Glass Houses [Closed] - Printable Version
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RE: Glass Houses [Closed] - saronym - 09-04-2019
Cain tried to show her that he could withstand her fair criticisms of him. He felt like a man accused, listening to a litany of his offenses and waiting for his sentencing. But that was the problem. What was his sentence? Was it over?
Was she moving on with this fucking Aric guy?
“She did bring me here,” he admitted, “and I’m glad I came. I wanted to see you.”
“I’m sorry, Akiko. For all of it.” He tried a sweeping apology sounding as pathetic as she thought he looked. “I want you to know it was never like that with her. I want to talk about it. I want to work it out.”
He glanced around him. A few people had taken notice of their couples fight, right there in the open public. It was embarrassing.
“But not here.” He added, returning his eyes to her. She looked shrunken into his jacket even more. “Do you want to take a walk maybe? Please?”
RE: Glass Houses [Closed] - megs - 09-18-2019
Akiko was quiet for a few passing moments. She was aware of the attention they were getting. She didn't want to have this conversation with him here, either. But she didn't want to go on a walk with him. "I can't..." She dropped her arms from their defensive posture and looked up at him. Eyes shining like she might cry. "I don't trust you right now," she admitted. "I don't even believe what you're saying right now. About...her."Her. Her. Her. Indigo. She couldn't keep the woman out of her head and every instance of her visage made Akiko burn hot with rage. She was pretty and she was fun and apparently Cain enjoyed spending time with her more...
Pushing a hand through her hair, she sighed deeply. "I'm going home - to Colorado- for the summer. As usual. Maybe...after that I will be ready to move on. But I get it. If you don't want to wait. I mean..." Akiko paused. Trying to keep herself from making another snarky comment. But she couldn't. She was so mad at him. Her expression darkened. "I get if you don't want to wait for me to come back with better options around."
"I have to go," she said, because she felt bad almost immediately for being mean to him and she was disappointed in herself for it. She was the one who had been treated poorly and now she was regretting giving him less than he deserved. "Tell Anita I said hi, and...sorry."
RE: Glass Houses [Closed] - saronym - 07-21-2020
Cain reached out and touched her forearm. He enclosed her arm with his hand briefly and tried, gently, to coax her towards him. But it was useless. She didn't want to be touched or convinced. "No." He said to moving on. "I'll wait. I'm waiting." He cocked his head looking at her searchingly. "But... don't go." His request sounded impotent in the face of her determination to leave for the summer.
He let his hand fall away.
She was leaving.
Cain glanced around feeling suddenly as if the room were pressing in on him. All those eyes on him. The scorned boyfriend. He could feel their judgment. Their curiosity prying him apart.
His ears flattened against his head and his tail twitched erratically before he pushed through the crowd back to the table occupied by Anita. He snatched up his car keys and phone that lay on the table.
"We're leaving." He announced to Anita and walked away. He was half blind with disorientation. With Akiko leaving for Colorado, their "break" felt like a real breaking apart.
Outside the cafe, he lit a cigarette with slightly tremulous fingers and waited for Anita to join him.
RE: Glass Houses [Closed] - megs - 07-23-2020
A week later, Akiko's last conversation with Cain was still on her mind. They way he had looked and they way he had apologized to her. She stared out the airplane window. A playlist Cain had made for her in college playing into her ear buds. She knew he was sorry, but would that really change anything? She had flown into Colorado enough to times to know that the plane was about to make it's descent. Akiko was ready to be off the plane. Her medication hadn't been sitting right with her. Probably because she took it too infrequently. The vaguely floating and nauseous way being on a plane made her feel certainly wasn't helping.
Akiko turned off her phone as instructed and took a few slow breaths of recycled air. Her dad would be waiting at the airport to pick her up and if she couldn't muster a pleasant face he would immediately get all worried and overbearing. Which he was probably going to do anyway because she had lost weight. Enough for him to notice immediately, because she had been at a very healthy weight the last time they had seen one another.
A hoodie in the summer wouldn't be enough to hide it.
She turned on her phone again after leaving the plane, while she was standing at the baggage carousel waiting for her luggage. She broke her silence with Cain, just to let him know that she had safely made it to Winter Heights.
Converging with the crowd out of her gate and into the main entrance of the lobby it wasn't difficult to spot her father. The tall cowboy always stood out. She picked up the pace and trotted towards him, trailing a rolling suitcase, various items in her carry-on jingling. She managed a smile. Managed to look happy to see him. To be back in Colorado.
And she was.
But she also wasn't.
She let her stuff go to reciprocate the big hug he would pull her into.
RE: Glass Houses [Closed] - saronym - 07-24-2020
Sanders waited anxiously for his daughter to arrive. He was always happy to welcome her home but this time there was a bit of a pit in his stomach. He was worried about her. He had an idea that she was running home in part because she was in trouble. Her long-time relationship was failing (or he understood as much from his conversations with Aphrodite about it) and she was running to somewhere safe. Home. Sanders spotted only spotted Akiko after she had started her trot towards him. The bottle necking of the crowd at the gate had masked her amongst the other travelers. His lips cracked into an involuntary smile and he rushed forward to meet her.
"Hey sweetheart!" She was right to expect a big hug. He lifted her off the ground an inch or so. She felt lighter than he remembered. "Welcome home!" He said remaining cheerful though that feeling of fatherly worry buzzed more intensely inside. "How was your flight?" He took her luggage from her and draped his other arm around her shoulders. "Not too bad?"
He escorted Akiko from the airport terminals to the parking lot. "You hungry? We could get some lunch before heading home? Or pick up something for the drive?" Her travels weren't done yet. Another hour of driving through the Colorado countryside to the ranch.
RE: Glass Houses [Closed] - megs - 08-25-2020
Akiko allowed her luggage to be claimed and for her dad to sweep her under his arm. She had some of his height and was tall enough that it wasn't awkward to try and walk next to him like that. "The flight was fine," she replied. "Same as every year. I'm pretty used to it by now." Akiko had not been particularly fond of flying until she had gone off to college and was making trips back and forth between Washington and Colorado to visit her family. Up until she had to switch schools and stay closer to home. She brushed the thought away. How easily she was reminded of the near-death experience that forced her to move back to Colorado as soon as she stepped foot in the airport. Coming home was supposed to make her feel better, so why didn't it always make her feel worse? Was it the picturesque homelife that Sanders now shared with Lochellan and their two daughters that Akiko felt like a black mark on. She didn't know where the strange disconnect between herself and her half-sisters had come from. She didn't know at what point she had stopped being excited that her father and her favorite riding teacher were involved and had started being somewhat resentful of it.
Akiko was starting to think coming home wasn't the best idea. Maybe she should have stayed with Aphrodite and Holland. But not coming home would have probably caused more problems than it solved.
"I'm not hungry," she replied, without even thinking about whether it was true. The dry Colorado air hit her like a freight train as they stepped out of the air conditioned airport. Jeans and a hoodie weren't the most practical for summer in the Southwest. "I'd love to just get to the ranch. It's been too long since I've seen the horses."
RE: Glass Houses [Closed] - saronym - 09-12-2020
Sanders kept his arm thrown around Akiko's shoulders as they walked through the airport. He let her go when they reached the tram that would take him to the parking lot. He watched the terminal slip by through the tinted tram windows. His own face reflected in the window showed a man who looked visibly concerned around the eyes. Trying to relax, he smiled at his daughter, and squeezed her against his side again. "I'm so glad you're back!"
He'd bought a new truck since he saw her last. The new car smell still clung to the inside. Work life on the ranch had yet to spoil it.
Even though she declined food, he stopped at their favorite burger joint just before the interstate. They had always stopped there on her trips home. Food for the drive back to the ranch. Ignoring any protests, he ordered their usual. Burgers, fries, and shakes. He was hoping the smell of the food and happy memories would entice her to eat with him.
On the highway, he turned the radio dial to the country station she liked when she was younger, he set the truck to a comfortable cruise, and managed his burger with one hand. "So, what do you want to get up to this summer? How long are you staying exactly?"
RE: Glass Houses [Closed] - megs - 09-25-2020
Akiko felt awkward walking so closely to her father. She was in such a strange place. Touch-starved but becoming so unused to physical interaction that it was starting to feel weird. They were both trying to relax. She didn't need to see their reflections to know how they looked in that moment. An uncomfortable reunion. Akiko had all the love and appreciation for her father, but it was locked away somewhere behind the walls of her illness. "Happy to be back," she heard herself say. She felt herself force a smile for him, but it felt like someone else was pulling the strings.
Her steps slowed as they approached a vehicle she didn't recognize. Akiko looked around for the old work truck she was more familiar with, but her dad was loading her suitcase into the cab of this new truck.
It was another thing he had replaced while she had been gone. Starting since her first year in college, it felt to her like he was always replacing something about their old life. Getting rid of things from back when it had just been the two of them, changing them. A new truck, new horses, a new addition to that barn and perhaps the most insulting of all...new daughters.
An emotion she refused to call jealousy quickly grabbed her around the heart. Iris and April, she had forgotten about them until now. She climbed into the truck and pulled the door closed a little too hard. She didn't want to think about having to see them when they finally reached the ranch. She let her purse fall to the floor of the truck by her feet. "You got a new truck," she said, it sounded a bit like a complaint.
The music and the drive-thru were all meant to make her feel comfortable. Like nothing had changed, but it didn't work in the new vehicle. "I'm staying for two months." He was always asking, like it was going to change. Every summer she came for two months. Maybe two months was too long for him. That made sense, who wanted their grown daughter hanging around for 60 days when they had a whole new life. "I don't know. I haven't thought about it. Nothing, really, I guess."