FicWad

Chapter 51: Seconds

The next morning came way too quickly. When Gia woke up, she felt like going back to sleep and never waking up again. But only moments after she had woken up, the door opened. Instantly Gia panicked. Lucas was still in her bed too, sleeping. If Gerard saw that, he’d have them both executed.

Imagine her relief when Lindsey peeked in.

“Good morning”, Lindsey greeted with a smile.

“Morning”, Gia said back, wondering exactly what she was doing there.

“A small warning, your dad is about to come up here to check up on you two.”

With that, the woman left, closing the door as silently as she had opened it. After the information sunk in, Gia shook Lucas awake.

“Wake up!” she hissed, but Lucas didn’t even budge. “You better wake up if you don’t want your man-parts ripped off.”

That got the boy moving. His eyes opened in a flash and his hand instantly went to check that all of the parts that made him a member of the male gender were still there. A look of relief washed over his face.
“Thanks for that wake up, it was very gentle.”

“Go, you have to be on the couch!” Gia said and pushed him off of the bed.

“What’s the time?”

“How should I know, I just woke up too.”

“Then I’m still sleeping.”

Right after Lucas had started snoring again on the couch, the door opened, this time revealing Gerard, who was already in his day-clothes.

“Morning”, he said when he noticed that his daughter was awake.

“Morning.”

Gerard glanced at the couch and seemed to approve of what he saw. The couch was far away on the other side of the room and no one was naked.

“Right, well Linds is making breakfast if you want some.”

Gia agreed to go downstairs soon to eat, but only after she wakes up Lucas. Gerard left after glancing around the room for clues of the sinful things that must’ve been going on at night, but when he found nothing, he had no reason to stay.

Gia just sat on her bed for a while. The white duvet was still wrapped around her legs, warming them up.

Her thoughts drifted to the events of last night. The kiss, to be precise. Somehow it had felt right, but still it was odd. He was her best friend. Hell, he was her only friend! So how could they have done that? But the more she thought about it, the more it all seemed like a dream. Maybe she really had dreamed it? In that case, it had been a very strange dream.

“Lucas, now you have to wake up”, Gia said, getting up from her bed and going to shake his shoulder.

“Five more minutes, mom”, the boy mumbled and turned to his other side.

Unbelievable. During the five minutes since the first wake-up, he’d already fallen back into deep sleep.

“Lucas please, wake up. It’s our last day together”, Gia pleaded, but when he didn’t budge, she sighed.
“Fine then. Sleep. I’m going to go eat breakfast.”

“Did someone say breakfast?” Both Lucas and Jersey raised their heads and jumped up. The dog ran downstairs before them, and when Gia and Lucas got to the kitchen, Jersey was already emptying his bowl on the floor.

A few hours later Gerard and Lindsey were in the living room, just watching TV, while Gia and Lucas were upstairs doing god knows what. Lindsey had assured Gerard that they were just spending their last few hours together, just talking, but Gerard hung on to his right to doubt.

But still, when he had his arm around Lindsey and her head was resting against his shoulder, he could concentrate on something else but worrying for a moment.

Gerard watched Jersey dragging himself to the room. The dog came to them and rested his head on Gerard’s knee. He scratched behind the dog’s ears and Jersey wagged his tail. But soon he dropped something on Gerard’s lap and then sat down on the floor, his tail still wagging so hard that it was moving the couch table bit by bit.

“What’s this?” Gerard asked. The item that Jersey had brought him was a dark blue colored plastic wrapping, and inside… Gerard gasped when he realized what the wrapping was. If there were condoms in the house that weren’t his, then…

“Oh no”, Lindsey sighed and pulled away from Gerard when his expression turned from shock to anger. “Honey, that isn’t even used.”

“Don’t you know what this means?! There could be more! Lots of them! Used ones! And even if they weren’t used, the intention would still be there! I have to –“

Gerard tried to get up, but the woman pulled her right back down. “Please, just rationally think about this. Your daughter is a smart girl, she wouldn’t do something like that.”

“Oh yeah, she’s smart? She is related to me! And! She asked for a piercing! We know what that leads to! She is ruined, I tell you, ruined by that… that… boy.” The way he said the last word was filled with so much venom, so much hate that Lindsey didn’t know how to argue anymore.

This time she allowed Gerard to get up and stomp out of the room, but she really wished she hadn’t. Lindsey felt bad for him. It had to be hard for him to try to keep his daughter safe. In fact, he tried so hard to keep Gia sheltered from everything bad that his good intentions were doomed to backfire. It would just end up hurting both of them.

__________________________

When it was time for the boy to leave a few hours later, Gia wasn’t sure what to say.

“So…” Lucas started, rubbing the back of his neck awkwardly.

“Yeah”, Gia answered, just as uncomfortable. They had already said goodbye once, when Gia left California, and they didn’t want to do it again. But they knew for a fact that if they just left it like this, they’d regret it later. So, there they stood by the front door, staring at each other, both wishing that the other one would think of something to say.

“I’ll call you,” Lucas finally managed to choke out.

“Yeah, do that.”

“And… We’ll chat on the webcam, right?”

Gia nodded, even though she still wasn’t exactly sure how to even turn on the computer by herself.

After a moment of silence, Lucas stepped closer to her. His arms snaked around her waist and he pulled her to a hug. It wasn’t one of those tight hugs Gia always got from Mikey, or those shaky, bone-crushing ones that Frank seemed to be so fond of. Gia rested her head against his shoulder and her arms went around his upper torso.

It was a rare moment that Lucas managed to stay completely serious and not make disgustingly inappropriate jokes or gestures, like he did the last time they were saying goodbye, but now he didn’t even say a word.

However, when they pulled away from the hug, Lucas didn’t let go. When he looked at her with the exactly same expression that he had looked at her last night, moments before the kiss, Gia knew she hadn’t been dreaming. Or if she had, then this was very freaky.

This time she knew what was coming and closed her eyes before his lips touched hers. The only things Gia’s mind could register were the secure feeling of his hand on the small of her back and the soft, nearly tickly feeling of his lips against hers. It felt like magic, as the feeling sent shivers down her spine. Her eyes fluttered open for only a second, but when she saw that his eyes were closed, she closed hers as well.

Neither of them was no longer aware of their surroundings. And that was one of the biggest mistakes they had ever made.

Everything went horribly wrong when the kiss was broken by force. Not due to either of their own will, but by Gerard, who had stormed out of the living room, only to stumble upon this nightmare.

If he had already been enraged, imagine his rage when he saw his daughter with this boy who had his hands around her. And even though the position and the kiss were completely innocent, in Gerard’s mind it looked like something that was so wrong that he couldn’t even understand it.

His first reaction was of course to break the two apart, so he grabbed Lucas by his shirt and pushed him forcefully against the wall so hard that it must’ve hurt.

Upon hearing the noise, Lindsey ran to the hall just when Gia understood what had just happened. But she was in too much of a shock to say or do anything. Gia just raised a hand to cover her mouth and felt tears burning her eyes, and soon Lindsey put a comforting hand on her shoulder.

The look on Lucas’ face was one of complete and utter fear, as he stared at the man. Gerard was no pile of overly developed muscles, but he was still bigger and stronger than Lucas, and the anger gave him even more power as he grabbed the boy by his collar and pushed him on the wall. The collision hurt Lucas’ back, but the fear made him forget about that.

“You…” he started, trying to find the words to say. But nothing came out. No words could do justice to what he was feeling, so in the end he just choked out in a low voice: “You get out of my house, and never come near my daughter again. Got it?”

Lucas nodded fiercely. Yes, he got it. The message was clear. He didn’t even want to imagine the things that would happen if he broke his rule, and right at that moment his brain screamed only one thing to him: ‘Get out while you still have all of your body parts.’

Gerard let go of him quickly, and that was enough for Lucas to run out of the door and not look back. He slammed the door shut after him and then turned his angry face to Gia.

Nearly instinctively, Gia tried her best to look as small and unnoticeable so that he’d stop looking at her like that. The hate, the disappointment, the pure, white anger was too much for her to bear. Gia gulped when he took a step forward towards her. She could almost see the thoughts moving in his head as he was wondering which one of them he should shout out first.

What came far too soon, as Gia had no time to prepare for it, Gerard found his voice and boy was he not going to hold back.

The man looked at his daughter, clenching his fists. He tried to control himself, tried to clear up his thoughts.

This was Gia’s first kiss. Why? Why did she have to kiss that boy? Then a very disturbing thought occurred to him when he remembered the condom. Was this her first kiss after all? That was the last straw, and the walls broke, letting everything out.

"How could you do that?!” he shouted, and in his anger missed the way Gia flinched as if he had just slapped her. He might as we had. “I trusted you with him and I thought you were better than that! How do you expect me to trust you now? You kiss some guy you know I don't like nor approve of, and you...”
Gerard paused for a moment, and then continued with twice as much power: “YOU KISSED HIM! Do you not know what boys want? They just want to get in your pants and then they leave, moving on to the next girl. I can't believe you!”

The tears were now streaking down her cheeks freely, and her sight was blurry. What Gerard was saying made no sense. “Dad, it was just a kiss, I –“

“Don’t lie to me,” Gerard interrupted her with a growl. “Do you WANT to end up like your mother?!”

Gia had no choice but to stand there still and listen to him shout. She couldn't take the yelling. Gerard had never been this angry at her, no one had.

When she finally got to the point when she would’ve broke down if she heard any more of it, Gia ran to her room, leaving the still fuming Gerard and Lindsey, who had shied away from the whole situation in fear of making matters even worse.

When the door to Gia’s room slammed shut upstairs, silence filled the house. Gerard was breathing heavily, exhausted from the anger that was still there, but was slowly fading away. It was being replaced by the hopeless feeling of the knowledge that something was lost, and now that he knew about it, he’d never look at his daughter the same way.

Lindsey quietly followed Gerard to his room, where he pulled out the emergency bottle he kept in the desk drawer.

“Are you sure that’s smart?” she asked him.

“I don’t care.”

Gerard went to the kitchen, but Lindsey stayed in his room and took his phone from the night table. She found Mikey’s number from the memory and called him.

“Hey Mikey, it’s Lindsey. Can you come over? We have a small situation.”

Within fifteen minutes, Mikey, Frank, Bob and Ray were all at the house. Gerard had a vicious, slightly drunken glare in his eyes when he ranted to his friends about how he could just kill the boy. He had downed nearly half of the bottle, but it hadn’t calmed him down at all.

“And! As if it wasn’t bad enough that he had his hands all over her in MY house”, Gerard said, slurring over his words a bit. “I found a condom! Can you believe it! That punk dares to come to my house, convince everyone else that he’s just some nice boy next door, which he’s not, and then he just fucks her like she’s some whore and leaves. You know what that is? That is RUDE.”

While Gerard was speaking, Frank’s eyes widened in shock. He glanced at the other three, strictly avoiding Gerard’s eyes (not that he needed to, because Gerard had trouble looking at any of them anyway), and whispered to Mikey, Ray and Bob: “Um… I need to talk to you guys about something.”

Frank quickly got up and went to the other room, and soon the others followed.

“What is it?” Ray asked once they noticed just how panicked Frank looked.

“I was the one who gave Lucas that condom”, Frank confessed.

“What?!” the other three shouted.

“Yeah… So do you think this is kinda my fault?”

The three of them were all thinking of the same thing: Which one is better; have Gerard kill some random boy or find a new rhythm guitarist for the band?

“I think we should just stay quiet about this, doesn’t really change anything. He’ll still think they did it. But Frank, what the hell were you thinking?”

“I don’t know!” Frank answered. “You see a young couple, you assume they’re gonna have sex. I don’t want Gia getting pregnant, even though it would be really cool to be a grandfather at age 26.”

No one bothered to break it down to him that he wasn’t Gia’s father and therefore wouldn’t be the grandfather of her kids.

“Frank, I don’t think they are a couple”, Bob said, and the other two nodded to confirm it.

“Well they should, they’re really cute together.”

Mikey didn’t like this situation at all. In the end he just left the others to listen to Gerard whine, and went to check up on his niece. According to Lindsey, it had been pretty terrible. And if Gia had ran to her room, crying her eyes out, then how much better could she be now?