SEVEN—GET TO KNOW
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ANNOYANCE SURGED THROUGH my veins, prompting my next decision to stomp after him quickly, following him down the hall. It probably wasn't my finest idea.

"Hey!" I called after him, frustration ebbing into my voice. When he didn't stop, I planted my feet and curled my lip. "What, so you're just gonna ignore me this whole time?"

He whirled around, a dark look on his face that almost gave me pause. "It's for the best," he sneered, turning Steve's previous words around and smashing them in my face.

Rolling my eyes, I retorted, "how is this supposed to work if we don't know anything about each other?"

His shoulders slumped, but only an inch. "If you haven't noticed over the past few days, I'm not particularly versed in getting to know people." He scowled. "Besides, it wouldn't do any good." He began to turn around, but I was insistent.

"What's that supposed to mean?" My attempt at losing the venom in my tone had worked, but it didn't stop the annoyance at his sour mood from winding around in my body. "What do you mean, it won't do any good?"

Bucky's eyes slowly blinked up to mine, such a profound mix of emotions held in their depths that I didn't know what to do. His stormy blue irises burned with anger, aimed directly at me, but the shades of guilt and longing that floated beneath the mask only confused me even more. He was such a complex person, I couldn't even begin to understand the person he was, or who he'd become. 

"My only friends just left me with a stranger whom I hardly know. So forgive me for being a little hesitant to cuddle on the couch and watch movies," he snarled, the mockery in his voice crawling over my skin, electrifying it.

"Look, I get it. It's hard to see them leave without--"

He shook his head sharply and hissed, "you have no idea how this feels. Don't try to act like you know me."

"Then why don't you tell me about yourself? If we're going to be stuck in this house together, we may as well know some things about each other."

He scoffed and waved a hand dismissively. "I'm not interested in playing twenty questions while my friends are out there risking their lives for my sake."

"It must feel good, to have some friends so loyal that they'd do anything to keep you safe," I said softly, my memories of Sam doing the same thing for me popping up in my head.

Bucky looked at me with his dark eyes. "It doesn't feel good," he spat, "I don't deserve to be saved. The more you realize that the better off you'll be." He shook his head, his next words so soft it seemed as if he didn't want me to hear them. "You can't even fathom what it feels like to be the reason for all of this." 

Without letting me respond, he stalked off, down the hallway and turning into one of the empty bedrooms. Recognizing just whose bedroom it was, I put a hand out. "Can you stay out of there, that's--"

He whipped his head back to glare at me, cruel amusement flickering in his eyes. "Why? Is it precious Sammy's room?"

The tone of his voice smacked me across the face; the implication of his words hit me hard. "No," I retorted. The strength left me as I continued, "It's my brother's."

Bucky didn't say anything. He just blinked, standing there and staring at me, his eyes sliding up and down my body. Without betraying any emotion through his gaze, he suddenly was walking briskly toward me, so fast I almost stepped back to avoid a collision. But his eyes left mine, staring somewhere over my shoulder as he stalked past me, back towards the living room.

I huffed, crossing my arms. Who knew he would be so moody? That should have been in a contract of sorts before I agreed to do this.

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The garden was especially cooperative that day as if it were compensating for my frustrations with Bucky. Planting my new tomato seeds was a task made nearly effortless because the soil was uncharacteristically soft, moving wherever I needed it to and completely covering the seeds. 

After planting a full row of tomatoes, I stood back to inspect my work, wiping my hands on my faded blue jeans. Choosing to grow my own produce had to have been one of the best decisions in my life. Sure, it was a lot of work, but it kept me busy. It wasn't like I had a job, or that I would be getting one any time soon. My inability to afford college had pretty much made that decision for me. 

But a simplistic life wasn't a bad life. It just meant that when I needed to buy new clothes, I'd go to the thrift shops--luckily thrifting was a newfound trend, so I didn't stick out like a sore thumb. And when I needed money, I applied for a part-time job at the nearest gas station. Sure, it was painstaking hours of ringing up people's orders of extra-large sodas and donuts(those were mostly the truck drivers), heaps and mounds of chocolate(high school students with their parents' money), or the normal stuff, like milk and bread. But it was worth the money. Besides, I couldn't live without at least a little slack in my budget.

Ever since my parents moved to Arizona for retirement and my brother left, I was all alone to care for the family house. My closest friends at the time encouraged me to sell it and buy an apartment closer to the city, but I'd never had the heart to get rid of the quaint home in the middle of the forest. It centered me, always reminding me of the beauty of nature. 

Besides, it seemed to be working perfectly for its new purpose of housing a world-renowned criminal. 

Sighing, I grabbed the pruning shears out of my bucket and began to clip some flowers from their stems, preparing to refresh the vase of flowers on the kitchen table. I silently thanked Mother Nature for delivering such a rainstorm a few nights prior, having prompted the flowers to bloom more beautifully than they had been this summer.

That night was just full of surprises, I thought in bitter amusement. 

Losing myself in the snip of the shears, I hum to myself, content filling my body. Of all the things that happened in the past few days, being with my garden was the most normal. I was trying to savor it for as long as I could before I had to go back inside and deal with the moody centenarian. 

I heard the shuffling of footsteps beside me, and I froze. The flowers I'd been collecting in my hand were dropped from my slackened grip, flopping on the ground. Someone had snuck up on me and I was more than willing to bet it was someone from the CIA, someone coming to collect Bucky for the crimes he'd committed. I knew it wouldn't have worked. There was no way they could evade the law for this long, especially when I was involved. 

Discreetly squatting down to grab a trowel, I gripped it in my hand like a character in a horror movie would grab a butcher knife. Whirling around, I was ready to defend myself against anyone who'd appeared behind me.

But when I noticed who it was, it took all of my willpower to keep myself from letting a string of curses fly from my lips. "Are you kidding me?" I shouted angrily. "You couldn't have announced yourself to a girl minding her own business?"

Bucky shifted his weight from foot to foot. For a moment, he looked like he was going to apologize for scaring the hell out of me, but then he just glanced up, his features hardened, and said, "You should come inside."

"Yeah, just a few minutes, I've got to finish with the flowers first," I replied, turning my back to pick up the forgotten plants from the ground. "If you hadn't freaked me out so much I would probably be done by now," I added to be petty. It only satisfied me a little.

He didn't stop, though. "You shouldn't be out here."

Rolling my eyes, I rotated and put a hand on my hip, blowing a strand of hair out of my eyes and cocking an eyebrow at him. "Yeah? How come?"

Bucky's stony expression didn't change. "Someone could see you. It's not safe."

"Please," I said matter-of-factly, "no one wants to waste their time to come all the way out here these days. They all want to stay in the city and go to their white-collar jobs and raise their kids in a pollution-infested suburb." The bitterness in my voice wasn't supposed to be so thick, but the combined frustration between Bucky and the norm of society really put me on edge. "No one's going to find us here, so you can calm down and go back to sulking."

I only felt a little guilty for saying it. But if it affected him in any way, he didn't show it. His face remained expressionless, his right hand hanging by his side. He seemed mute, merely peering at me in my faded blue jeans and an old white t-shirt, my hair pulled back in a loose ponytail. His eyes changed for a moment, showing something more than just indifference. But before I could decipher it, the look had disappeared as fast as it had appeared. 

"Fine," he said, his voice hard again. "I'll be inside. Sulking." He turned on his heel and quickly made his way back to the house. Sighing, I tried to return to my contentment of gardening, but I couldn't shake his words. If it weren't for his expression or the tone of his words, I would've thought that he was...concerned for my safety. I shook my head. No, he didn't care about me. He barely knew me.

It was the earsplitting silence that twisted my gut. If we were ever going to reach a point of mutual understanding, it seemed like it would be far in the future, if ever.

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yayyyy this long chapter is up! please please please vote and comment, it means everything to me! please let me know how i'm doing, i love to get feedback!

also: if you have a book that is marvel or harry potter that you would like me to read, just post a comment and i will get into it! i'm looking for some good stories to read, and i would love to read some of yours!

love, laura

published on: april 14, 2018