“Fuck Jackson! Can’t you ever knock?” Enrique scolds his brother, wiping his hand over his bruised face.
“Sorry, my bad but if you’re finished with your porno session, we brought Leyla over. Haley dropped her at my place since she’s going with the love-couple to see the next generation Grimm on sonar. I swear, that unborn little fetus gets more attention than all of us combined.” Jackson’s baby-blues scan the room, lingering on the black lacy bits on the ground, and then he looks all knowingly at me and again my cheeks burn like little fires.
His face sprouts a broken lip and a new bruise just below his eye. Hockey must be some seriously dangerous sport, cause he always looks like he stepped out of a boxing ring.
“We?” Enrique asks.
“Oh, you don’t know yet, I got a new roommate yesterday. His name is Lee and he’s our new goalie.” I roll my eyes. Ug, is probably another egotistical cocky perverting maniac to deal with. I’ve met his other teammate, Big Red, a Scottish foul-mouth, that’s staying with Logan …
“I was thinking, maybe we could … ” Jackson gets rudely interrupted by a high-pitched outstretched girly scream and then some person stumbles frantically past Jackson into the room, shaky fingers trying numbly to close the front of his jeans. The twins get the same cloned graveled psyched-out fix on their mugs, but it’s nothing compared to the bedeviled gape on the new face in the room. I’m assuming this must be Lee.
“Ssssppider,” the boy stutters, still fiddling with his button. I blink my eyes a few times, just to make sure they’re working properly. This is not at all what I was expecting Jackson’s teammate to look like. He’s about the same size as Mel female petite – dressed in an oversized T-shirt and baggy jeans stuck into long black combat boots, but it’s his face that’s knocking me for a six. I swear he looks around 16, his pretty profile has flawless skin and no trace of any facial hair; reminding me of the Asian boys in the K-dramas I love to watch.
Then he looks up, and his big hazel eyes grow into saucers when he sees Enrique. He does a double-take, swinging his head from one twin to another, like a tennis referee. Jackson comes to his senses first.
“What spider?” This seems to bring Lee back from his orbit around Earth and he finally manages to close his pants.
“In the bathroom … there’s a big spider in the bathroom.” I notice his hands are still shaking. Jackson walks down the hall to the guest bathroom and we all follow suit, meeting Logan with a cup of coffee halfway in the corridor. It’s the mood-cup I bought Enrique, and it’s blue, meaning Logan is quite relaxed. Then Ilkay appears shortly after. Seems the whole gang is in our house.
“What’s the racket about?” He looks expectantly at his brothers.
“Just a spider,” Jackson says, leaning back against the wall as if waiting for something to happen.
“I can’t believe you’re scared of a spider,” Logan looks at poor Lee who at least stopped shaking.
Lee pulls up his shoulders. “I have pretty bad arachnophobia.”
“Pissy!” Enrique scoffs at the newcomer.
“You kill it then!” Lee utters and I’m impressed with his boldness. Enrique bravely walks into the room. A few tense seconds pass in silence and then …
“Shit, it’s huge!” he screams, getting out of the room as fast as he can. “Yeah, so not gonna happen.”
“Maybe you should blow your vuvuzela at it … it could be a South-African spider, you never know,” I say softly earning myself a nasty look from Enrique and a snigger from Lee.
Logan hands the cup over to his brother with a roll of his eyes. He enters the doomed room and I peek valiantly around the corner, not fond of the eight-legged creatures myself. The youngest brother stands in the middle of the room, looking around to find the dreaded bug.
I notice something moving against the wall to his right and then he jumps up like a frightened cat and speed-walks backward out of the room.
“Nope, nope, nope … bring a gun or Raid or something.”
Ilkay exchanges a strange look with Jackson … then with Enrique … one I can’t unravel but it plants a chill in my bones. Jackson cast his eyes down as if he is embarrassed. These brothers sure are strange. The oldest brother enters the dreaded room. Surely he would succeed.
“Fucking hell,” Ilkay swears inside, running out, his face a shade paler. He quickly closes the door and leans against it, not looking all that well.
“Screw that! That’s one big ass spider!” he mumbles and Lee nods his head in agreement while keeping his distance.
Jackson pushes himself away from the wall and walks past his brother. I peek at him from afar, watching how he extends his hand toward the spider. He doesn’t seem faced at all, but then the spider suddenly runs across his hand and up the wall. He jerks as if being shocked by an electric current. The man stands frozen and turns a shade of white that would make a ghost envious.
He walks past us and disappears into the kitchen, clearly shaken. What was that all about? He didn’t seem scared of the arachnid … so what rattled him that much? Did the spider bite him?
“What you’re doing?” A small voice comes from behind us and we all turn our heads simultaneously to look at my little sister.
“We’re thinking how we can kill the huge-ass spider in the bathroom before he webs us,” Logan answers her.
“You guys are so funny,” she says pushing past us, “Stupid, but funny.” And the brothers snort in union.
Before I can prevent her from certain death, she walks up to the spider and lets it crawl onto her hands, holding her palms together. The thing is black and orange and hairy and rather large … but still no Aragon or even one of his kids.
Then she carries it past our frozen shocked corpses to her room. When she returns, we’re all still standing in the exact same position we were when she left.
“It’s done, you’re all safe now,” she laughs at us while shaking her bold head unbelievingly.
“Oh, and by the way, that was a Mexican Red-Knee Tarantula … it doesn’t spin a web, Logi,” she smiles angelically at the men who look dismayed; each of them is looking at some spot not occupied by another person at this moment. Leyla concocted a nickname, that’s an abbreviation of their names, for each of the boys.
“I think it must have been someone’s pet that got free … ’cause you don’t get them in San Francisco. Anyway, it’s in a box in my room.” My sister’s always been this fond of animals … all animals. She wants to be a vet when she grows up. A sharp pain pings in my heart. I hope she survives to grow up to fulfill her dreams. She then looks at Enrique with pleading eyes, “Can we get a vivarium for it, Ricky? Pretty please? I can’t just let it go outside, it will die.”
Enrique nods quickly and starts drinking Logan’s coffee, still cupped in his hand the cup now red, meaning love, or in this case, maybe embarrassment. So … the super Blackburn brothers got scared by a little spider. I wonder how that would go down their huge egos. But in their defense… that thing was pretty damn UGLY!
“Yeah … I guess that’s that,” Logan attempts to move past his squeamish behavior, all of them looking rather uncomfortable about their yellow-belliedness. Ilkay just pulls a strange face and struts away. Something is off here. Why are they all acting so strange?
I look at Lee trying to keep his laughter in, and I think I might just like our new companion. He seems to be different than the rest of the guys.
“Let’s get some coffee ’cause this could take a while,” I say, gesturing towards the kitchen with my head and we walk off, leaving the still-half-frozen guys behind. Lee looks out the window as if looking for someone and then his face brightens up.
“Eh, I’ll just go check if my roomie is okay,” he says quickly and rushes through the door, leaving me alone … slightly confused. I wonder if I should warn him that he moved in with a potential psychopath. And Lee seems like a little hothead himself … something tells me that this new cohabitation might just end up in murder.
PS please note no animals were harmed while writing this chapter.