A calm and collected family discussion

Funnily enough, with everything that had happened the night before I ended up forgetting to set an alarm to wake up the next morning

Charley was lying beside me, watching me as my eyes slowly opened. She was facing the window, and the shifting rays of light from under the curtains moved across her face and throughout the dark sheen of her hair like something out of a movie. She was such a vision that my heart genuinely started beating faster. And that only increased as the events of last night suddenly came back to me.

“Were you … watching me sleep?” I asked.

“Uh huh,” she replied. “Why? Creeped out?”

“Little bit,” I muttered, and she chuckled.

We just lay there for a little while, looking at each other silently. It was a bit strange maybe – at any other point, it would have been kind of embarrassing just gazing into each other’s eyes like this. But in the moment, after everything that had happened, it felt right.

“How are you feeling?” I asked.

She closed her eyes for a moment, long enough to make me a little nervous, but when she opened them again, she was smiling. “I’m feeling amazing,” she replied. “Except for the fact that I just remembered you’re flying back to Tokyo in three hours.”

“Ah. Yeah.”

Charley reached out with the back of her hand, slowly tracing down my cheek. “Speaking of which, we should probably get moving. We don’t want Mum or Dad-”

As if on cue, she was cut off by the sound of sudden banging at her door. “Luke, you’re in here, right? You need to make a move to the airport now!”

My dad. Right outside.

Charley’s eyes shot open. “Fuck!” she hissed. “Clothes, Clothes!”

My heart pounding, we both quickly scrambled around, trying to pick up what we had thrown off the night before.

“Just a second!” I called back, trying to stop my voice from shaking. Charley and I had been so carefree last night that our clothes were all over the place, and we weren’t even close to being fast enough.

Then I heard the door handle turning, and my stomach dropped. “No!” Dad answered. “I am glad you are both talking again, but-”

And then he stopped in his tracks as he saw the two of us.

We weren’t fully naked anymore, but there wasn’t any mistaking what had happened here. I was half-naked with my boxers on, one leg in my jeans. Charley just had a t-shirt, and had to hold up the duvet covers to hide the fact she wasn’t wearing underwear.

“What the…” Dad breathed.

The three of us just stayed completely still, in absolute silence for what seemed like an eternity. What was I supposed to say? ‘It’s not what it looks like, Dad!’ Except … it was exactly what it looked like.

And then my dad’s expression slowly began to morph from shock to something completely worse.

I had been in a lot of unfortunate situations with him over the course of my life. I had seen him furious with me, like when he’d caught me stealing from his wallet as a kid, or when I got sent home from school for getting in a fight. I’d seen him disappointed with me, during all those times I didn’t study properly for an exam, as he lectured me about how I should be more like my big sister.

But I had never, ever in my life, seen him so … disgusted. It felt like a knife, twisting in my heart.

“Get out,” he said, his cold gaze boring a hole my skull.

“Dad, he hasn’t done anything wrong,” Charley said carefully. “Just let us get changed, we can go downstairs and talk-”

“I was talking to both of you,” he interrupted as he turned to her, his voice like steel. “And I meant get out of my house.”

Charley stared back at him as she realized. “Oh,” she replied. She sounded very small.

I looked back at her helplessly, half wanting to comfort her, half looking to her for support. But when she noticed me, she seemed to regain her composure a little. “Go get changed in your room and grab your suitcase,” she said quietly. “I’ll meet you downstairs.”

I nodded and quickly gathered up the rest of my clothes. It took everything I had not to flinch under Dad’s glare as I slunk by him in the doorway, hurrying over to my room. Luckily, I had already packed most of my stuff the day before, so I just had to throw in my toiletries and check for my passport before I was done. I probably would have been able to do it quickly anyway – I was essentially running on autopilot, unable to concentrate on anything except the turn of events this morning.

And as I left my room, for the first time that morning I saw my stepmum. I didn’t know how much she had heard from the exchange upstairs, or if Charley had said anything. But as I quickly hauled my suitcase downstairs to join Charley by the door, Mum just stared at us at the other end of the entryway. Her eyes were like saucers – like she was completely out of it.

I hadn’t even noticed in my haste, but Dad had still been waiting upstairs for me, and as I made it to the hallway he stomped down after me, barging past me to join Mum where she stood.

“Well, you were right,” he chuckled, though there wasn’t even a hint of humor in it. “Something was very much going on with them.”

My stepmum’s eyes flicked to him, then back to us, still in shock. I had absolutely no idea what was running through her head. I desperately wanted to say something to reassure her … and yet I couldn’t think of a single thing to that end that was actually true.

Suddenly, it was me and Charley on one side, our parents on the other. Completely divided.

Dad was turned away, facing the entryway to the living room. He couldn’t even bear to look at us anymore. “Go. Now,” he spat.

And so … we left.