; time flies when you have fun. Oh, nevermind. I wasn't like I was twenty minutes or half an hour late, however, I most likely would be so if I didn't get a move on, so I got out of bed, gave my closet a cursory scan, picked out some clothes and hurried downstairs with Buddy following me from behind.

When I entered the dining room, my siblings were all sitting at the table eating and each one of them gave me a nod, acknowledging my presence. I sat down at my normal seat and I took a sip of my cup of tea that was already made for me. Wow, that hit the spot. This was just what I needed in the morning, a lovely hot cup of tea with one and a half sugars that warmed up my heart.

However, I was hesitant to start eating the pieces of toast that were balancing in the rack with spreadables by the side because I was still hung up on last night and perhaps I remembered my stomach turning upside down since I felt so pessimistic about Caitlin's actions and attitude and now, I still felt the exact same. I felt that if I took one single mouthful of food, I would throw it back up again. Ugh, that seemed like an awful feeling, so I gulped and tried not to focus on the emotion, but I must've done the exact opposite by accident because I heard Wendy ask, "Hey Lar, you good?"

I looked up from the table and nodded. "Yeah, I'm good, why? What makes you think I'm not?"

"Oh, nothing, it's just…you look pretty down." my sister replied. "What happened last night?"

My eyes widened and I spoke in a timid tone. "Why? What makes you think something happened?"

Wendy let out an exasperated sigh. "Good grief!" she exclaimed, placing down her butter knife so it made contact with her plate, causing a clatter to ring around the room. "I'm only asking questions out of curiosity! I'm not on to you or anything! But seriously, what happened last night? Did you and Caitlin have a nice talk?"

"Actually, Wen," Lemmy said. "I think that's a pretty daft question. I mean, didn't you see Larry last night?"

I sighed inside my head. I thought that this was not a good time to build up to what I wanted to say, so instead, I just leapt straight to the point. "I don't think Caitlin likes me as much anymore." At first, I didn't think Iggy had been listening, but after I had just said that, he did a double take and blinked at me.

"What? But…you only went out last night." he said. "And didn't you have a call with her last night?"

I nodded. "Yeah, but she wasn't as…interactive towards me as she normally is, and…she kept on mentioning this other guy she met online literally two hours before we called and she seemed very enthusiastic about him. She even sent me a picture of him and he looks like such a…" I stopped. I was about to say something rude, but I decided not to since I wasn't that judgemental type. "Well, it's not that I think he's an asshole, I haven't even met him yet, but I'm just saying, I have a feeling he's going to steal Caitlin away from me, that's if they start seeing each other more often, of course."

My siblings all looked at each other. "Well, I was going to say." Iggy said. "You really shouldn't judge a book by its cover, maybe this guy could be really nice and maybe he could end up being just a friend." He moved his seat further round the table and put a hand on my shoulder. "Do you remember your first day of High School?"

I slowly nodded.

"Well, I remember at the end of the day, you came home really upset because you felt like all of these new kids were judging you."

"Oh yeah." I said, perking up a little bit. "They were all judging me because…because…they heard my accent, but they didn't hear my attitude towards everyone. I was so scared about being nice to everybody that I completely forgot about the way I talked."

"I know." Iggy replied. "They thought that because you came from a different country, you were going to act differently to all the other Brits, and not in a good way. I think that this is the way you're gonna have to act towards this guy that Caitlin's talking to. You have to give him a chance, he could be quite nice."

No matter how hard I tried, I couldn't link the word 'nice' to Miles' face, but I shook that fact off of my shoulders and said, "Yeah. I-I'll try. I'll just be nice and I'll treat him the way I want to be treated."

Iggy ruffled my hair. "Good boy." he said, grinning. "That's how I brought you up."

Suddenly, I remembered that my phone was charging in the living room. I still felt a little bit groggy and tired and I thought that it would be nice if I had some time watching some videos that would make me laugh in no time, but as always, my phone took ages to turn on and update my apps. Well, it depended because that sort of thing was on and off and hopefully, it wouldn't be so slow today. I rose up from my seat, walked into the living room, pressed the miniscule button on the side and entered the dining room again.

When my phone had actually decided to switch on, the first thing I saw was a notification from Caitlin. At once, my spirits lifted high as a kite. Maybe she had texted to say sorry. Wait, no. That sounded a bit greedy and unfair because Caitlin might have not spotted anything wrong with her attitude last night. Nevertheless, I was interested to see what she had said, so I clicked onto the message.

Hey, Larry, she said, I'm so sorry about last night. I felt really tired and I guess my mind just got caught up in something else. I'm also sorry if talking about Miles rubbed you the wrong way. I don't like him like that; I love you.

As I read the last line, I let out a huge sigh of relief and I felt as if a massive sprig of flowers were growing in my heart, for I was delighted to be seeing this and I always felt a colourful firework explode in my heart whenever Caitlin told me she loved me. The reason for this was because I would always remember the place where me and Caitlin shared our first kiss; at Elderview's firework display back in November. My mind suddenly caught onto that and I remembered Caitlin acting so sweet towards me that it was impossible for me not to forgive her.

That's okay, sweetie, I replied, I wasn't that pissed off, I should've trusted you more to be fair. Maybe I was tired as well, lol.

After about ten seconds, Caitlin appeared online and it showed that she was typing something. Eventually, she said, Oh, thank god you forgive me. Anyway, I want to ask you something. Since I was the reason for last night's slip up, I was wondering if I could make up for it by inviting you to spend the day with me.

Upon seeing this message, my heart rose way up into the atmosphere. Yeah! This was great. Miles wasn't going to ruin our relationship by casting a spell on Caitlin just by talking to her online. We were going to be together forever. But…what if Miles lived locally or in a different town? What if he were to come down to Quinstone and purposely come and meet up with Caitlin just to annoy me? I had no idea if that was going to happen or not, but even if that did happen, hopefully Miles wouldn't be so emphatic with talking to Caitlin and hopefully he wouldn't slowly push me away.

Aside from all that, I was willing to give Caitlin a chance with this outing, so I replied, Sure, I'd love that! Do you have any plans on what exactly we could do?

Well, Quinstone's quite big to some degree, Caitlin said, But still, there are a lot of things we could do, like go up town, have a walk through the park, buy lunch, or maybe you could come round mine!

By now, I was grinning from ear to ear. As all of these inviting thoughts swam round and round in my head, my heart began to beat with a much quicker rhythm and I couldn't help but completely disregard that my siblings were within my presence and I stood up from my seat, still smiling all the while.

"Hey, where do you think you're going?" Iggy asked.

I turned around and I saw him and my other siblings with raised eyebrows. I could have groaned in annoyance that he had stopped me, but no. I felt too buzzed and far too excited to do that, so I smiled, hurried back to my seat and showed them the conversation me and Caitlin had just had. They were all hesitant to speak and for a moment, I felt pretty awkward showing them a conversation between me and my girlfriend and them having no comments for it. I cringed briefly before swiping the feeling aside.

"I know, right?" I giggled nervously. "That's a quick change if I've ever seen one." And when I had no comment from that either, I shook my head. "Nevermind." and I directed my attention to my phone. I typed into the box, When are we going to go out?

There were a few moments of absence from Caitlin because her profile didn't say that she was online, so that implied that she was probably talking to her parents. After a couple minutes though, there came a reply.

Would you like to come round my house in half an hour and then we could go? Caitlin asked.

My heart almost stood still. Instantly, my brain sent an electric shock to my fingers and I immediately messaged back, Sure! Just let me get ready first. And with an excited chuckle, I leapt up from the breakfast table and ran upstairs to my bedroom.