Silence – Chapter 35

By MyNameIsCAL

-Max's POV-

I lay in bed with Fang later, his chin resting on my shoulder as we spoke. He was getting tired, I could tell, the way he was starting to sound like it strained him to keep talking.

"How's Teddy?" he finally asked. "He hasn't been around."

"Jeb shot him in the leg." I looked up at the ceiling. "He didn't give away how much damage was done."

Fang frowned.

"I'm—I'm sure he's fine." It surprised me Fang had been the one to bring Teddy up.

"I'm not upset with you, Max." He took my hand. "Teddy got you through when we were gone. I owe him actually."

"You don't have to pretend to like him though."

He shook his head. "It's not about that, Max. Any guy who spent that much time around you would have fallen for you. I get that."

I turned to face him. "Alright…"

"Teddy's a good guy." He let out a breath. "I don't want you to feel that you need to choose me, Max. I've been thinking about earlier. If you'd rather pick Teddy, I'd be okay with that."

"Teddy's just a friend, Fang. I could never think of him like that. Besides, Fang, I've always pictured the future with you."

Fang allowed himself to smile and he took my hand. "Me too."

I kissed him on the cheek. "Goodnight, Fang. I love you."

"I love you too."

We hadn't really been out together since coming back home. I knew the FBI was still sending agents our way. Once a day Teddy would call to check up on us. It was like he felt it was the least he could do, especially since he was supposed to be staying home and resting. Some days he would have news for us too. They were preparing to deal with Jeb and find other people that were doing the same as him. Teddy kept saying he was going to play a big part in the investigation once the doctor cleared him to work again. I just hoped that it would work out for him because I was starting to get the impression that Teddy wasn't telling us the full extent of his wound.

Things seemed to be slipping into some kind of normalcy though. It was a relief, to be honest. The flock was getting along as it used to. Whatever mistakes we had made before were realized, and now it was time to move on now that the mess was behind us.

Most days, Iggy would cook. Sometimes we would help him, and other times it would just be him, Nudge, and Gazzy or Fang. I'd take Iggy to go to the grocery store once a week. Sometimes the others would tag along, but I think we just wanted our peace away from the rest of the world too.

I guess we were feeling a little cooped up though.

"I want to go out, Max," Gazzy said one morning.

"Then let's go out," Iggy remarked. "I'm tired of cooking and besides, we need to do some grocery shopping. We could get lunch or something."

"Alright, we'll leave at noon then," I agreed.

Everyone scattered from the kitchen to change and get ready. Fang was the last to rise from the table and I followed him to our bedroom.

It was a length drive back to civilization from our house. We rolled the windows down, taking in the fresh air. The weather was warming up now and I was going to take that as a good sign of things to come. After driving up and down a street full of restaurants, we finally settled on the Chinese restaurant on the corner.

Its menu claimed the restaurant was famous for its soup dumplings. We ordered some of those along with some noodles and pork, but after they gave us our first serving of the dumplings, we had to order more.

Our troubles seemed to slip away as we sat there eating. We were laughing and joking. Even Fang was quite the comedian trying to figure out how to use his chopsticks. He had a chopstick battle with Gazzy too where they had a sword fight across the table. We were loud and obnoxious, but by the time we were satisfied, the owner of the restaurant came out and thanked us personally for coming. He gave us some coupons and told us to come back again.

"We probably spend the most money today," Gazzy commented. He smiled childishly at me. "We're coming back though. He's won us over with his coupons!"

"Shhh, Gaz, he'll hear you!" Angel elbowed him in the ribs.

We paid our bill and left a generous tip. The owner saw us to the door and bid us farewell until next time.

"If we had stayed any longer," Iggy sniggered, "he would have taken photos of us and put it up on the wall with the pictures of celebrities that have been there."

Nudge rolled her eyes.

Our next stop was the grocery store.