[Author's Note: Been busy for the past two weeks but I'll be maintaining at least one or two chapters a day from now on]
[Awkward]
Even Nyx knew… the three of them were at the dining room table and instead of talking, everyone was just silent with nobody saying anything to the other person, it was very awkward.
'Though the food isn't.' Wren thought. Diana had really gone overboard… there were different kinds of meals on the table like pepperish spaghetti, jollof rice, a steaming pot of vegetable soup, golden-crusted macaroni and cheese and Fried Chicken.
He was also sure that the Zoe girl who was sitting not too far away from him had something to tell him. If she did, all she needed to do was say it.
"Diana, this food is amazing." Wren said as he lifted his plate of spaghetti and swallowed the rest.
Diana gave him a warm smile as she pushed a plate toward him.
"If you like my spaghetti then you'll like my chicken." She said, nodding at the chicken wings. "You can have as much as you want Wren. Ryan told us you graduated and think of this as a celebration if you hadn't had one already."
Wren smiled as he dropped the empty plate of spaghetti. He was getting fuller but he took one of the wings with his hand and looked at the crispy surface of the chicken. It looked and smelled amazing.
"This is the best celebration I've had." He said and took a bite of the chicken, tearing a piece off as the taste filled his mouth and he couldn't help but moan a bit at the crispiness. "Are you sure you're not some Michelin star chef in disguise… This is the best chicken I've ever had."
And that wasn't even an overexaggeration. It wasn't that the chicken sold in Bostara was bad unless you made it yourself but most of the businesses didn't care about their customers that much. Some even reused the oil that they used for batches over and over again. There was even a place called Golden Crunch on the east side that got shut down after customers started finding things in their food — the oil had been recycled so many times it had gone completely rancid and the lawsuit that followed ran for months.
Putting that aside, this was one of the best fried chickens he had ever tasted. Better than even what Leah usually made.
A blush crawled up Diana's face as she averted her eyes.
"Stop lying… there are so many better chefs in the city than me but I'm glad you like it." She said while shuffling her chair closer and brought a plate with sauce in it closer to him. "This is my very own pepper sauce. Here, I'll teach you how to use it on the chicken."
She brought out her hand and touched his own. Her palm was really soft and a small blush crossed his cheeks at the closeness.
"Here… you just dip it into the sauce like so." With his hand, she dabbed the rest of the chicken with the sauce and pulled back. "Taste it, you'll like it a lot."
Wren took another bite and she was right, it tasted amazing alongside the pepper sauce. However there was a problem. He dropped the chicken back on the plate and fanned his mouth.
"Too hot… too hot…" He said and Diana laughed while giving him a cup of cold orange juice and he drank it down with a sigh of relief.
On the other side of the table, Zoe clenched her teeth as she glared at him and unable to contain herself anymore, she stood up, slamming her hands on the table making both adults on the other side flinch unexpectedly.
On her side, a cup fell over spilling yogurt off the table to the ground but Zoe didn't bother to pick it up.
"Why… Why are you being so nice to him, Mom?!" Zoe's voice cracked open like something that had been sealed for a very long time. "Did you forget the suffering that his father put us through?"
Diana turned to her daughter with a look on her face but Zoe ignored it. Why was she trying to hide it?
'What did my father put them through?' Wren blinked. He was intrigued though speaking from the way she was looking at him, it was nothing good.
"Mom was on her own and then this rich man kept making advances on her… buying different stuff and even paying for my things. He was really nice but Mom really didn't care about the money." Zoe's hands were trembling now, pressed flat against the table. "It was just after the divorce when Mom's ex-husband had cheated on her so I thought it was okay. The moment they got married, he threw both of us into this place."
Her face became even redder, her eyes glassy but refusing to spill.
"This place wasn't always like this. It was run down, dusty and there was no furniture… We had nowhere else to go. I was just a child and I had to watch my mother work herself to the bone every single day for years. Different jobs, different people treating her however they wanted and she just took it all with a smile because she had no other choice." Her voice dropped but didn't soften. "I was useless. I couldn't do anything. I just watched."
Her palm tightened into a fist so hard it went pale.
"Mom managed to renovate this entire house with her own money. Her own hands. Years of her life. And the man who was supposed to be her husband never called. Never asked if we were okay. Never checked if we were even alive." A tear finally broke and she wiped it away violently like it had betrayed her. "And after all of that, after years of nothing, he couldn't even call us himself. He had to tell that mechanic that you were coming to live with us." She pointed an accusatory finger at Wren, her whole arm shaking. "You don't own anything here. You're a fucking freeloader and I don't want to see your face anymore!"
"Zoe!" Diana glared at her and she flinched. Why was her mom glaring at her when she was standing up for her? Why did the men of this family think they could walk over them without being called out?
However the tension vanished as Wren pushed back his chair with a poker face. He turned to Diana with a small smile.
"Thanks for the dinner, Diana. I'll be heading to bed now." Wren said and then slowly, leaving all of his food on the table, Wren ascended the stairs and soon they heard the sound of a door shutting upstairs.
"Serves him right… sick fuck…" Zoe muttered while storming off and leaving Diana at the table alone looking at the food she had made.
Wren on the other hand laid back on his bed with a sigh.
[Host, are you okay?]
He raised an eyebrow… Nyx really cared about him? He genuinely doubted it.
[If I didn't care about you, I wouldn't have asked the question. I'm well aware of how humans respond to emotional stimulus like that especially about their family members though I don't understand it much.]
Wren adjusted both hands behind his head and yawned.
"I'm very fine. I think Zoe's situation is very understandable." Wren muttered. He really didn't like his father so naturally he believed everything she said about him and how he had hurt Diana. But at the end of the day, was there anything he could do about it? "Other than making her fall for me."
Well that was going to be a tad harder since the woman was a divorcee and even her ex-husband had cheated on her and now her current husband neglected her. How did she even manage to keep smiling like that?
'She's a very strong woman.' Wren thought and closed his eyes while flicking the switch on the wall and the ceiling fan turned on, blowing at his face. 'Well there are a lot of things I need to do tomorrow… I'll try and sleep now.'
He didn't realize how tired he was. In just a few minutes he was off and asleep.
…
The next morning, Diana woke up as early as 5am to begin warming up the food for breakfast. She adjusted her nightgown. Last night had been especially hard since she had been turning left and right in her sleep.
'I wanted to make him feel right at home…' Diana thought. After speaking with several people including Ryan, she had learned that Wren was also a victim of his father's negligence.
His mother had died from a sickness and his father was nowhere to be found, so Wren had watched his mother die slowly only for his father to come around afterward and take him to the city.
Of course Zoe didn't know this or she wouldn't have said all that last night. But there was nothing Diana could say to her daughter right now that would make her listen — she had locked herself in her room and refused to speak with her.
As Diana crossed by the backyard window, she noticed the door was unlocked when she had clearly locked it before sleeping. There was someone shirtless in the backyard doing squats.
"Wren?" Her lips pursed as she looked. When he stood up from the squat, his toned upper body came into full view and she hadn't noticed it earlier but he was really well-built with even abs. "He looks like he goes to the city gym a lot."
As someone who used to live in one of the major cities of Unitas, she knew what gym guys looked like and it seemed like he was one of them.
'It looks cold outside though…' She thought as she opened the door and a burst of cold breeze hit her face. Wren just finished another squat and looked over at her with a smile.
"Morning Diana, wanna join in?"