“Where’s your car?” Aveline asked pragmatically. “We’ll go back to my house.”
“And then promptly leave?” I asked, walking with her down the sidewalk towards where I’d parked.
“Leave?” She looked at me in confusion. “This is my home.”
“Your mother would burn this place to the ground if she knew what happened,” I informed her dryly. “I don’t know why you want to stay.”
Aveline turned to look at me with a wide eyed glance. “Did you tell her?”
“No. And Mom said she wouldn’t as long as I texted her before this afternoon.” I yawned again, pulling my keys from my pocket and dropping them into the hand Aveline held out.
I had no qualms with Aveline driving us to her house. I didn’t know my way around the city, after all, and was much too tired to spend the rest of the night lost.
I’d never visited Aveline in New Orleans, and I had thought she still lived in an apartment. After she parked my car in the driveway inside the small neighborhood, Aveline got out and stretched as I examined her house in the darkness.
The house was beige, with dark brown wooden shutters and an obnoxiously red door. There was a very small porch leading up from the sidewalk, and her yard was neatly landscaped with a few trees and small bushes.
“I didn’t know you’d bought a house,” I admitted, following her up the sidewalk and catching my keys when she threw them to me.
“Last year,” she told me. “So about five months ago now.”
“And here I’ve been living in a dorm room,” I grumbled good naturedly, flashing her a smile as she opened the door and walked inside.
It was unlocked, but I knew for a fact her house was warded and it would take someone with more power than her to get past her protections.
Like the coven had. Could someone get in again if I combined my magic with her wards? I really didn’t want to wake up to a witch standing over me waiting to sweep me out of bed and to a cemetery.
Inside, the floors were hardwood and the house had an open floor-plan. I explored a bit, turning to the left of the door and going around the corner to see a kitchen with a raised counter dividing it from the small dining table and chairs.
The living room that lay between it and the door was large, and Aveline had decorated it with overflowing plants and plush, charcoal furniture. Her tv was hung on the wall, the shelf below it full of dvds and her Xbox. Across from it sat a large couch, ottoman, and recliner.
Behind the couch was another set of doors that I assumed led to her yard.
“I have a guest room–two, actually–but no bed,” Aveline explained apologetically. “But I’ll toss you heads or tails for the sofa.”
“Go sleep in your bed,” I laughed, shoving her towards the back hallway.
“Guest bathroom is right here,” she told me, tapping a doorway. She paused, looking back at me in the darkness. “Thanks, George,” my cousin said quietly. “I knew you’d come.”
“Well I sure as shit wasn’t going to leave you with them,” I snorted, making for the bathroom and turning on the light. “Since you know. I love you or something.”
Aveline shook her head. “Yeah. I love you or something too. We’ll order in when we get up, okay? Good night.”
“Good night,” I replied, closing the door of the bathroom behind me.
From my thigh bag I pulled out my glittered medicine organizer, popping open Friday and dumping the pills into my hand.
Remember to call your doctor and have them transfer your prescriptions, my mother had reminded me, repeating herself at least four times over the last week.
I hadn’t yet, of course. I didn’t even know who I wanted to go see when I moved back in with her.
The thought made me grimace as I swallowed the pills with a handful of water from the faucet. I didn’t have anywhere to go, just yet. I didn’t have a job, and with college over I couldn’t just stay in the dorms.
It wasn’t like I wanted to anyway.
It was awkward to be the oldest person living in the dorms, and I’d done so because of the scholarships I’d received to live on campus. My health had delayed me from going to college for a few years, but thankfully I was much improved from what I had been a few years ago. Now, at twenty-four, I’d been severe illness free for over three years and counting.
The thought of being sick again caused my chest to tighten, but I worked to push the feeling away as best as I could before leaving the bathroom. Aveline’s shower curtain reminded me too much of the white vinyl things in the bathroom of my hospital room and when I was forced to imagine it, I was forced to imagine everything else that came along with being in the hospital so much as a kid.
Don’t dwell on it, I chastised myself. You’re fine. Everything is fine. It was a lot more believable when my mother or doctor said it, but I did my best to remind myself of the facts.
I was fine. I was here. I was physically healthy. There was nothing to worry about right now, except maybe alligators in the neighbors’ pool.
With a loud, theatrical sigh, I fell onto Aveline’s couch, barely managing to drag a blanket over myself and kick my shoes off before falling asleep.
A pillow hit my face, causing me to groan and burrow farther into the fleece blanket over me.
“Five more minutes,” I mumbled, refusing to open my eyes.
“It’s two in the afternoon,” Aveline informed me, picking the pillow up and letting it fall on me again.
“Great. Let me stay here until two o’ five in the afternoon,” was my growled reply. I cracked one eye open to glare
