I headed to my bedroom but before we got there Ellie came out and looked at me suspiciously. “Who’s this?” Ellie asked taking her eyes off of me to look at Eric. I glanced up at him and he was looking at Ellie then back to me with curiosity. “Eric this is my older sister Ellie. Ellie this is Eric my um…..”

“Boyfriend.” Eric finished for me while smiling at me. Ellie took one more look at the both of us before I pulled Eric into my room. “So that’s your sister?” Eric asked.

“Um.. Yeah that’s my sister.” I replied, “So you’re my boyfriend now?” I asked while turning around to smile at him.

“Yes, unless you don’t want me to be.”

“No! I do want to be your girlfriend……….. it just took my by surprise that’s all.” I reassured him. I took a seat on my bed exhausted and noticed that he had found my Coldplay CD, the exact same one he had at his house. He then sifted through a stack of my favorite books that were in the corner of the shelf just waiting to be picked up and read again. He turned around to face me “I never knew we had so much in common.” he said.

“I guess that means that we are meant to be together.” I said happy to finally be able to say those words out loud.

“I guess we are.” Eric said sitting down next to me and taking me hand in between both of his. I heard police sirens outside and I winced at the horrible memory. Eric had felt me shutter and he squeezed my hand tighter. “Do you think they caught John yet?” I asked looking at him my eyes locked on his.

“Let’s hope so.” he answered me, a little tense himself. I hated the memory of John, I hated everything about that day so I quickly pushed the memory away wanting to forget about as soon as possible. Just then Ellie peeked into my room. “You can come in.” I told her. I knew she wanted to know more about Eric so I would tell her, when I was ready to. She walked in and sat on my bed on the other side of me. “How long is your boyfriend here for?” she asked me, her eyebrows raised.

“Truthfully I don’t know. I hoping he’ll be here forever.” I said. Ellie leaned forward to look at Eric again, when she sat back she whispered in my ear, “I hope he stays here forever too.” she giggled and then walked out of the room. I looked at Eric it was hard to read his expression so I said “Um.. Sorry about that my sister is a little.. Weird.”

“She’s a good sister she’s nice.” He told me openly. I turned to face him, my eyes widening in surprise. “You really think so?” I asked, shocked at what he had said. He smiled a little and then answered me “Yes I really do think so. You guys look like you’re very close friends.” Before I could say anything else my mom called us down for dinner, Eric and I got up, walked downstairs, and sat next to each other on one side of the dinner table. I had a weird feeling about having Eric here, especially with my dad, mom and my sister all at the table with us. I saw my dad look at Eric suspiciously then at my mom questioningly. My mom nodded in approval, reassuring my dad that Eric was allowed to be here. I strongly disliked their little private conversations even though I knew what this conversation in particular was about. Ellie who also saw their silent questions and answers glanced at me trying to tell me in her own little way to breathe. There was nothing I wanted more then to not be here right now; I wanted to be invisible and I bet Eric was sensing the awkward vibe at the dinner table also. I didn’t want to look at my family, I didn’t need to look at them to know that they were all staring at Eric and I. I just looked down at my plate pushing my food into separate piles on my plate and then eating some of it but truthfully I wasn’t even that hungry. I couldn’t eat much anyway not with this awful knot in my stomach that would tighten more and more every time I thought about how I wasn’t the only one at the dinner table tonight.

After the excruciating dinner was finally over I decided that cleaning the dishes was a good excuse to leave the table, and the tension. “I will clean the dishes.” I said slicing through the silence, getting up, and taking two plates from the dinner table. Eric stood up with me, grabbed some dishes and said “I’ll help.” I smiled at him, happy he decided to help instead of suffering through more silence from my weird family. We didn’t say a word to each other until we got to the kitchen sink and out of hearing distance from everyone at the table. “Dinner was very um… quiet.” Eric said to me while piling up the dirty dishes onto the counter.

“Yea I know, sorry about that. I’ve never really had a boyfriend over for dinner, my family was kind of thrown off. Dinner with my family isn’t usually like that.” I said trying to reassure him. I filled the sink with water and dish soap, carefully placed the filthy plates into the sudsy water, and started to scrub them with a sponge. Eric and I soon came up with a pattern to make it easier and more fun to wash the dishes. I would wash them, rinse them, and then I would hand them to Eric who would dry them. After we finished drying all of the plates Eric started to play a guessing game, he tried to figure out where everything that we finished washing goes. We fooled around with each other for a little, just until I heard someone clear their throat. I whipped around to see my mom standing behind us with a smile on her face. “Sky, I think it is a good time to lay out the ground rules.” my mom said pointing to the kitchen table where we could sit. I put the last clean plate away and took my seat along with my mom and Eric. My mom then began her lecture. “Ok, I’ve been thinking about there rules for a while and I’ve picked out the most important ones. Before I go any further, you have to promise me that you will follow every one of them.”

“I promise.” Eric and I both said at the same time.

“I trust both of you.” My mom said before diving into a long hard lecture……….