It was another one of those evenings. Before Casper even got home, Riley sneaked out of the house and went over to Alex’s right after work. This time, however, it wasn’t just the usual going behind her brother’s back. Usually, they’d either be at Alex’s house or somewhere on a date, but this time something way more important was going to happen. You see, Alex decided to take the next step in their relationship. No, I don’t mean that they were in love with each other yet, so he wasn’t thinking about saying those three words just yet. But he did think it was a good time to let Riley meet his parents. It was important to him that they knew about each other and at least acted like they liked each other. Plus, he hoped it would give Riley the incentive to let him meet her parents. But that wasn’t going to happen as long as she had control over it.

Yep, that’s right. Her parents still hated Alex without knowing a thing about him. All they knew was his name and that he was in a band. They didn’t even bother listening to all the good things Riley had to say about him. Like the fact that he had been picking up ASL. He was actually improving quite well. After getting the alphabet down, the next things were just simple gestures he learned through making Riley sign to him first before writing it down. He even tried to use it back and would ask whenever he didn’t know a word.

But then again, he might have also been improving because he’d stay up for hours a couple of nights a week just to teach himself new stuff. This time, however, he was a lot more careful with where he got his information from. He was actually progressing quite quickly now that he accepted that it sometimes was going to take a little while longer to remember it all.

Anywho, that’s not the focus of this part. This was about Riley meeting Alex’s parents, not the sudden miracle that Alex was finally getting the hang of sign language. So, let’s go back to that, shall we? Where should I start?

I can tell you all about the preparation Riley did, but that might be a bit boring and repetitive, so I’ll give you a quick summary for the people who really want to know. Of course, she took a shower and blow dried her hair so it wouldn’t come out all frizzy. She spent a while deciding an outfit until she finally chose something that was fancy, but not too fancy, and something that was warm enough with the weather getting colder and colder by the day (it was still just warm enough for her to wear her yellow raincoat). Then, she also put on some makeup, but nothing too much, just the simple stuff. And the last thing (well, actually first thing, but the least important) she did was give Iggy a bath. She also wanted Iggy to look perfect since she obviously was going to come along.

So, now I’ve given you that super short and vague description, I’ll get into the interesting part; the part where Riley actually meets Alex’s parents.

Alex had driven them to his childhood home, Iggy scurrying around in the back while Riley just looked outside the window. One thing that Alex considered a perk was that he could blast any music he wanted without Riley complaining. He could play any guilty pleasures or sing along loudly to Green Day if he wanted. It really didn’t matter. Riley, however, would never dare to tell him that she could feel the bass as soon as he put the stereo on near full volume. She actually enjoyed it. Somehow she still got to experience the music without hearing it.

Alex parked his car in the driveway and was the one to let Iggy out of the back while Riley got out of the car herself. She took Iggy’s leash from Alex and petted the head of the dog a couple of times for being so good in the car. Surprisingly, she wasn’t so nervous. Or, at least, she was just as nervous as whenever she met any random person for the first time. That either meant that she was always freaking out or she was just very chilled this one time. She was more worried about being deaf than his parents not liking her. With her parents already hating Alex, she didn’t have much to lose on that part.

So, up they went to the front door. Alex took a deep breath before ringing the bell, hoping that everything was going to go just as perfect as he hoped. He was still praying that his parents liked his girlfriend, it was so important to him. He couldn’t imagine a relationship where it wasn’t like that, little did he know the relationship he was in was already his worst nightmare. There was a high possibility that he wouldn’t have been together with Riley if he knew just how much her parents hated him.

After a short wait, an older women, also known as Alex’s mother, opened the door with a bright smile. She looked at the couple briefly before hugging her son, happy to see him again. Riley just stood there with Iggy while that happened until Mrs. Gaskarth turned to her.

“You must be Riley,” she said in a friendly and clear tone, already knowing that Riley was deaf, and held out her hand.

Riley nodded and shook the hand. She would have said something back to make sure she didn’t come over as rude, but that was easier said than done. Nobody in the household other than Alex knew sign language, and even he wasn’t good at it. Riley didn’t know how to speak, and it would have been way too awkward to pull out the notepad she brought along to write something. Luckily, Alex’s parents were very compassionate and understood completely.

Isobel stepped aside to let the pair in. As soon as they were standing in the front hallway to take off their coats, Iggy started to walk around and in between Riley’s legs, something she had been doing quite often when meeting new people recently. Riley kept turning circles along with Iggy so that she wouldn’t trip over the leash, but every time she was untangled, Iggy would keep moving. Eventually, she resorted to just switching the leash between hands, but it didn’t make taking off her coat any easier. So, Alex took the leash instead to give Riley some more room.

Eventually, they all made it into the living room, Iggy now being able to walk around freely but still staying right at Riley's side. Alex’s father was waiting for them there and got up as soon as he noticed that there were more people. Just like Mrs. Gaskarth, he greeted his son first before introducing himself to Riley. It was very similar, with Riley just smiling and nodding and no other conversation starting around it. For any normal situation, it would have been very awkward, but since Riley couldn’t exactly do anything else, everybody easily dealt with it and nobody had any prejudices.

Just before dinner, they were already sitting at the table and having a conversation as well as they could. Riley had to write down everything she said so that Alex’s parents could follow along. Sometimes she had to ask them to repeat something since she couldn’t understand, and occasionally Alex even tried to translate things for her. Of course, he didn’t know most of the symbols for the words and would spell them out instead, making things quite difficult for Riley, but she would then show him the correct symbol if she was able to come up with it right at that moment. Mostly, though, it was just writing and lip reading.

“So, have you ever considered getting a treatment?” Isobel asked Riley at one point, genuinely interested and not because she was judging. She then added, “if it’s available of course.”

Riley wrote down her answer, which happened to be quite long. ‘I could get a cochlear implant, but they are super expensive and my healthcare doesn’t cover it. Maybe I could get one now if I bribed my brother, but I’d have to learn spoken language.’ She ripped out the page and put it on the table before continuing on a new piece. ‘It’s a bit hypocritical since Alex is trying to learn ASL, but I don’t think I could do it. Not because of the difficulty, but because I’m used to no noise. If I had could have gotten it at a younger age, however, things would be different.’

“So you wouldn’t want to get one?” Isobel inquired further. Alex wanted to step in, to not force something like this on Riley, but Riley didn’t mind one bit.

‘I could always turn it off, but I wouldn’t want to spend the money and go through surgery for something I would possibly not use. I’m not saying no, but I’d need a very good reason to do it.’

“You could hear me play music!” Alex offered as a reason he considered very valuable. He really did want Riley to hear it, even if it would turn out that she didn’t like it.

Riley shrugged in agreement. She would do it for Alex if she had the money. But there also were more implications. ‘But, apparently, music can sound very weird through it.’

“Well, that sucks.” Alex frowned in disappointment. If he had to be honest, he would have totally considered paying for the surgery and device if it meant that Riley would have a better life. Sure, they had only been together for a couple of months, but he was willing to throw his money at it. Of course, it would suck if they ever had a terrible breakup, but Alex didn’t want to consider that a possibility.

Riley nodded and flipped through the notebook to find a new clean page. It was full of half ripped off pages, pages full of writing at different angles, and drawings. Beautiful drawings nobody knew about. Well, until then, because Alex got a glimpse of a particular one that caught his eye. He recognized exactly what it was of. So, he stopped Riley and took the notepad from her. At first, she was confused, but then she saw the pen drawing of Sebastian (Alex’s smallest dog) she had made a week or so before when she had a lazy day with Alex at his house.

“Holy shit,” Alex gasped, not caring about the language he was using around his parents. They had to know where he was coming from when he turned around the page for them to see as well. Alex tried using some messy sign language to express his surprise. “I didn’t know you drew! How did I not know you had this talent?”

Riley rolled her eyes a little. She would admit that she was good at drawing with various mediums, but she wouldn’t say that she was talented. As somebody who’s main mean of communication was through writing, she had a lot of time to doodle as well. She started out completely horrible, but practice makes perfect. Throughout her twenty-five years of life, she had more than enough time to draw and perfect her skill, not counting the years she was a baby. If she hadn’t been given paper and a pen at a young age every single day, she would have still been drawing stick figures.

Alex flipped through the notebook to see if he could find any more rare gems in between all the random sentences. He happened to end up on a pencil drawing of himself. He was sleeping in the picture, and in hindsight it was pretty creepy that she had been watching him, his face as detailed as possibly could be. It amazed him so much how she could capture everything so perfectly. For some weird reason, it made him proud to be Riley’s boyfriend and, hopefully, muse.

“Have you ever considered being an artist?” Alex asked as he lightly trailed his fingers over the pencil marks, not wanting to smudge it.

Riley shook her head, still internally rolling her eyes at how stupid Alex was being. She took the notebook back, not because she didn’t want him to look further but because she needed to write down what she wanted to say. ‘I earn more money as a teaching assistant that I ever would as an artist.’

“But you’re super good at it.” Alex tried to convince her, thinking that was all it took.

‘You need to be way more than good. You also need recognition. Plus, my parents would probably disown me.’

If you hadn’t realized yet, Riley’s parents frowned upon any career in the creative field. They hated Alex for being a musician, and not just because they thought he was a typical rockstar that would treat their daughter terribly. To them, creativity couldn’t really bring you anywhere. It was a nice hobby, but not job worthy. Not only wouldn’t you be financially stable, but people would think you couldn’t do anything. A lawyer or a businessman was a real thing to call yourself. An artist just sounded sloppy and homeless.

Now, I’d like to fast-forward a little bit. I could go through their entire boring conversations and make both of us fall asleep, but I’ll go to the slightly more dramatic part. The food was already on the table and everybody was eating. The entire table was quiet, not because they had to, but because everybody was enjoying the food too much and didn’t have anything to say. Somebody not in the house, however, had a whole lot to say.

About halfway through, Riley got a text message, causing Iggy to do her usual nudging and barking. Riley, of course, ignored it since she was having dinner with her boyfriend’s parents. But the person on the other side did not know. They sent another text that was ignored by everyone but Iggy. Everybody was looking at Riley before it really started. After the two texts, they suddenly became way more frequent. Like, no-time-in-between-texts frequent. So, not only was the phone going crazy, but Iggy was also barking her head off.

Riley quickly grabbed the phone from her pocket to see what it was and saw her screen full of angry messages from her brother. Not really caring what he had to say, she turned on the do not disturb option and put her phone on the table, apologizing for what happened. But, you see, that option would let through a call if the person called three times in a row. Calling was pointless in Riley’s life other than to get her attention. That was obviously what it was for this time as well.

She breathed out a little louder than normal due to her frustration and ended up turning off her phone completely. She didn’t need Casper coming in and trying to ruin everything for her. So far, the whole dinner had been going pretty well, something like her stupid brother would not screw it up for her. Alex’s family had been some of the most accepting people she had met so far. Her judgemental brother would not cause it all to end.

“Who’s trying to contact you?” Alex asked, noticing how annoyed Riley was through her body language.

She signed out Casper’s name and gave a very fitting eye roll along with it, expressing her annoyance. Alex by now completely understood where she was coming from. While he first used to be very concerned about Casper hating him, he was also getting very bothered by it by now. Just like Riley, he didn’t understand why Casper could just give up and see that he wasn’t going to break them up soon.

He didn’t, however, expect his phone to buzz next. For some reason, he was still a little surprised when he saw ‘Casper Pierce’ in big white letters on his screen, a hint of fear rushing through him.

“Do you need to take it?” Peter was genuinely worried about what was happening. He and his wife didn’t know the anything other than that somebody had been desperately trying to contact his son’s girlfriend before calling his son. All he could think it was, was that it was some emergency that needed to be tended to right away.

Alex shrugged, not really wanting to, but still pressed the accept button and brought the phone to his ear. He didn’t even get a chance to say hello or act oblivious before the other person was barking down the line.

“Bring her home now,” Casper stated, anger seething through every word he spat.

Alex shook his head. “I’m sorry, but--”

“No, you don’t understand. This isn’t a favor I’m asking. It’s an order.”

“I’m at my parents’ house right now,” Alex answered although it had nothing to do with what Casper wanted.

“So, what? I know my sister’s with you. I don’t care where you say you are. You’re going to bring her back right now. If you guys aren’t back in ten minutes, I will make sure you never come near our street ever again.”

“You see, that isn’t going to be possible. The drive from my parents’ house back to mine is at least twenty minutes. So, that request of yours isn’t going to work out.”

“Oh, fuck you. You think you’re so smart, don’t you?” Casper threatened in a tone that would make any guy run for his life (if Alex stopped reminding himself that there was no way Casper could actually do anything but try to beat him up, he would have obeyed as well). “You think you’re untouchable and get to say anything to me without having any consequences. Ever heard of Charles McClain?”

“No, why would I--”

“He’s in jail right now for sexual assault. I didn’t exactly like how he played around with my sister. Don’t you dare underestimate my power.”

That got Alex to shut up. He wasn’t sure who this guy was, but he did not want to have a similar fate. If anything like that was even said about him, his whole career could crumble to pieces. Not only would he go down, but his entire band would be affected. He would be the reason why all of his best friends would lose their job and maybe even would be wrongfully attacked. Maybe the guy actually had done something horribly wrong and deserved to be in jail, but Alex didn’t want to risk it.

“Ok…” Alex sighed, not wanting to give in, but also not wanting to push Casper.

“You said twenty minutes, so be here in twenty minutes. You got it?”

“I understand.” Alex nodded and Casper hung up the phone.

Well, that wasn’t how he had expected the evening to go. All he wanted was for Riley to meet his parents, and now he was being threatened. He thought the worst that could have happened was that Riley and his parents would not get along at all, creating a gigantic mess. Who would have thought he was going to have to make an important life decision?

“That was Riley’s brother, we have to get back.” Alex put his phone back in his pocket and hoped he didn’t seem too deep in thought.

“So soon already?” Isobel wondered, upset that the couple already had to leave without having time to finish dinner, let alone have desert.

“Yep, he’s the one that’s in charge.”

In no time, Alex and Riley were back in the car. Riley wasn’t sure what had happened, not having been able to follow anything that had been going on. The only thing she was sure of was that it hadn’t been her fault, but that it had to do something with her brother. She was going to be so mad at him as soon as she got home. All he was doing was trying to ruin her life. She could deal with him not really liking Alex, but this was going way too far. This was no longer a simple big-brother-looking-after-younger-sister deal, this had gone way further.

When they arrived at her house, Alex still wasn’t sure what to do. Riley was the one to get Iggy out of the back and walked over to his door to say goodnight. She signed that exact word and wasn’t expecting anything but that word back from Alex, but she received so much more. He briefly kissed her through the open window and took a deep breath as his heart starting racing, signing what he knew was ASL for ‘I love you’.

Riley stared back at him with wide eyes, but she didn’t have time to do anything back. Alex rolled his window up and drove away without saying, signing, or writing another word. He wasn’t sure if he was ever going to see her again.

Riley turned around and saw her brother already impatiently waiting for her at the front door.

If this isn’t a sign, I don’t know what will be.

Notes

Unexpected twist of events? It certainly was for me. I had no idea what was going to happen when I started writing this, but this is what came out. Now, here's some things you can suggest specific to this chapter:
- Why Casper is acting this way

• Bad experience?
• Mental disorder?
• Trust issues?
• Dark past?
• Simple hatred that's gone too far?

I've tried to set it up so all of these are still possible. (I personally have nothing planned for this, so I would be very grateful if somebody where to help me out)
- Something with Riley's drawing
- Alex telling Riley he loves her