Solitude

A Solitary Family

A pool of anxiety bubbled inside my stomach, growing and growing as I watched the clock tick second by second.

Tick.

Tick.

Tick.

8:59.

One more minute and he should be here.

What if he forgot?

My hands gripped the cotton bag, twindling with the handles and twirling at a loose string. I could feel my pounding heart beating against in my chest like it wanted to burst out.

Thirty seconds.

Did I want to go? What if I had a panic attack? What if they didn't like me?

Oh my god they aren't going to like me. I'm a stranger, a complete stranger spending Christmas day with them. This is insane. I'm deranged. Why didn't I realise this before? Why didn't Morgan tell me how insane I am for agreeing to this?

I have to text him and tell him I can't co-

"Oh excrement." I muttered when a knock echoed through the apartment. "Loki don't repeat that."

He wagged his tail slightly, jumping off the sofa and stretching. Shakily, I walked to the door, counting my steps and counting every tick of the clock.

Seven steps. Eight ticks.

"You ready to go?" Alex asked once I opened the door.

I opened my mouth to say something but I couldn't, my throat constricted. I felt Loki touch my jean clad jeans and I picked at the hem of my oversized cream jumper.

Loki and Zeus will be there. I can lock myself in a room if it gets too much.

I'm okay.

"Let's go."

Alexander explained that he owned two living spaces, one which was the family home where the whole family met for celebrations and the second was his apartment in the city where he spent most of his time. His family house was a lot further out than I first thought. It wasn't a fifteen or twenty minute journey, instead an hours car ride. A car ride filled with awkward small talk and talking myself out of throwing myself out of the car to stop the rise and fall off anxiety that bubbled away in my chest. I couldn't help but exhale out of relief when we reached his house.

We had passed the suburbs with all the detached and lone houses, with all the playgrounds that were deserted now due to the time and day. The suburbs transformed in to fields and greenery, the houses and apartments blocks lessened in to cottages and villages and cows and sheep popped up grazing on the fields like clouds on the ground.

His house was rural; bushes, farms, fields and trees scattered on either side of the roads. The greenness was everywhere, invading the countryside.

Again, my first thought of his family house was very different to how I imagined it to be. Instead of a small quaint terrace house with limited space on a main road or a semi-detached house in the suburbs, or even a cottage near a field. His family house was a mansion.

It was grey stone, a brown wood foundation congregating on the outside. There were multiple stories, the house on different levels, some higher and some lower with a long grey road leading up to the house. A guarded gate, face recognition and an army of trees guarded the premises and it made me wonder what exactly his job was to afford all of this.

The inside of the mansion matched the outside, elegant and dark. It was open plan which made everything look bigger, sets of dark wooden stairs leading up each layer of the house. Dark wooden pillars held the house together and, like the outside and the stairs and the pillars, all the furniture and walls were stone grey and dark.