BXBX NOVEL Chapter 46 - Birthday
By the look on Lena's face it was obvious that she had forgotten about the bandage wrapped around her hand.
"It's nothing serious, I just hurt it one of the times I was doing training and my father insisted I keep it carefully wrapped so as to not get an infection since it's my dominant hand." She replied with a shrug.
"If was anything serious, I wouldn't be here today." Samuel wasn't fully convinced about this but he knew there was no way for him to see how badly the injury was himself with the way that it was wrapped. "What is planned for today anyways?" She asked, changing the subject as she moved to sit down on the porch. If his parents were still asleep, she wasn't going to risk talking their conversation inside where she might make a bad impression by entering the house while they were still asleep and she hadn't rightly introduced herself to them yet.
"Not much really. My mom made a cake and some other family will be coming to join us a few of my friends." Samuel replied as he sat down next to her but not too clos. "Other than that it will probably just be a lot of talking and maybe a few games."
"Your family doesn't all live close together?" She asked.
"No, my uncle lives about two hours away. He moved elsewhere after he got married because he wanted to find a better job to support him and his wife. They still come to visit with my cousin whenever they get a few days off or we'll go visit them around the holidays." Samuel. Lena made a 'hm' noise in response to this. In her mind having grown up with all her family living so closely together, she didn't imagine that others didn't live the same way.
"You know though, you don't have to stay too long if being around everyone is going to make you uncomfortable." Samuel offered.
"It's fine. They're all your family and friends. Plus, I have to wait gifts are being open anyways to give you yours. It would be odd if I already gave it to you so early on." She replied.
The conversation went on for a while longer, mostly revolving around what had happened over the last two weeks. Samuel had more to offer as to what he had been up to than Lena did. He got the feeling thought that it was due to the fact that she still wasn't allowed to talk about a lot of things with him until after the engagement.
The one thing that he had been hoping to avoid talking with her about, how is target practice and working on his aim was going was the one conversation that she didn't let slip by. He didn't have much to say about it though because even though he had been trying, it hadn't gotten that much better.
Roger had been happy to help him work on it, but his friend was difficult to work with because if he missed too many times, he got impatient about it and tried to show him the best way to aim which didn't work well for Samuel . No one else though had really wanted to help because they had other things going on since it was summer break now and most of them had graduated so they were more focused on trying to either find a job or figure out what college they were going to go to.
The conversation didn't have to go on for too long though because he heard a sound that indicated to him that his parents were awake. There was one spot near where the front door was positioned that if anyone walked over it, the floor would make an odd 'creak' sound that indicated to anyone who was outside the front door that someone was getting ready to open.
Samuel used the opportunity to stop Lena from further expressing her disbelief that he hadn't gotten much better at all while they were apart.
"That sound probably means my parents are awake now. If you'd like to go in and meeting them, you can." Samuel offered as he stood up. Even if she didn't want to come inside with him, he needed to go back inside to let his mom at least know where he was before she began to worry about him.
"If you think that they're going to be alright with me being here this early." She replied with a slight sigh. It wasn't that she didn't want to meet them, but rather that she wasn't use to doing this type of thing and didn't know what to expect meeting them for the first time.
"It'll be fine, if anything they'll probably be surprised that you came so early since no one else was planning on coming until later in the day." He replied as he held out her hand to help her stand up since there wasn't much to hold onto to help one regain their balance once they sat down on the porch. She gave a small nod of her head after he had helped her to stand up but didn't say much else as he opened the front door.
"Oh Sam, I didn't know you were up already. I thought-" He mother had started, a smile on her face until she realized that her son wasn't the one only that had come back into the house. A mixed emotion passed over her face, but Lena didn't take it to me that she was unhappy to see that they were there together.
"Mrs. Foster I take it." Lena offered with a nod of her head. She tried to offer a smile but she knew it was smaller than she meant to be, she wasn't used to smiling politely at people.
"This is Lena." Samuel explained to his mother who took a few seconds to recover before she began to smile again.
"Lena! So nice to finally meet you. I have heard a lot of good things about you. I'm sorry for my lack of manners dear, I hadn't been expecting anyone to already show up this early." Samuel's mother apologized as she approached the two. Lena was quickly taken off guard when his mother came in to give her a hug rather than shaking her head. She froze slightly when this happened and Samuel didn't miss the flash of shocked look that crossed her face.
"Please, make yourself at home. My husband, Sam's father will be down soon and I'm sure he'll be excited to meet you as well." His mother told the princess before releasing her from the hug and turning the same thing to her soon while saying 'happy birthday'.
"Thank you." Lena replied, brushing off the shock of what had happened. As she glanced at Samuel to try and figure out what she should do next. Without saying anything, he motioned for her to follow her into the living room since he knew that his father would be down soon. He didn't have work today, but he did need to go out and pick up a few things for the birthday party that his mother wanted to make dinner with but realized that they didn't have.
When his father did come down, he gave Lena the handshake that she had been expecting to get from Sam's mother, but said something similar along the lines that she had about hearing good things about her and it being nice to meet her. Their conversation was brief though as he wanted to leave and get back quickly but he assured her that he would like to take more time to talk with her after he was back.
"I look forward to getting to know more about you as well." was the response Lena gave, uncertain as to what else she should say in such a situation. She was happy though to have the reprieve from talking to anyone else after he had left.
While Samuel assumed his mother was making breakfast, he and Lena stayed in the living room where he talked more about his family and explained a few things to her. His younger siblings weren't up yet, but he knew that there mom would end up waking them before breakfast. He was curious as to how Lena was going to react to them since they were younger than Leo was.
After he felt like it had been longer than usual for it to take his mother to make breakfast, he went into the kitchen to make sure that everything was okay and that she didn't need help with anything. He stopped not far in the kitchen though when he saw his mother on the phone with a rather stricken look on her pale face.