Sounds of Summer|Braden Higgins|

|TWENTY-THREE|

"Stop splashing me!" Maisie exclaimed as yet another wave of pool water hit her face.

"How's that pool going, Keithie?" Greg smirked from his place in the pool.

"Oh, it's great." Keithie's voice held a ton of sarcasm.

Since everyone wanted to sit out by the pool in the Feder's backyard, they didn't want Keithie to feel left out since his cast so Greg and Andre game up with the idea to stick the third oldest Feder boy into a kiddie pool with his broke leg sitting out of it.

"You can thank your father for that." Roxanne glared at her husband.

"He wanted to play football! I was gonna teach him how to play football!" Lenny yelled from his place in the swimming pool.

"Is somebody knocking on the door?" Kurt asked from his place on the unicorn floaty that belonged to Charlotte.

"I'll get it." Roxanne sighed, standing up from her place and going inside the house so she could answer the door.

"Braden!" Maisie shouted, jumping onto her boyfriends back as he splashed her with the pool water, dunking him under. "I told you to stop!"

"I'm sorry." He laughed, wrapping his arms around her waist just as Roxanne and another figure came out of the house, "Mom?"

Maisie looked up at her boyfriend with a confused look before she noticed that he wasn't even looking down at her, but yet behind her with an even more confused look on his face.

"Hi, honey." The blonde woman smiled.

"What are you doing here?" Braden asked, pulling Maisie closer to him.

"I came so that I could take you home."

✖✖✖

After Braden's mother had shown up and dropped the bomb that she was only in town long enough to help her son pack his stuff up and then drive him home, Maisie had gotten out of the swimming pool just as fast as she had gotten in and made her way inside of the house. And hasn't come back outside since.

The dark haired girl sat on the window seal of her bedroom, overlooking the backyard, and watched as everyone talked by the pool with Braden's mom.

"Maise," Braden's voice flowed threw her ears and she turned her head to find him leaning against her doorway. "Why'd you run up here?"

"I don't really want to be in the conversation of you leaving." She shrugged her shoulders as he made his way over to her.

"I'm not leaving."

"Seems like you don't have a choice." Maisie said, "You're mom made that pretty clear when she came into our backyard and said that it was time for you to come home. I knew this summer, this relationship that we have wasn't going to last before someone came in and messed the fucking thing up. In our case your mother."

"Baby.."

"No. Okay, because no matter how hard we fight for her to let you stay, she's your mom." Maisie told her boyfriend, "And you have to listen to her."

"Maisie! Braden!" Roxanne called from downstairs, "Come down here."

"We aren't done with this conversation, Margaret." Braden pointed his finger at his girlfriend before the two of them got up and walked downstairs, Maisie keeping some form of distance between the two.

"Morgan is going to be staying with us for the next two days in our guest room." Lenny said, watching the heartbroken expression on his daughter's face. "Braden, you can also stay with us."

"Great." Maisie chuckled, uncrossing her arms from her chest and walking back towards the stairs, "He can sleep in the other guest room, you know, the one on the other side of this house."

Braden let out a long and loud sigh, running his hands over his face as all of the adults, minus his Mother, gave him sympathetic looks.

✖✖✖

Maisie rolled over on her back for the fifth time since everyone went to bed. She wouldn't, and couldn't, sleep without Braden next to her even if she was mad that his Mom would just show up, after not contacting him since he had arrived, and demand that she was taking Braden home.

The eldest Feder child just didn't want another relationship, with another guy that she had finally admitted that she was in love with, to crash and burn before they even got to see where the relationship would go.

Finally deciding that she couldn't take it anymore, she got up from her bed and slowly made her way to the guest room that Braden was sleeping in. Pushing the door open, Braden lifted his head up and smiled softly at his girlfriend.

He lifted the covers up enough so that she could get up under them before wrapping both of his arms around her waist and pulled her body as close to him as he possibly could get her.

"I couldn't sleep." Maisie whispered into the quiet room.

"Me either."

"And I don't want you to leave either." Her eyes weld up with tears as the of them held eye contact. "I don't want you to go."

"I know, baby." Braden whispered, pecking her lips. "I don't want to leave you either. I don't want to leave any of them either, you've all become family and I can't just leave after a few months of having the time of my life."

"I love you, Braden Higgins."

"I love you too, Margaret Feder."