THE SPAWNS

I'm Not the Third Wheel

Chapter XXII—Jayden

© DarknessAndLight

I still hadn’t looked at Maika in the eyes since I had woken up with her on top of me, my morning wood poking in her hip.

If it had only been the morning wood I might have been able to deal with it, but I also had been dreaming about her before waking up, the kind of dream only Summer Glau should be starring in. Like I needed one more reason to be uncomfortable around my bestfriend. And the worst thing was I had no idea how Maika had ended up on top of me. I perfectly recalled falling asleep with her beside me. Had I reached for her during the night and dragged her on top of me? What was wrong with me? Normally, waking up with Maika in my arms, erection or not, wouldn’t have been such a big deal. Seriously! What was going on?

“TOUCH ME, TOUCH ME, I WANNA FEEL YOUR BODY!” Maika sang beside me while doing cartwheels in the big field.  

Cole was trying to show her some kind of freaky ninja move and Maika had been less than cooperative all morning long.

And I was just being lazy, laying on the ground, with my sun glasses hiding my weak, hangover eyes from the blazing sun.

“Seriously, Mai, if you don’t want to practice, we can just skip it,” Cole whined for the ninth time—I was counting.

“No, no, no, no. Don’t! I’m totally going to nail it this time,” she squealed happily.

I chuckled at the way she was saying it. She totally wasn’t going to be cooperative again. Cole obviously realized it too, because he groaned in exasperation.

I couldn’t see what they were doing because they were doing their thing basically at the back of my head, but I could hear they weren’t that far.

“Get ready on three, Obi-Wan-Cole-Booby!” Maike shouted.

“I DON’T TRUST YOU, CRAZY WOMAN!” Cole yelled back.

I chuckled, wanting to see this. I lifted my glasses off my eyes and turned my head a little to look towards my back, just in time to see Maika doing her flips and basically, I froze and at one point her face was right over mine and she was flipping over me. It was kind of freakingly eerie. She just front flipped over my whole upper body and landed right on top of me, straddling my hips.

“Jesus fuck, Mai!” I yelled, trying to get up but she pushed my shoulders down.

“Oh no, Jesus never fucked Mai,” she said in a sing-song voice. “No one ever fucked Mai.” And then, because she was my best friend Maika, and because being inappropriate was pretty much her sole purpose of existence she started to roll her hips. “Oooh Jay-Jay-Poo, is that Hardy in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?”

This time I managed to push her off of me, while she just laughed hysterically. “Would you stoooop?” I whined.

She lay on her stomach, propping her chin in the palm of her hands, her elbows resting on the ground, her legs kicking up and down in the air, grinning at me. “I can totally give you a hand if you want help to deal with that problem!”

I pushed her face off her palms and looked away. “You’re getting more and more inappropriate by the second.”

I still couldn’t look in her eyes. Maika was my best friend. Her and Cole and Belly knew me better than anyone else, but sometimes it felt like Maika not only got me but knew exactly what to say to annoy me, or to comfort me. Sometimes it felt like she was in my head, and the thing was, I didn’t want her in my head right now, because I was thinking about that dream I shouldn’t have had and I felt bad. My unconscious was making me into a shitty friend. Maika simply couldn’t know about this because I would never hear the end of it. Same reason why she would never know who it was I was thinking about that very awkward time when I was thirteen.

Cole finally came to sit with us and Maika pinched me, “I’m trying to ease you in back to it.”

I groaned, looking at the sky. “You’re worst than usual.”

She made a pffff sound. “I’m always like this.”

“She’s always like this,” Cole agreed, while she put her calf on his lap, giving him little kicks, probably trying to get a foot rub.

Again, I made a pained sound, rubbing my face, replacing my sun glasses. “But I’m not always hungover.”

“True.”

I looked their way again and Maika was messing with Cole’s hair with her free foot. “You guys are getting too friendly together,” I whined.

Maika stopped moving and frowned at me, like she was utterly confused. Cole was trying not to laugh and said, “Too… friendly?”

I groaned, yet again. “Shut up.”

“Jay-Jay-Poo’s jealous, dear,” Maika whispered, loud enough for me to hear.

“I’m not jealous!” I exclaimed. They were ganging up on me. I always hated when they did that.

“Yeah, you totally are,” Cole laughed at me. Back stabber. What about brotherhood and all that crap? Shouldn’t he be siding with his fellow male? Not with the traitorous double jointed Asian!

“I’ m not.” I defended myself. “You two are just being all weird this morning.”

“He feels like he’s the third wheel. He’s jealous,” Maika whispered again.

Oh my god, how many times would I have to say this? “I’m not jealous!”

At this point, Maika was sitting, so she started to give Cole little elbow shoves and leaned her head towards his, whispering, “But he is the third wheel.”

“What the hell?” I slapped the ground with both hands. “I’m not the third wheel! I’m running this show!”

Mai snorted. “No you’re not.”

“I am.”

“Cole is.”

“I am,” Cole agreed.

“And I’m the sexy female lead,” Maika explained. “You’re like a sidekick.”

“My sidekick,” Cole grinned mischievously.

I let my head fall back dramatically on the ground and whined, “I wanna go hoooome.”

“Aw, poor baby,” Mai crooned, crawling towards me. “Cole, come give Jay some loving.”

I raised my head quickly and started to crawl away from them both—Cole was following her lead. “You two better back off.”

“Let’s give Jay-Jay-Poo some luuuurving.” Cole drawled.

“GET AWAAAAAY!” I yelled and tried getting on my feet to run and hide, but they were two and they were quick, so Maika quickly grabbed me, pinning me down, and Cole helped her keeping me on the ground while she blew raspberries all over my face.

When I finally managed to get out of their grips, kicking and screaming, I ran away towards the deck.

“I’m going to kick your asses,” I yelled back at them—they were hot on my trail and this was kind of pathetic because they were two and they were the ones chasing me, not the other way around. I

“You can try.” Cole screamed at me.

Maika was the first to catch up with me. I tried to grab her to swing her over my shoulder but she quickly kicked my legs from under me and made me fall on my ass. And of course, Cole had taught her well, because she knew how to keep someone down, even if the were bigger and stronger than her. Damn martial art freaks.

My best friend didn’t lose a precious second and her hands went to my sides, slipping under my shirt. “TICKLE WAAAAR!” And that’s when I was done for. That girl know all of my weak spots and I was not prepare so I had no way to retaliate. It took her less than thirty seconds for me to be completely unable to breathe from laughing. And because she was awful, she took advantage of that and decided to be truly mean. “NIPPLE TWIST!”

The surprise from the pain helped me throwing her off of me. “MAIKA RADNOR PARKER!”

Cole was almost reaching us—I guess he hadn’t been running as fast as her, but he was too late to protect his Padawan. In three second, I had her over my shoulder and then I was throwing her in the Dump Creek.

But of course, Cole avenged her and I followed suit, but because Maika could never miss an opportunity to torture both of us, she got out of the water and pushed Cole in the freezing creek too and at that point, things escaladed quickly, everyone pushing and fighting each other while trying not to choke on water because we were laughing and we had to call a truce.

We were all stacked on the edge of the deck, our feet dangling at its edge, looking up at the sky and trying to dry when Cole asked, “So? What should we do?”

“We should go on a road trip,” Maika said.

I liked the idea. Sure, we fought a lot and I still felt bad about that whole dream thing but spending any length of time with my best friends was always a good thing. “Where?”

“Anywhere,” she answered me, and she sounded really enthusiastic. It was kind of contagious.

“Like, right now?” Cole asked, getting giddy with the idea too. We all looked at each other and grinned. Yeah, definitely. “And… we should bring Beth with us,” he added.

I remembered our talk—or non-talk last night. Something had happened with Belly, that much was obvious. I didn’t want him miserable on a road trip. But I also didn’t want to abandon my baby sister. “You sure?”

Cole nodded, “Positive. She’s your little sister, she’s our friend, and she should be with us.” He sounded sure of himself.

I shrugged. If he was okay, I was okay. “Alright! So? We pack up and head home?”

I didn’t need to say it twice.

From there, we were pretty efficient. Once we had a goal in view, we usually worked quickly. Fifteen minutes later we were all sitting in the Jeep and on our way to Maika’s place.

When we parked in their driveway, Maika’s father, Travis, was in the garage, working on his car.

Maika quickly jumped out of the Jeep, skipping towards him. I couldn’t help smiling at the sight. She looked like the little girl I grew up with when she did things like that.

“Daaaaad. We’re going on a road trip,” she announced, not even saying hi.

Her father was obviously used to this though. “You trapped in a car with two boys?” he asked, putting his tool down on his workbench.

Cole and I both made our way towards them while she answered, smiling sweetly, “Don’t worry, you taught me well. I’ve surrounded myself with gay men, my virtue shall be preserved.”

Travis rolled his eyes at her. “It’s fine with me, ask your other dad.”

He smiled and waved at us while we followed Maika inside the house. We probably looked like two lap dogs following her around. Maybe she was the one running the show after all, and we were just the man candy there to carry her purses.

“Daaaaaaaddy!” Maika yelled stepping through the front door.

“Living room,” her second dad, Alexander yelled back.

We all quickly made our way to the room and found him watching a football game. It wasn’t a surprise seeing he had played football with my father when he was in college. He was the quarterback. Oh and he had also dated my mom before his coming-out which had apparently made things tense between him and my father. I could see why.

“Hey!” Maika greeted and he automatically smiled the second we stepped in the room.

“Hey Sweetie,” he replied.

“Sooo,” Mai drawled. “I’ve decided to enact my Freudian inhibitions and run away with two sexually confused men.”

I sighed heavily and Cole rolled his eyes.

Alexander closed his eyes, shaking his head slightly and then opened them again. “Just to ease my mind, will you at one point stop making Freud jokes?”

Maika grinned in triumph. “Never. You decided to be a shrink, now you gotta live with it.”

Her father shook his head at her yet again. “Shrink, such an ugly word.”

Maika ignored that. “So, you okay with it?”

He waved at her, like it was no big deal, “Ask you other dad.”

“HE SAID YES!” she squealed, throwing herself on the couch beside him.

“You’re awful.” He rolled his eyes, but still looked at her smiling, and stroked her hair. “You can go. But text me often and call every night.”

“EVERY NIGHT?”

“That’s your deal.”

“Bleh! Fine.” She got back on her feet. “I’ll call you, but I won’t cooperative when you ask questions.”

Her father ignored that comment and looked our way. “You two keep an eye on her?”

I nodded while Cole said “Yes, sir.”

We followed Maika down the stairs, towards her room—it was in the basement because she liked her room always being dark and cold. She was weird like that.

When we were downstairs, Cole headed in the opposite direction of her room. “Gotta make a pit stop,” he announced, going for the bathroom.

I got in Mai’s room first and she closed the door behind her, grinning evilly. “You, me, bedroom. Must it always end like this?”

I rolled my eyes, ignoring her. “Just grab your stuff.”

I always liked Maika’s room because she had an inability to throw away stuff. She kept everything, and if it was something as useless as a receipt, she’d make something else with it, like an origami bird—she made a kind of mobile with a bunch of useless pieces of paper turned into origami. She had a bunch of different kind of birds in it, and flowers too. That was just one of the things she did with her useless junk. Her room was a cluster of things, but it was all turned into something pretty. I like that about her. I liked her ability to make something beautiful out of something useless, that she saw potential in everything. I loved the fact that she could see that beauty, that she saw past what things were at their basis and instead saw them for what they could be.

“I’m assuming Cole’s taking a dump, so we have a good five minutes to play peek-a-boo,” Maika informed me, still grinning at me.

I rolled my eyes and headed for her double bed. “Pack your damn bag, Maika.”

“Sheesh, party pooper much?”

I smirked. “Cole’s the one pooping.”

She rolled her eyes as I walked past her. “Turd.”

“Again…”

I didn’t wait for a comeback, either way, she was opening drawers now, getting stuff for the trip. I just crawled into her bed and wrapped my arms around her pillow, burying my head in it. It smelled nice, like Maika, like lilies and peaches and home.

After a couple of minutes, I looked up and found Mai standing by the foot of the bed, just looking at me with a little smile.

I smiled back. “What?”

She shook her head, the smile still there. “Nothing.”