Chapter 3
Lexa is packing away some of the food she picked up at house when the door swung open and laughter filled the room. She looked up to find a sweaty duo stumble through the front door into the living room. Lexa moved to the entryway leaned against the wall, and watched her little brother laugh and roll on the floor to whatever her best friend had said to him.
“Well it looks like you guys had some fun today.”
“Hey Lexa, we had a great day didn’t we, bud?” Octavia asked the boy who is still in a giggle fit on the ground.
“Mmm..hmmmm,” is all he could get out between the laughs. Lexa and Octavia laughed watching the boy as he tried to compose himself.
“What is so funny?”
“’Tavia tell Lexa the joke,” is all he can get out.
“Lexa, why don’t they play games in the jungle?” Octavia asked Lexa.
“I don’t know.” Lexa smiled as Aden started into another laughing fit again before Octavia could even get the punchline out.
“Because there are too many cheetahs!” Aden screamed before Octavia could finish the joke.
Lexa starts laughing more because of Aden than the joke, Octavia follows suit. She is happy to see Aden laughing like this. It is refreshing from the hell-ish week they had. She loves that kid with all of her heart. Her heart swells to see him with joy.
“That’s a good one Octavia.”
“It’s one of my best.” Aden has started to calm down and is now just smiling and laying on the ground.
“What did you two crazy kids do today?” Lexa questions.
“I’m the only kid! She isn’t a kid!” Aden argues while still laughing.
“I don’t know Aden. She acts like a lot like a kid,” which only makes him laugh harder.
“We went to the park and went to the play ground,” Octavia starts to explain. “Played on the swings and the monkey bars, right Aden.”
“Yep! And we went to the pond and watched the ducks swim,” Aden adds. “I wanted to swim too, but ‘tavia said I couldn’t swim in the pond.”
“She’s right. We can’t swim in that pond, but maybe if you ask politely Octavia will take you to the gym to go swimming soon.”
Aden turns to Octavia. “Can we?!” Octavia works at a local gym where she is a receptionist.
“Yes, I think we can manage that. We can see if we can sign you up for more lessons as well.” Aden’s face lit up as he jumps off the ground and runs at Octavia tackling her leg in a big hug. Lexa smiles as she looks on. Aden has always loved the water and had taken beginner swim lessons in the winter. He has really found his love in the water even at his young age.
Aden unlatches himself from Octavia’s leg and runs to the corner of the living room where some of his toys were stacked. He pulls out his train set and starts to build a new track around the living room. Lexa takes this queue to move and give Octavia a hug and a more formal welcome home.
Octavia moves to head upstairs to her room, “If it is okay with you, I am going to go take a shower. Trying to keep up with that kid all day is a real workout.”
Lexa laughs. “Yeah no problem. I just finished putting away the food I brought over here, so I can hang with him for a little bit. Thanks for running all the energy out of him.”
“He ran all the energy out of me,” Octavia chuckles as she runs up the stairs to head to shower. Lexa smiles and moves to the couch where she watches her brother in utter concentration creating the track for his train as it approaches the coffee table. Instead of disrupting his thought process, Lexa settles on the couch and pulls out her phone to answer some emails for school. There aren’t that many so she quickly joins Aden on the floor to see if she can help in his engineering construction.
The two of them play for an hour when Aden starts to slow down and Lexa knows he is tired from the morning out with Octavia. He is now just keeping the train right in front of him and just moving it back and forth in small motions.
“Hey bud, I have a surprise for you!” Lexa gets his attention. Aden sits up straight and drops the train onto the ground.
“What is it?” Aden inquires.
“It’s in your room so why don’t we head down there?” Aden was up before Lexa could finish the sentences. Lexa joins him on the landing and walks down right be him.
Aden quickly moves down the stairs. He opens the door to his room and looks around when he finds a bag on his bed. Right behind him is Lexa who lets him scurry over to the bed where he grabs the bag and starts to open the contents. His eyes light up. Gasping he pulls out a new sketchbook on that has some blank pages and some that give him more structure.
Aden drops the sketchbook on his bed and continues ruminating through the bag to find markers and new pencils.
“Thank you so much, ‘xa!” Running at a full sprint he tackles Lexa’s leg in a tight hug.
“You’re welcome, bud. I hope you like it. Clarke said it would be great for you.”
“Who is Clarke?” Lexa mentally kicked herself. Why did she even bring up Clarke?
“She is the nice lady at Target that helped me pick it out. She is an artist too and she knew you would like something like this.”
“Can we go there and see her? I want to thank her for the gift.” As much as Lexa tried to brush off the suggestion, she really did want to see the woman again. Something about those blue eyes drew her in. She confessed more to Clarke in the 15 minutes they were together in Target than she has shared in a very long time.
“We can try. I don’t know if she will be working when we go back,” she didn’t want to give the boys hopes up in case she wasn’t working if they went. “We can go later this week to try and see if she’s there. How about you move your new stuff to the table and you can start drawing in the morning. We can even go to the park if you want to draw the stuff there.”
“That sounds good!” Picking up his new supplies he shuffles them over to the small table in the corner of his room. He then hops up into bed and Lexa goes to tuck him in.
“Good night, bud.” Lexa gives him a kiss on his forehead. Shutting the door and flipping the light switch off on the way out.
It had been an overwhelming two days with the kid. She was now solely responsible for a kid. At 21 years old she is now expected to step into motherhood. It is absolutely astounding. The love she has for her brother is more than she can even describe, but now she was legally responsible for his well being. She was going to have to feed him, care for him, and financially provide for his life. He is 5 years old. Was it going to be too much for her to handle? Could she do this? Octavia, Raven, and Anya will help out, but that’s only until they graduate, if that. What about the years after that? The other girls will have graduated and moved on at that point and Lexa will have to find something local to make sure Aden has a stable life. It was too much to think about at once.
After a long shower, a beer, and some television Lexa called it a night and headed to bed hoping this feeling of overwhelming anxiety about the future won’t be an every night occurrence.
Two weeks of the summer passes. Lexa and Aden fall into as much of a routine as possible. With the help of Octavia, Raven, and Anya, Lexa has been able to keep her hours at the grocery store and her small filing job on campus even with Aden in her care.
Aden initially had trouble sleeping in his own bed at night. For the first week in the new place she welcomed the visitor, but knew if she didn’t put her foot down he would never be in his bed. So, she started taking him back and after another week Aden was spending full nights in his own room. He would start to fight when it was bed time. As much as she hated dealing with an ornery kid, she was glad he started acting a little more like himself.
They had visited the graves once after Aden asked to go and talk to his mom. She gladly obliged. Aden would get sad, but he had more better days than bad days.
The had been a whirlwind with lawyers dealing with her mother’s estate. They kept most of the money where it was, the house was the problem. There was a lot of paperwork to put the house title into her name. They had decided to sell the house as the money could go towards Lexa’s education and savings for a smaller more appropriate house for after school ended.
Lexa enrolled Aden in school for the upcoming year at the local elementary school. It was between her apartment and the campus which was a major plus. He is expected to start in 6 weeks, which still gave Lexa time to hopefully introduce Aden some new friends he would be going to school with.
Lexa arrived home from a meeting at the bank to find Aden passed out on the couch and Anya doing dishes in the kitchen. Anya has been Lexa’s best friend since the 6th grade when Anya punched a bully who kept shoving Lexa to the ground at recess one day.
“Hey Anya, how long has he been out?”
“Ah, I think it’s been 45 minutes or so,” Anya turned to look at the clock on the stove. “How was the meeting at the bank.”
“Frustrating. This is all a mess. The house is going up for sale though, which is a positive I guess.”
Anya walks into the living room where Lexa had just sat down on the other side of the couch from her brother. Anya has been through a lot with Lexa. She was there when Lexa’s dad died, she was there when her mom was pregnant and had Aden, now she was here again with Lexa for even worse times. She knew everything there was to know about Lexa. They were each other’s first kiss when they admitted to each other they were interested in girls. It ended up being a terrible idea, there weren’t any romantic feelings between the two. Lexa deserved to be a college kid. She deserved to have fun and let loose. Unfortunately, this isn’t the case. But, just like everything else Anya was there to hold her hand get her through the day.
“You need a night out,” Anya said. “We are going to plan a night out this weekend.”
“Sounds great Anya, but what about him,” Lexa nodded towards the kid sleeping on the couch.
“No problem. I will have Octavia or Raven stay here with him. You and me are going to have a fun night out. Murphy from Chemistry is having a party this weekend. We’re going. End of story.”
“Okay. If you can wrangle one of them to stay with Aden, I’ll go.”
Anya smiled. “YES!”
“SHHHHHHHH… don’t wake him up. I don’t want a cranky Aden.”
“Oh sorry,” Anya whispered. “You got plans for the rest of the day?”
“Yeah, I think I’m going to take him to Target to pick up some school supplies and clothes. I know it’s early, but I got paid and that’s the next thing on the list.”
“Perfect, sounds good.”
Lexa busies herself while Aden slept some more. She woke him up about an hour later so he would still sleep at night.
“Hey bud, you want to go to the store?” Aden was starting to stir and groaned as he rolled over. He squinted looking at Lexa. “You want to go to Target? We can get you some school supplies for when you go back?”
Aden smiled while still trying to wake up. “Yes.”
“Okay, bud. Go get your shoes on.”
Aden slowly sat up and rubbed his eyes. “Okay.” He hopped off the couch and walked to the door sat down and started putting his shoes on.
Lexa slipped her sandals on and grabbed her purse. “You ready?” Lexa asked Aden. He nodded back after he strapped his last Velcro. “Perfect.”
Lexa and Aden were looking at crayons and coloring books when a familiar face turned the corner of the aisle. Lexa quickly double taked at the worker, before realizing who it was.
“Well, well, well if isn’t my favorite target employee,” Lexa gets Clarke’s attention.
“Hey, Lexa, good to see you. Wasn’t expecting to see you here,” Clarke smiled and tried not to blush. “And would this be Aden?”
“I am, but who are you?” Aden scooted a little closer to his big sister.
“Aden this is Clarke. The girl I told you about who helped me find that awesome drawing book I got for you.”
This put a smile on Aden’s face. “Hi Clarke. I drew a tiger in my drawing book. I want to draw other animals as well. We are going to go to the park soon and draw all the different animals we see. Right ‘xa?”
“Woah, buddy. Slow down. Take a breath,” Lexa laughed. “Yes, buddy we are going to the park soon to draw the animals.”
“I love to draw animals! What are your favorite animals?” Clarke asked.
“Ummm….I like tigers, and giraffes. I have only seen a tiger at the zoo. What animals do you draw?”
“I like to draw lions and I drew a really cool racoon and otters,” Clarke smiled at the little boy. He was so excited to talk about animals.
“Oh do you have the racoon picture with you?”
“Sorry, Aden I don’t.”
“Alright Aden I think we have to let Clarke get back to work now,” Lexa looked at Clarke with an apologetic look.
Clarke smiled and nodded at Lexa. “It’s not a problem. I have a minute for my favorite customers.”
“Hey ‘xa, can Clarke come to the park with us? She can draw the animals with me.”
“Oh Aden, I don’t know. I’m sure Clarke is busy.”
“I can make time. Hand me your phone,” Clarke winked at Lexa. “Let me know when you are going, I would love to draw some animals with you Aden.” Aden beamed a bright smile at Clarke. She handed the phone back to Lexa.
“Let me know when you are going to the park, or you know if you want to grab dinner or something,” Lexa flashed a bright smile. “Bye, Aden see you soon.” With that she turned and walked around the corner to continue to stock the shelves. Lexa stood with a stunned look on her face. She definitely wanted to go to the park now.