K Darblyne - Unbroken Season 1

“…`Cause when the hammer falls and it hits my balls it’s cool, cause I’m Unbroken…”

The two brunettes made their way down the crowded hall that fluxed with people ebbing in and out of rooms. With each open door they passed, the different stages of moving in could be distinguished by the sounds coming out of every occupied area. The noise from the assorted radios, CD players, or televisions could be heard blending into a cacophony of culturally tinged reverie that only the young can enjoy.

Trying to stay near her sister who was leading, the taller one took each bump or jostle that came in her direction and simply rolled her eyes behind her dark sunglasses in annoyance. Loaded down like a pack mule, she heard the smaller woman in front of her laugh although she couldn’t see her.

“What are you laughing at?” The deep, contralto voice asked, obviously irked as she wiggled her nose trying to keep the dark glasses in place.

“Come on, Brooke. Stop growling. I can hear you. This is the last of it and we’re almost there so don’t get your shorts in a wad. And don’t even think that I don’t know you’re rolling your eyes at me back there.”

The older woman did what she did best when she was annoyed, she began to roll her eyes, only to stop suddenly, sighing in disgust as she realized just how well her youngest sister knew her. “I’m surprised you can hear a damn thing with all of this racket going on out here.”

“Yeah, whatever…Come on, old lady,” the younger woman teased as she unlocked the door to her dorm room, holding it open for her sister.

Brooke walked in and placed the boxes on the floor by the bed. She stood up, placed her hands against her lower back and leaned back to pop it. “Yeah… I’ve got your ‘old lady’. Next time I’ll just make you carry your own shit.”

She removed her sunglasses and placed them on top of her head, forcing her blue eyes to squint against the bright August sun that streamed through the window. Glancing around at the room’s tight quarters, she wondered how two people were supposed to live in such a cramped space. Especially two people who hadn’t even met or knew if they would get along.

Shaking her head, Brooke turned around to address her sister. “C.C., why are you doing this? You’ve got one year left. Why don’t you just stay at Mom and Dad’s?”

“Oh really? Are you prepared to haul all of my shit back over there?”

Brooke glared at her youngest sister. “Don’t even go there. You know what I mean.”

“Yeah, Brooke. I do know and that’s just it. I have one year left here. I can’t stay with Mom and Dad forever. It’s about time I move out,” C.C. answered as she began to unpack her clothes, putting them into the closet.

The older woman sat in a chair at the small desk in the room and picked at some imaginary lint on her jeans. “You could always stay at my house if you had to,” Brooke offered quietly. She looked up as C.C. rolled her eyes. The look on her face told Brooke exactly what she thought of that idea.

“Oh yeah, right. We both know how well that would work out,” C.C. answered sarcastically as she mimicked her sister with a jerk of her head. “I’d be looking over my shoulder every five minutes. God only knows when you’d sneak up from behind and grab me by my ankles. Yeah, go on, laugh Brooke. Holding me upside down to bang my head on the floor while you’re standing on the coffee table isn’t my idea of fun.” C.C. thought about Brooke’s favorite pastime when they were growing up.

“Hey, I couldn’t do that now. My coffee table is glass and it would shatter if I tried to stand on it. Besides, I stopped doing that years ago.”

“Yeah, three years ago, when I was eighteen.”

Brooke held her hands up in front of herself defensively. “Hey, it wasn’t my fault. You told me I couldn’t. I just wanted to show you that I still could.”

“Yeah, whatever, show-off. Go on. Get out of here. Go do whatever it is that you do so I can get unpacked.”

C.C. offered a hand to her older sister to help her stand. As Brooke stood up, she was embraced in a sisterly hug.

“Thanks, Brooke. I owe you one.”

“You owe me several. Call me if you need anything.”

The younger woman forcefully turned her sister to face the door and began to push her in that direction. “Okay, you big worry wart. I’ll see you at Mom’s for dinner next Sunday.”

Brooke turned around to smile at her sister. Replacing her sunglasses, she walked out the door, pulling it shut behind her.

Anxious to get through the hustle-bustle of new and returning students moving into the dorm, Brooke maneuvered quickly toward the exit doors. Her long stride navigated the obstacles in the hall until she met the petite blonde heading in the opposite direction, her arms full of luggage. The tall woman barely managed to get past her without being slammed into the wall. Brooke then made a quick detour to the right where she found herself on the landing of the stairwell. Looking down the length of the hall, she decided that it just might be more prudent to take the three flights of stairs to the ground floor than to try for the elevator.

Reaching the bottom, she forced open the steel safety door and ran to her car that was parked next to her sister’s truck. She unlocked the silver Nissan 300Z and got in. After cranking the engine, fiddling with the stereo and adjusting her seatbelt, she headed back toward her office at the beach.

The young woman looked down at the small piece of paper in her hands and then up to the number over the door. She shifted her luggage a bit and tried to knock on the door. With the combination of her short stature and the amount of bags occupying her hands, she had no such luck. Hearing someone moving around on the other side of the door, the woman tried to knock again, this time with her foot. The weight of the bags pulled at her strength as she waited patiently. Just when she thought she was going to drop them, the door began to open. The tall woman on the other side was met by tumbling pieces of luggage that had seemingly been sucked right out of the shorter woman’s grip in the vacuum created by the open door.

“Hey now. Let me give you a hand with those.” C.C. offered. She grabbed a few of the bags to give the girl the opportunity to make it into the room before losing the rest of her load.

“Thank you. I am so sorry,” she apologized immediately. “I’m Samantha. Looks like I’m your new roommate.”

“No sweat. I just got here myself. Come on in.” The brunette backed away from the door allowing the small woman to enter.

“I hope you don’t mind but I went ahead and started unpacking on this side of the room.” Pointing to the side with the windows, C.C. placed the luggage down on the bed opposite from the one she had chosen then turned around to face the shorter girl offering her hand. “Hi, I’m C.C.”

Letting the bags that were still in her arms fall next to the bed, she turned and grasped the hand offered to her. “Sam,” she said with a smile, “and this side is fine.”

“Nice to meet you, Sam.” Releasing the handshake, C.C. smiled politely. “Well, I guess I’ll let you get settled in.” She watched as the blonde nodded in agreement, then returned to her own unpacking.

“…Give me a chance to prove to you that you’re Unbroken, too…”

The pickup truck slowed down as it pulled in front of a large house with immaculately kept flowerbeds trimming the walkways and outlines of the building. The sleepy little neighborhood was kept in much the same way; each house stood out from the one next to it by the varieties of color and landscaping techniques that was utilized in their development.

“Last as usual, just like the birth order,” C.C. muttered unconsciously as she saw Randi’s Durango and Terri’s Cherokee parked next to each other in the driveway, with Brooke’s 300Z parked in the grass. The young woman smirked knowing that her older sister had to have caught some grief from their parents over her impromptu parking space. That’s when C.C. decided parking on the street would be a lot safer.

“Well, we’re here,” the driver announced as she maneuvered into the next available parking spot on the street. “I’ll warn you now that dinner in this house usually tends to get a little,” C.C. winced looking at the space as she backed into it, “Well…very…um…interesting.”

“Interesting?” Sam looked to her left and smiled. “Come on, what can be so bad?”

“One never knows until these dinners are over.” Slamming the truck’s gearshift into park, C.C. turned off the ignition and unbuckled her seatbelt. “There we go,” she turned to the blonde beside her, “time for you to meet my family. Think you’re up for it?”

Nodding her head, Sam opened the door sliding down from the seat. She then turned, shaking her long blonde hair into place, and looked back in at her roommate. “Guess it’s now or never, eh?”

“You got that right.” The driver smiled and got out. Her long legs carried her swiftly around the vehicle and soon she was side by side with the blonde. “Don’t worry, you’ll fit in. Just act like you belong.”

The blonde woman just smiled politely and followed C.C.’s lead to the front door. Sam envisioned all sorts of scenarios as to what was inside the house before settling on the one that had been bugging her for the better part of the week. What’s interesting will be trying to figure out which one of them is gay before they tell me. Okay, Sammy girl, get that gaydar working!

Approaching the front door, C.C. noticed the serious look on her new friend’s face. “Don’t worry. It’s not like we start fires or anything in the dining room.”

“No fires. Well that’s good to know.” Sam let her mind come back to the conversation with her roommate.

“Yeah, we stopped that after burning Mom’s favorite table cloth,” C.C. amended as she opened the front door and walked through it announcing her presence to everyone in the house by shouting in Ricky Ricardo style voice, “Honey…I’m hooooooooome.”

“Burned the table cloth…” Sam muttered under her breath as she poked her head, cautiously into the doorway of the house. “Why did I ever agree to this?” The next thing that the small woman felt was C.C.’s hand grabbing hold of her, pulling her further into the family’s home. It took Sam’s short legs their full length running strides to keep up with the rest of her body. The fast paced entry causing her to see nothing but blur as she passed the simple décor of the surroundings. Before she knew it, they were standing at the end of the hallway watching everyone in the kitchen helping to prepare for dinner.

“Hi guys!” C.C. greeted her family as she walked in, noticing that Brooke was sitting on the kitchen counter with her head in her hands. Considering the woman’s slumped posture, C.C. could only wonder what their mother had been giving her older sister grief about now.

A matriarchal looking woman in her late fifties turned around and swept her youngest child up into a hug, as only a mother could do. “Hello, C.C. How’s my little girl doing today?” She asked as she kissed the wincing half-girl, half-woman on the cheek.

The look on C.C.’s face was priceless as she ate up the attention. Anyone that walked in could tell that this sister was the baby of the family.

Sam looked over to the other women in the kitchen and recognized Terri as she stood near the sink cleaning vegetables, while another older version of the cookie cutter mold was slicing them up for the salad.

Looking up from their chores, they noticed that C.C. had walked in. With a disgusted look on their faces, they turned to each other and began singing out in unison, “She’s ba-aack,” their notes slightly off key.

The annoyed young woman rolled her eyes at her other two sisters and held up one choice finger in their direction. “Excuse me, talk to the finger cause the face ain’t worth the hand!” She turned her attention back to her mother and answered the question. “I’m fine, just fine, mom.” She hugged the woman in a gentle manner and once she knew that her mother couldn’t see her gesture, she made sure the finger sticking up was the middle one.

“That is so grade school, C.C.” The eldest sibling cast her eyes to the ceiling and shook her head of long brown hair, letting it dance gracefully about her shoulders. On one of her sways, the woman brought more of the room into her sight, immediately catching the young blonde woman with her eyes. “Who do we have here?” The tallest of them all asked as she turned completely around from the sink and noticed the small blonde woman standing in the doorway.