Age Recommendation: 18+
His little sister has a couple of very big secrets, and both are about to come out and into the open.
"If you don't wash your dishes, I'm going to seriously curse you." Lily growled, plopping down on the couch next to Ryker.
He rolled his eyes at the black-haired ball of complaints that was his sister. "Do you see the plate in my lap? I haven't even finished eating."
"I'm just saying." She tucked her knees up under her and reached for the TV remote. He moved it to the other side of himself pointedly. The introductory branding for his movie was still rolling.
Lily glared at him and crossed her arms, "I wanted to watch Larmore. The new episode is today and they don't stream."
"I wanted to watch my movie without being bugged by you. But I guess neither of us is going to get what we want." Ryker said briskly.
He knew he was kind of being selfish, and if she'd actually asked he would have surrendered the TV to her. Lily had a way of making everything with him into a fight.
It had always been this way between them.
Ryker couldn't understand why his sister had come to him begging last year, asking to move in with him. They got along best when they didn't have to deal with each other, every day.
She still acted like an entitled princess, even at twenty years old.
She didn't ask for things, she just tried to take them, and then would get annoyed if she couldn't, and burst out with weird and outrageous statements.
He didn't know anyone else who would threaten to curse him.
That being said, his sister had always had a fascination with weird stuff like that. She had a single tattoo, that she'd only let him see once.
A tiny little pentagram, the edges of the star spelling out a Latin phrase, right on the small of her back. He'd thought it must have hurt, but that it looked kind of cute.
Lily had got pissed at him - it hadn't been the reaction she'd been looking for.
"Yeah, fuck that." She said, switching the channel, "You can stream it. Go watch it in your room or whatever."
Ryker glanced at the remote in her hand and beside himself. He had no bloody clue how she'd managed to do that one.
He considered getting up from the couch to do as instructed. He didn't really want to share his dinner with Larmore. It was teenage angst combined with adult stress, with just a touch of pointless miscommunication.
The kind of drama that Lily adored, and he hated.
On the other hand, he'd had a really crap day and her pulling her usual irritating crap had him right on the verge of losing his temper because he couldn't watch his crap movie.
Most of his work involved getting people to pay vast sums of money. It was part of running accounts for a multinational. There were always some customers who tried to not pay, or pay late.
Sometimes it was okay, sometimes it wasn't. Different customers had different allowances. The bills and invoices in question always went above five hundred thousand.
However, someone had screwed up the billing of a certain massive customer, leaving it for Ryker to actually piece together who owed what, to what accounts.
He even had to reverse engineer a bunch of stuff to even work out where the product was. The container numbers, the ships, all of it.
Lily glanced at him, "Aw, come on. Don't make me go watch it on the little TV upstairs. You know it gets hot up there!"
"Screw it." Ryker stood up with his pizza, "Enjoy your drama."
He dumped the food in the bin, and put his plate into the dishwasher. He took a look at the dishes, decided to do those in the morning, and went off to his room.
He closed and locked the door.
Lily had insisted that locks be put on the bedroom doors when she'd moved in, who knows why. She always seemed to lock hers, but Ryker had never bothered to use his before today.
He fell face-first into his pillow, only turning to fiddle with his phone and put on some music, before going back to burying his face and trying to fall asleep.
© Copyright 2024, James Milne