“Jace, my parents did not suddenly turn into flesh-eating monsters since the last time you saw them, “Coraline insists as the car parks right in front of her parent’s property, a fairly large area of land complete with a beautiful garden and a sophisticated looking brownstone. Mr. Granger’s vintage automobile is parked near the garage, which must be sheltering Mrs. Granger’s much more modern car for the night. The couple takes turns parking their car in their one-car capacity garage and I can’t help but think that’s the cutest compromise ever. The older couple has a nice relationship between them as well, a very loving partnership that had endured through the decades. Coraline is their only child, and they had her quite late in their lives, in their late thirties. So, by now they’re in their sixties, and her mother suffers from hypertension while her father is a diabetic, so Coraline is sometimes worried about them. Which is why she’s not too invested in moving out of her parents’ hou
The dinner spread for the night looks and smells fantastic. There were juicy steaks cooked to perfection according to everyone’s wishes, a fancy salad made of exotic vegetables, a corn-cheese bake that looked positively melty, and silky mashed potatoes with gravy. The wine was top-notch as well, and I forewent my normal tendency and indulged in two glasses throughout dinner.The conversation flows, in the same way, it would have this been a normal dinner with the Granger family. Mr. Granger talks about his car and asks about my work; Mrs. Granger asks about business as well as school. Sneakily, they also try to get information from us about our future plans regarding our relationship and whatnot, and Coraline and I indulge them. Of course, when the stealth questions about marriage and kids make their presence known, very subtly, of course, we do a great job of deflecting them. It’s far too early to entertain such thoughts. It hasn’t even been a month yet.And eventually, the atmosphe
The movement erupted all around me as I raise a hand to my temple and lightly press it to where it hurt. A hiss rips through my lips as my fingers make contact, and the skin starts to feel wet.‘Oh’, I think, knowing exactly what the wetness means, ‘did I just get hit in the head? By what, though?’I look down at the ground, and that’s enough to make my head feel like it’s been twirled from the inside. Suddenly, my balance is compromised, and I lean on the counter for steadiness and support.Through the din in my ears, I hear a very familiar voice say, “we heard a glass shatter and then you cried out. I thought you had an accident with the porcelain, but it’s clearly not! What’s going on, mom, why is Jace bleeding?”Well, guess that confirms one thing. But what really did happen? Glass shattered; Mrs. Granger screamed. My vision slowly stops being hazy amongst the noise, and I shake my head a bit. This action catches the attention of everyone else, and suddenly they’re crowding me.“J
I’m sitting in the garden under a nice, shady canopy from a perennial with my laptop in front of me when I get interrupted.“Well, fancy seeing you here alone. Where’s your better half?” Lemon’s voice calls me as he approaches me, bouncing off his feet like usual. I raise my eyes from the laptop screen in order to acknowledge his presence, as he grins sunnily at me. Sometimes, I wonder where the heck the dude keeps all this energy from. It’s nearly 08:00 PM in the night, and he looks like he just rolled out of bed after a good night’s sleep, ready to go raring to enjoy his day.“Coraline had to go visit her parents after work. She said she will be here shortly. I send Laurent off with her for protection.”“Oh, right, you still got a stalker on your tail. I haven’t heard of him recently, so I thought that problem was sorted.”“No, not really. He's just missing at the moment, that’s all. The police told us to be as careful as possible, which is what we’re doing now.”“I see,” he takes a
“So, there’s a new villain in town,” Louise concludes after listening to my rendition of how the dinner with Coraline’s parents went. The moment I stepped into the cafeteria of King’s College campus for lunch, my friends had been on my case, asking for the details of the dinner because I texted them in panic in the group chat, we created once. After that, they had become very interested, and I thought that by today that interest just might be forgotten.But there was no such luck.“I would not go as far as to call it a villain,” Annabelle amends, quirking her head contemplatively, “maybe a new menace.”“What’s the difference?”“I don’t know, but it feels too much calling a land developing company a villain, like, come on! It’s like calling frozen yogurt fantastic. Like, you get to call ice cream fantastic, but frozen yogurt? Come on, it just does not fit!”“I have a lot of questions about your thought process there, also, what the heck had frozen yogurt ever done to you…”Mal rolls hi
“Jace Greyson!” Coraline’s voice comes, breaking the silence of my home. I snap my head up, realizing that it’s actually dark in my room. I had been completely occupied and focused on the information gathering I’d been doing that I didn't even notice night falling.I stand up from my chair, hastily turning my monitor off so Coraline won’t see my latest research project. I want to have more information on this before talking to her about it, and I still didn’t have the relevant details yet. Not enough to form a plan or give an explanation.Coraline bursts into my room just when I’m straightening from my monitor, and I’m taken aback to see the thunderous expression on her face.That coupled with her yelling out my full name before cannot be a good thing. After our courtship started, Coraline would normally greet me with a kiss as soon as we see each other again.“Hey, Coraline,” I smile at her, trying to diffuse the tension that seemed to be quickly forming although none of us had start
Coraline leaves after dinner to meet up with her parents rather than spend the night at my place, saying that she feels like it would be safer if she stayed with them for a few days. I feel so very bad when I see how tired she looks with this new problem piling on top of all the old ones. It’s bad enough we got a stalker on our tails, but land sharks too. Granted, it was technically not my problem, but as long as Coraline associated with me, I would be concerned about it one way or the other.Hell, even if Coraline decides tomorrow that she wants nothing to do with me, breaks our relationship, and resigns from her job, I’m still going to be invested. She was that important.Lemon, who had made himself scarce throughout the dinner, opted to let us have some ‘couple-y time’ rather than stay and be the third wheel. His words, not mine. He’d gone out by the looks of it, a soft-looking, dark-colored leather jacket draped over his shoulders and wearing a scruffy pair of dusty shoes. Althoug
“I’m just asking this to clarify some things, you do remember how you got a murderous psycho on your tail, right?” Lemon asks as we trudge down the road that leads to Coraline’s neighborhood, huddled in enough clothes to ward off the chill. “It’s such a moonless night tonight, and this area is pretty empty. Prime serial killer hunting ground if you ask me.”“You invited yourself over to this trip, remember?” I ask him, a bit amused, “I didn’t demand that you tag along.”“No, but you were implying that you would prefer to have my company than be alone, miserable, and cold in the night.” A flash of white through the darkness indicates that he had grinned at me.“I’m not implying anything, but if I were, to be honest, I am grateful to have a buddy while coming out here,” I admit, making the buddy in question bark out a quiet ‘hah!’ Quiet, because we’re not exactly supposed to be roaming this area.“I knew you loved me,” a smug reply comes, “that’s nice to know and all, but I couldn’t hel