Blessing In Disguise

Chapter 9

Chapter 8: The Smurf who stole some teeth again- 02

Her parents didn’t even bother to spare her glance but kept throwing the blame ball at each other as if they were playing a ping pong game. Her sister, Carly, was sitting on the couch with a bowl of popcorn on her hands enjoying the show. Since Owen got married, he moved out to Lucy’s apartment, so it was just Nyx, Carly and her parents living in one house, so Nyx, being the oldest of the siblings and moving in with them after getting hospitalized two months ago, was the most familiar with how her parents argued.

There had been a work accident during a prototype testing two months ago, and Nyx was sent to the hospital. She had broken her arm and hurt her head, so Elinor had told her to move back in her house to take care of her. That way Nyx didn’t have to struggle with cooking or survive on junk food as she planned to do, and Elinor didn’t have to travel back and forth to her apartment to help her with cleaning and cooking. The lease of her apartment was coming to an end anyway, so Nyx agreed.

She regretted it.

Ever since then, she couldn't find a good apartment, and her mother started harassing her about everything. Walter kicking her out of the company only made things worse.

"What's up, Pink Thing?" Nyx messed up Carly’s long hair knowing that she hated it.

"It's the Kissy Face part now." Carly said stuffing her mouth with popcorn as Owen, Lucy and Nyx sat on the counter looking at Elinor and Randy turning her grandfather’s kitchen upside down.

No matter how serious was the fight, mostly it was for foolish reasons, Elinor and Randy always fought in a set pattern. Firstly, they would start yelling questions at each other with no proper answer given by either of them. It was something among the lines:

"WHY DIDN'T YOU BUY THE MILK?"

"IF YOU WANTED THE MILK SO MUCH, THEN WHY DIDN'T YOU REMIND ME?" Or something like that.

After that was done, it was the time for the Blame Game where they just blamed each other for whatever was reason for their fight, and when they were done with it, they would bring up things that happened months ago. It was actually a very helpful way to keep up with the things Nyx might have missed while being away since they kind of brought up literally everything that happened within the year. It was like the rule of the Blame Game. Her parents could mention as many facts as they wanted as long as they happened within the year. When the year was over, everything was left in the past and never brought up again. This way of arguing was quite funny to watch when they fought in January since not a lot of things could happen in just two weeks into the new year, so they had to come up with the most stupid s**t.

After the Blame Game, came the third and final part of the Fight Pattern. The Kissy Face.

The funny thing about this was that Nyx got to see one parent following the other around the house with a duck face trying to steal a kiss. In this part, one of them, mostly it was her father, would just give up on the fight and try to calm down her mother and make her smile while trying to kiss her.

"Come here." Randy said to Elinor, dropping the angry face and putting on a silly smile on his face. He walked towards Elinor to kiss her, but, of course, as always, she stepped back. And then Randy started his chase, yelling "Give the Beast a Kiss" while Elinor tried her best to look angry but failing.

“Sometimes when I look at them like this, I get this feeling I’m about to throw up.” Owen whispered at Nyx. Nyx couldn't agree more but didn't say anything out loud.

“Did you do that thing I asked you?”

Owen nodded, but he was visibly dissatisfied with the current situation. “When are you going to explain to me what the f**k happened?”

Nyx smoothed down the soft white fur of the cat she was holding in her arms, looking more interested in the animal than in answering her brother. “I’m going to see grandpa first. Do you know where he is?”

Owen could only reluctantly answer her. “His study.”

Nyx thanked him and went to the second floor where Walter’s study was. She knocked on the door twice before entering and making herself at home.

Her grandfather was sitting at his desk reading some documents, not even looking up at her once. His wrinkled but strong hands held the papers in a firm grip as his pale blue eyes moved behind his glasses along the lines written on the documents.

Walter looked at his niece who sat on the cozy couch, petting her white cat and had to bite down the smile that was forming in his lips. He moved his eyes away from her before Nyx could notice that he was looking at her, and looked down at the documents he was reading before Nyx walked into his study. The problem was that he couldn’t concentrate anymore.

Still, he could keep pretending. Or at least try to...

“Just say it.” Nyx said, not even needing to look at her grandfather to know that he was pretending.

Walter put the documents and his glasses down.

“Aren’t you bothered at all? Don't you care at all?”

Nyx shrugged, petting Murmur's head while grinning at her grandfather, feeling like a Disney villain.

“I can take it as a vacation.”

“It has already been two months!”

“You will personally call me to come back. You will see. You need me.”

Walter’s company, Eris, was a defense contractor and Nyx worked there as one of the main weapons design engineers. Walter had wanted to pass the company to any of his children, but they all either just didn’t have the skills to manage it or weren’t interested at all. So, he had hoped that at least one of his grandchildren would have the skills. Still, no luck. Even with Nyx, there was no luck. The girl only wanted to do her engineering stuff and had not the slightest clue on how to operate the company. But at least she worked with him.

Working in the same place, even though they didn’t meet often, Walter would at least eat lunch with his niece almost every single day, and sometimes she would come to pay him a visit on the weekends in his house.

No wonder why Walter loved Nyx more than the rest of his grandchildren that only came to him to ask for money. So, it was also no wonder that when Nyx was sent to hospital two months ago, Walter was scared shitless, almost having a heart attack. He had cried a river exaggerating Nyx’s condition, shouting about her almost dying.

His granddaughter almost died young and single with no husband to widow and cry for her.

After that accident, he was dead set on finding Nyx a boyfriend. After all, it was that ex-boyfriend's of her fault that she decided not to date anyone else after him. She became a such a loner and a workaholic, even sleeping in the company a few times. He wanted this to come to an end.