Play Me a Song

Chp.3 - And... it Began

I feel Tom's hand grabbing mine, holding it tightly. He was thinking the same as I, the guy was two Aesons at least. Just his arms should weight the same as my legs. And that's coming from someone with huge thighs.

"Don't talk this way about my sister." Aeson warns angrily.

"Or what, boy?" The man spits the words, tightening his grip on his jacket.

"He doesn't know what he is talking about, Alejandro." Frea gets between them pushing Alejandro behind. "We can just talk about everything, okay?"

Alejandro looks at her disgusted and pushes her arms away from him.

"There's no we." He turns to Aeson and points threateningly. "And you should learn to keep your mouth shut."

Aeson takes a step forward but Tom releases my hand and runs to stop him. The kid hugs his waist and seems to wake Aeson from a trance.

"Just get out." He says hugging Tom back.

Luckily the man decides against picking up a fight, probably only because of Tom, and gets out of the door. When he passes by me he doesn't even throw a glance at me.

"Alejandro!" Frea moves to follow him but Aeson stops her holding her arm.

"Don't even think about it."

She shakes her arm free and screams:

"This is none of your business! You should stop showing up at places you are not called!"

"Yeah? You know where they called me? Funyard! Sounds familiar?!"

Frea crosses her arms. With their faces full of rage they seemed more alike. They stared at each other furiously, waiting for the other to declare defeat, which doesn't seem like it happens much.

"Hey, Tommy, why don't you go show Em your room while I talk to your mom?"

Tom doesn't put a fight, he gets out of Aeson's hug and walks to me to grab my hand and lead me inside. Frea seems to notice me for the first time, her eyebrows raise in both surprise and suppressed will to make an ironic remark but keeps her mouth shut. Aeson looks to me to mouth the words "I'm sorry". I nod understanding, just wishing to get out from the family fight.

Tom seemed used to the siblings' fight. He calmly showed me the lego spaceship he was building while a too loud conversation was taking place at the living room. For what I could pick up and putting some pieces together,  Frea got pregnant with Tom when she was young, the father is probably not around much and as a young, single mother, Frea struggles and has to constantly turn to Aeson's help. Being the younger sibling but still the more responsible one, made him take the burden of parenthood very early.

It took half an hour or what felt like half an hour for Aeson to stick his head through the door of Tom's tiny bedroom. It was actually very tidy for a children's room. The walls were painted a fainted blue with the only decoration of little drawings on the white baseboard made by Tom himself. All his toys were neatly organized inside his drawers or, if it was a worth-showing lego construction, it was exposed on shelves.

"Hey, ready to go?" Aeson asks me as I look up from my project of a spaceship wing.

"Yeah, but if you need to stay here I can call an Uber." I show him my phone that had some unread messages from Cora.

"There's no need. And Tom, your mom is calling you in the kitchen."

Tom stands up and looks at me, apparently hesitating for a moment. Then he just waves for me and runs out of the room.