THE SPAWNS

The Little Moments

Chapter XXVII—Lilibeth

© DarknessAndLight

Fortunately for me, the next morning I did not wake up to the lovely stench of flatulent burritos coming from my cousin.

I was alone in Nikki's bed and I could hear her and her brothers arguing in the kitchen. I assumed it was the kitchen since I was hearing dishes clinging together. There was something strangely comforting about waking up to these sounds. They were the sounds of a lively household.

It was strange, but I loved waking up some morning to the sound of my parents bickering over some silly thing. I loved waking up to my annoyed mother telling Jayden to put his dishes in the dishwasher. It was probably wrong to enjoy waking up to the sound of arguments, but to me it was those little feuds that made a family whole. Never arguing over silly things sort of felt like we didn't care enough about each other to be annoyed with one another.

After getting out of bed, I followed the sound of arguing and walked into the kitchen to find Jackson and Gavin running after each other around the big central counter, Nikki trying to catch them each time there whooshed past her, while my uncle and aunt were slowly eating their breakfast basically ignoring their kids.

I wasn't sure if I should speak up or hide or just ignore the whole ordeal. The whole thing looked kind of amusing though.

"Jackson knows that the Cheerios are my cereals," Gavin the youngest of the Grayson family was whining.

Oh so this was a sharing food issue. It made sense.

My uncle finally stopped ignoring the kids, but instead of talking to his son, turned to my aunt. "Did you hear that honey? His cereals. I didn't know that," and then he looked at my cousin, "Tell me, Gavin, when did your seven year old butt get itself to work to be able to afford the said cereals? Because the last time I checked, the Cheerios aren't your cereals. They're your mom's and mine. Everything here belongs to us and we graciously share it with you."

"But daaaaaad," Gavin whined, and stomped his foot. I chuckled.

"What is this butt-dad you speak of?"

"That's a very bad dad joke," Nikki pointed out.

At this point I stopped hiding in a corner and made my way to the counter where everyone smiled and greeted me.

"I don't do these jokes for you, I do these jokes for me," Uncle Tyler told Nikki, after greeting me.

"I don't even want to start thinking about how senile you'll be when you're way older," my aunt said, shaking her head slightly. "You're already a lunatic. Right about now, you know who we would need to work on a cure for the degeneration of our brain in our old age?"

"Well, that sure isn't going to happen," Tyler snorted. I figured they were talking about uncle Nik.

"Speaking of which, we really need to go to the penthouse and water his plants."

"Oh! That's a great idea. We can go in his pool afterwards!" Nikki squealed happily. "Unless you're anti pool and sunshine and happiness Lili?"

I smiled at her. "I'm okay with all of that."

"Perfect! Because it's either that or going to buy yarn for my future catastrophic knitting projects."

I frowned a little. "Did you ever take classes?"

"Nope, I'm a self-taught independent woman," she announced quite proudly.

"No classes?"

"The street is my school," Nikki all but chanted, raising her hands in the air, her face looking up.

"You mean Youtube. Youtube is your school," Jackson told her, unimpressed. I snickered at his bored expression that came with the quip.

Breakfast was eaten leisurely. There was no rush. I enjoyed it quite a lot. At home, with my brother and Cole and Mai there was always a place to be at, a project to work on, something to do, and somehow it kind of felt like I was always in a hurry around them, like a hummingbird flapping its wings around. It wasn't visible for them, but boy oh boy was I fluttering around.

When everyone was done and changed and ready to go we got into the van and made our way to uncle Nik's apartment. Nik was Tyler's best friend from college, and he was very close with my parents too. His father treated my father after he had a seizure.

He had a penthouse in the city and while he was away to South Africa for his research my uncle was looking after his place.

I'd gone to his penthouse a few times with my family so I wasn't completely clueless as we made our way to his place. Luminous was the word that came to mind when I thought about it. Most of the penthouse was glass windows with a view on the city.

What confused me though was what my uncle said as we walked through the door and my cousins started to run around. "Remember kids, the good chocolate and candies are hidden in the walk-in closet behind the shoe wax in the purple box. The sexy bastard thinks he can outwit us by hiding the goods. Not going to happen. FIND THE CANDIES MY MINIONS."

"You never should have been allowed to be a parent," Aunt Vanessa sighed.

Uncle Tyler grinned at her. "I love you too dear."

"No candy for you?" I asked Nikki who wasn't running like her brother towards what was probably uncle Nik's room.

"Nah, no eating before swimming," she answered and then told her parents we were heading to the pool.

It wasn't a shared pool, it was a private one. The living room windows opened to a terrace with a decent size in-ground pool. It kind of made me think about my grand-parent's own place.

Nikki and I swam a few laps and then just floated around chatting about nothing and everything. When her brothers joined us we let them the pool so they could splash around and fight as much as they wanted and went to sit on the chairs scattered around the terrace.

"So, were you able to get any sleep last night or were you just overthinking about the whole you-not-being-worthy-of-Cole thing," Nikki suddenly asked me. I had a millisecond heart attack, thinking her whole family had heard her. Luckily, her parents were on the other side of the pool with all of their attention focussed on the boys.

"I do have to admit that thinking about him finding love somewhere else hurts," I answered softly.

"Sure it does, you love the guy."

"Even if I do, I still think being together would be a bad idea..." It was hard to admit the next part but I had to. I needed to be honest. "Even if I would lie if I said it wasn't what I always secretly dreamed about, what I always hoped would happen in the end. I say I can't be with him, but in the darkest, deepest parts of me it's the only thing that gets me going."

It took a little while for my cousin to speak again. I think she was thinking about the right words to say. "Don't get me wrong, but you seem to be putting a lot of importance on this whole loving Cole matter. It is important, sure, to some extend. But it's not really important too. Cole is not going to suddenly disappear. He's not dying. He's not going off to colonize Mars and never ever coming back. He'll still be here tomorrow. And the day after. And the day after. Cole is going to be here. How long have you loved him?"

"For as long as I can remember," I admitted.

"Alright, so it's not a new fresh thing that you absolutely need to get into because if you don't you'll suddenly lose interest. It's the real deal."

"I guess..." I trailed.

Nikki kind of groaned in exasperation and slapped my arm. "Stop being like this. You love him, he loves you. Fine, that's good. Don't take this the wrong way though, but your life is worth so much more than just getting together with Cole. The guy is swell, but you should be expecting more out of life than just dating a guy."

"Doesn't life work that way though? You get with the guy and then everything sort of works out." It was kind of how it had worked for my parents.

"Please, that's bull. Getting together with Cole isn't what should be important for you. Figuring out you should be more important. You shouldn't be dating anyone if you have no clue who you are and what you want. You're young, I'm young. Cole is young. We're all young here. What's the rush? Really? Why is it important to get together with Cole right away, right now? Because your hormones are kicking up and telling you that you need to find a suitable mate to keep the Eaton-Grayson line strong?"

I chuckled at that. "I guess you're right."

"Oh, there's no guessing here. I'm totally right."

"Yeah," I admitted. It was difficult to argue with my cousin when she made this much sense.

"See? Wasn't so hard to admit, now was it?" she teased.

"What am I supposed to do now?" I asked.

"You apologize to Cole, you tell him you didn't mean the whole blow out, but that you do believe that getting together right now would be too soon and that you need time to figure yourself out. I mean, you are kind of jailbait right now."

"Dakota said the same thing," I mumbled

Nikki snorted. "Dakota's a felon, she would know. Anyway, call the guy, apologize, but stop trying to rush things. If Cole loves you, he'll wait."

"Alright."

"Good cousin. Now call him." She pushed my shoulder, towards where purse with my phone was.

"I think I should wait for him to call me first," I said. The prospect of calling Cole frightened me. I had no idea what I was supposed to say. Apologize, sure. But how? It was easy to speculate here because Nikki was so enthusiastic and made so much sense, but love and making sense rarely went hand in hand. Maybe Cole was truly done with me. I had sort of told him I was done with him after all.

"What are you doing? Trying to play hard to get? Come on. Just call the guy."

"Fine, I'll call him. But not right now. As you said, there's no rush. And hey, he should enjoy his road trip. And I should enjoy mine too."

"This isn't a road trip though," she pointed out.

True. "More like a therapy spa."

My cousin smiled. "Funny. I'll add therapist to the list of possible futures."

"What else is on the list?" I asked, happy for the change of subject.

"Bungee jumper instructor."

Out of all things... "Have you ever bungee jumped?"

"Oh no, never, but I love the movie Chasing Liberty, it's just the right amount of cheesy, and in that movie there's a group of people that are just travelling around Europe bungee jumping off bridges and it just seems nice."

"I like the travelling around part, the jumping off bridges, not so much."

"Yeah, I think the travelling part is the most appealing part for me too."

"I'd love to backpack around Europe. I've gone often with my parents, but I'd love to go on my own one day."

"See, figuring yourself out won't be so complicated. You're already doing it!"

"Am I?"

At that moment, sitting by the poolside I thought about the importance of the simple things. Growing up with my parents, it was easy to focus on the big things. My parents had big moments. They had big turning points in their lives. It was like everything they did, every thing that happened to them was always monumental. But I never really stopped to think about the little moments and the little decisions that also shaped their lives.

As enthusiastic as Nikki was about my future relationship with Cole I still had many doubts about its legitimacy.

The kiss at the end of the movie was the big moment. But if the kiss at the end was the only good thing in the movie, it couldn't be a good movie.

Maybe one day ending up with Cole could be my big moment. But it would not make my life a good life.

I had to do that on my own, one little moment at a time.