Chapter 5 – There is no Prince Charming.

Alexa's POV

"Goodnight, Alex," Finn calls out as he pushes the door open, the slight draft from the cool night air blowing in and settling over my bare arms as I finish wiping down the bar.

As usual, he's the very last customer to leave after reassuring him for a full ten minutes that I'll be fine on my own. It's no secret that the guy has been crushing on me for a while now but I've completely run out of ideas on how to show him just how uninterested I am. Don't get me wrong, he's not bad to look at and he's a really great guy, I'd just never go there.

"Night, Finn," I reply, unable to stop my eyes from rolling on their own accord as the door swings shut behind him.

For the past hour all I've had to listen to was Finn dropping a bunch of not-so-subtle hints that he wants to take me to go see this new film that's playing in the cinema next week. I can't remember what it's called but it's supposedly this new horror that's apparently amazing, and there's not a single person in this tiny-ass town that doesn't know I'm a horror film fanatic. It's kind of annoying, actually. In Redwater Pine everyone knows everything about everyone, which gets pretty old pretty fast when there's nothing new to learn about each other, especially when it comes to dating.

Anyway, the film sounds pretty decent and I've wanted to watch it since I first saw it advertised last month, not that I'm going to tell Finn that. I was planning on going to see it with my best friend Darcy but after hearing about the trailer for it none stop for an entire hour let's just say I'm not as psyched to see it anymore.

Once I've finished wiping down the bar I quickly make my way into the pub's small kitchen over to the left side of the room and drop the cloth in the sink. With the way this place is built the kitchen couldn't fit out back near the storage room by the stairs and so Jenny had to pay for a small extension to be added on the side. The toilets are on the opposite side of the pub and the main bar is in the middle; it's not very exciting, I know, but it could sure be a lot worse.

My next and final order of business for the night is to quickly lock up before going home. Jenny and her husband, Stuart, are in America for a month visiting family and she left the job of locking up to me because apparently I'm the most trustworthy of her three employees.

I'd agree with that but, then again, I am pretty biased.

I guess I'm also the most obvious of choices as Bruce, our chef, finishes his shift at nine and Jodie, our afternoon waitress, finishes at four. I'm the only one that has to stick it out until eleven every night, although I do also start work later than the both of them. As far as staff go, we're pretty stretched to our limits, but it's not so bad when Jenny and Stuart are here to help out as well. They take it in turns to take the early and late shift so I normally have at least one other person with me behind the bar. It's not so great when they're not here, though, although it hopefully won't be so bad now that Beck's agreed to help out.

I still need to run it past Jenny but I'm sure she'll be okay with it, and even if she's not then after the two week trial I can tell him it's not going to work and he can find somewhere else to go. Jenny has been trying to look for someone who's willing to work for dirt cheap because, frankly, she's not got the money to fork out wages. My no rent for no wages deal is pretty great, if I do say so myself.

I don't need to lock the back door tonight, what with Beck being upstairs, so instead I lock the door to the storage room. Seeing as Jenny and Stuart used to live here, there are locks on every door as they quite often forgot to lock the back door after themselves after getting back from a meal or movie. I wasn't working here at the time but Jenny briefly explained to me why there were so many keys when I first started here. To keep their money and pub safe, they instead used to lock the storage room and the door connecting the back hallway to the bar as soon as the place closed, as I'm just about to do.

With the connecting door also locked now all that's left to lock up is the entrance door to the pub, which I do on my way out before I start my short walk home.

I don't live far from 'The Red Lion', only about a ten minute walk down one of the side roads, and I don't really mind walking in the dark as I've been doing it for over a year now. I've never had any trouble... well, apart from that one night, but I don't like to think too much about that. As I walk my mind drifts back to the new guy that's currently taking shelter in the apartment above the bar.

Beck is quite an odd one, I can't deny it, although I also can't quite pinpoint why. There's just something about him that's so... different. Then again, that might just be because I've grown up around Redwater Pine guys, who I'd call a species in their own right. I don't think that's it, though, because I've also met my fair share of people just passing through as well. I'm not going to jump to any conclusions about him, though, as I've only met him twice and even my deductive skills aren't that great. Besides, his business is his own, I guess, no matter how curious I may be about this new stranger. I'm not the only curious one, either, and Beck's going to have his work cut out for himself if he wants to keep his secrets his own. This town is full of what I like to call 'information vultures', who like to prey on the newcomers like a vulture to a dead antelope. When they're done there's nothing left to hide as they've stripped them right down to the bone. I know, beautiful imagery, isn't it?

I'd like to think that I'm not an information vulture; I'm just a girl with a hint of curiosity. Unlike the rest of the town, I don't need to know other people's life stories to be able to breathe.

When I get home just after ten past eleven, all is quiet in the Rowland household, as usual at this time of night. It's mainly during the daytime when this place is a madhouse. Being the oldest of ten siblings means I usually have to help look after the others during the day, especially when my dad is at work. My mum currently isn't in work as the youngest, Teddy, is only two years old. The next youngest are the twins, Clara and Cora, who are four. It's usually my job during the day to look after those two, along with my six year old sister, Layla, when she's not in school. Next comes Daniel at eight, Sofia at ten, Olivia at twelve, Mason at fourteen, Dylan at sixteen and then, of course, me at nineteen.

We are easily the biggest household in Redwater Pine and my parents have already said that Teddy is going to be the last of our rapidly growing family. My mum and dad were born and raised in Redwater Pine, and they were both only children which they absolutely hated. When they got married they agreed that their family would be bigger, although they definitely took that to the extreme by popping out ten children. I mean, don't get me wrong, I love all of my brothers and sisters to bits and wouldn't change them for the world but, when having so many of them turns you into a default babysitter for your parents for most of your life, it's not so fun when I want to go out and do something with Darcy. When I'm not looking after the twins then I'm at work, and my lack of free time only got more annoying when I was no longer able to see my friends at school. I finished about a year and a half ago and now my social life is non-existent. What I wouldn't give for just one day a week where I could actually go out and do something a normal nineteen year old girl would do.

Sighing, I walk through to the living room, the sound of the TV telling me that at least one of my parents are still awake.

I'm correct in my assumption as I see both my parents sat on the sofa watching some film, the light from the TV flickering shadows over their faces as the main light is switched off.

"Hey, sweetheart, how was work?" mum asks, glancing up from the TV when she notices me stood in the doorway.

"Same as usual," I reply with a shrug. "What are you guys watching?"

"Some shite your mum wanted to watch," dad replies, making me laugh slightly as my mum quickly smacks the back of his head. "Ow."

"Quit complaining, you secretly love this film," mum tells him knowingly.

She's right. We all know that my dad's a secret softie when it comes to rom-com's; he always offers to take Sofia and Olivia to see the new ones in cinema when they come out.

"I'm gonna head up to bed," I tell them, tiredness creeping over me now that I'm finally home for the night.

"Okay, goodnight, kiddo," dad replies as I start to walk down the hallway to the stairs.

"Oh, Alex?" mum calls me back, making me trudge to the living room once again.

"Yeah?" I reply, leaning against the doorway as I look at her.

"Daniel's got the dentist tomorrow after lunch so I'm going to have to collect him from school early, I'll take Teddy but could you-"

"I'll look after the twins," I agree, already knowing that's what she's going to ask.

"Great, you're a life saver," she thanks me. "Oh, also, Layla was complaining about not feeling very well before going to bed so when you go up could you-"

"I'll check on her," I agree once again.

"Thanks, I'll be up in a bit to check on Teddy," she replies with a smile.

"Okay, night, love you guys," I call out as I make my way back to the stairs.

"Love you too," mum calls back as I make my way up.

My first stop is, as promised, Layla's room.

Our house is a fairly decent size, I guess, although with the amount of people it contains it kind of has to be. Overall we have seven bedrooms, two bathrooms, one living room and one kitchen/dining room. I get a room to myself, much to the annoyance of Dylan, but so do Layla and Daniel. Dylan and Mason have to share, so do Olivia and Sofia but they don't really mind. Those girls are practically best friends and share everything anyway. The twins also share, which is kind of just a given, and when Teddy gets older he'll be moving into Daniel's room with him. For now, though, Teddy sleeps in my parents room so he doesn't wake us up as much if he starts crying because mum and dad are closer.

Peeking around Layla's door as quietly as possible, I'm surprised to find she's still awake. She's usually fast asleep by now as she's an early riser. Her bedside light is still on, though, and she's sitting in bed with her favourite teddy clutched to her chest.

Unlike me, Layla adopted my dad's brown hair, whereas my blonde locks are definitely courtesy of my mum, but we share the same blue eyes.

"Hey, you're still awake," I murmur quietly as she looks towards her now open door.

"I don't feel very well," she replies as an explanation.

"You don't feel very well?" I repeat softly and she shakes her head, her brown hair tumbling over her shoulders as she does so.

Sighing slightly, I walk into the room and close the door behind me so our voices don't wake anybody else up.

"What's wrong?" I ask, moving to sit on her pink duvet next to her and placing my arm around her shoulders.

"I feel icky," she explains, leaning her head against my shoulder.

"What about Teddy?" I ask, motioning to the fluffy bear she holds and still finding it adorable that she named him after her baby brother. "Does Teddy feel icky, too?"

"Yeah and he can't sleep neither," she replies.

"Teddy can't sleep either?" I ask and she shakes her head.

I glance around the room, taking in the baby pink surroundings and trying to think of a way to get her to sleep.

Placing my hand against her forehead I notice that she does feel slightly hot, maybe she's got a temperature.

"Do you want me to get you a cold flannel?" I ask, glancing down at her as she nods her head.

"One for Teddy, too," she says, making me chuckle lightly.

"One for Teddy too," I agree with a nod as I detach my arm from around her. "Okay, I'll be right back."

Heading into the bathroom I grab two flannels from the drawer and run them under the cold tap, wringing them out until they're only slightly damp.

When back in Layla's room I get her to lie back down before placing the flannel over her forehead, also placing one on Teddy as he lies in the bed next to her.

"You feeling a bit better now?" I ask as I sit on the edge of the bed to look at her. She nods. "Okay, good. If you feel any worse during the night then mummy and daddy should be upstairs soon, if not then come and get me, okay?"

"Okay," she agrees.

"Okay, goodnight, Sweetie," I say, reaching over to turn her bedside light off before making my way towards her door.

"Goodnight, Alex," she replies as I quietly exit her room, leaving her door ajar slightly to let the light from the hallway enter her room.

I then make my way towards my own room, flicking the light on and closing the door behind me as I glance around my burgundy bedroom. It's exactly the same as it always is, containing my desk, bookshelf, wardrobe and, obviously, my bed. A full-length mirror sits next to my desk by the window and my laundry basket sits against the wall by the door. On the back of my door there's a world map which, over the years, I've covered in small red sticker dots to represent everywhere I want to visit. I know I probably won't be able to visit even half of the places but a girl can still dream.

I don't think I've ever really left Redwater Pine, not with my parents constantly having more and more kids. I don't think I've ever even been on a proper holiday. My parents don't want to go until the youngsters have grown up a bit but, the problem is, when a new youngster is appearing every two years they're never really growing up. Even when Teddy has grown up a bit, though, it'll now be too expensive what with there being so many of us.

No. If I want to go places then I'm going to have to get myself there, which requires money, hence the job. I love my family and the town really isn't so bad but I don't want to stay here forever, I honestly don't think I could. There are very few people who leave or move into this town, which is why everyone knows each other so well, but I'm planning on getting out of here as soon as I can.

My phone buzzing in my pocket distracts me from my thoughts and I take it out to check the caller ID, answering when I see it's my best friend calling.

"Hey, what's up?" I ask, moving to sit on my bed with my back against the headboard.

"You bitch! How could you not tell me?" Darcy accuses as a greeting and I can't help but roll my eyes at her.

"How could I not tell you what?" I question, unsure of what I've done this time. Darcy has a bad habit of overreacting to the smallest of things so you can never really be sure of what she's going on about half of the time.

"Um... that you've spoken to him?" she replies as if it's the most obvious thing in the world.

Ah, Beck. I guess I should've seen this coming.

"Spoken to who?" I decide to play dumb.

"The new guy!" she tells me, knowing fully well that I know exactly who she's talking about.

"Oh, him," I reply, trying not to laugh as my friend gets more and more irritated with me.

"Yes, him," she says. "I guess when I called you this morning you just so happened to forget to mention that he was in the pub last night."

"I guess so," I reply, shrugging slightly despite the fact that she can't see me.

Darcy works in the local hotel that's owned by one of our fellow townspeople, Frankie, and called me earlier to express just how unhappy she was that Beck wouldn't be staying there. It ended up turning into a twenty minute rant about how most of the cute guys in our town are assholes; I completely agree with that, though, which is why I've never really been interested in dating them. Some of them are bigger assholes than others, though. A certain names pops into my head but I quickly brush it away. I don't like thinking about him.

"Alex...!" she whines down the phone at me, clearly unhappy with my lack of enthusiasm about 'the new guy'.

"Darcy...!" I mimic her with a laugh.

"How could you not tell me that you're, like, the only person in town who's spoken to him?" she asks.

"That's not true, he apparently spoke to Pete yesterday," I disagree.

"Okay, Pete does so not count," Darcy replies and I can practically hear her eyes rolling at me.

"And I do?"

"Yes!"

"I didn't think it was important," I admit with another shrug.

"How can it not be important? He's the talk of the town!" she announces as if I didn't already know that.

"Every new guy is the talk of the town," I remind her.

"Not the point. Tell me everything!" she demands.

"There's really not much to tell," I assure her, rolling my eyes.

"I don't care. Tell me!" she repeats.

"Okay," I reply, sitting up slightly and making my voice sound like I'm about to tell her some really juicy gossip. "So he waked into the pub last night..." I trail off.

"And then?" she prompts.

"And then, get this, I served him a drink!" I reply, adding emphasis at the end before laughing.

"You suck," Darcy tells me, her voice sounding so disappointed that I laugh again.

"You know you love me, really," I reply.

"Not anymore," she informs me.

"Oh, too bad," I say with another shrug.

"Do you at least know his name?" she asks.

"Beck," I tell her, knowing that she's not going to let the subject drop until I at least tell her something.

"Beck? That's a cool name," she replies.

"Yeah, I guess," I agree.

"What else do you know about him?" she asks and I groan.

"Why don't you go and ask him instead of bugging me?" I ask.

"Well, I would if he was staying at Frankie's," she says. "I don't even know where he's staying. Do you?"

"Maybe," I sigh, glancing at the back of my door and looking at all the red dots.

"Really? Where?"

"He's at the pub."

"At the pub? As in your pub?" she asks, her voice getting a few octaves higher in excitement.

"It's not my pub it's Jenny's pub," I correct her. "Yeah, there. He's staying in the apartment and working at the pub for the next few weeks."

"Is Jenny aware of this?" she asks.

"Not yet, so we're keeping this piece of info to ourselves for now, okay? I'm going to talk to Jenny tomorrow and sort it out."

"Okay," she agrees and I'm fairly certain that she won't go saying anything she shouldn't. She overreacts but she's not a motor-mouth.

"So... is his voice as hot as his body?" she then asks.

"Okay... I'm not going to dignify that with an answer," I laugh as I roll my eyes.

"Well, you're no fun," she mutters and I can tell that she's frowning.

"Talk to him and find out for yourself," I reply with a small shrug.

"Okay, well, in that case I'll be visiting you at work tomorrow," she informs me.

"Yeah? You do that," I reply.

"Aren't you calling dibs?" she asks, somewhat incredulously.

"On Beck? No, he's not really my type," I reply. "You're welcome to him."

"Really? Hot and mysterious isn't your type? Are you forgetting about Jonah?" she asks, making me roll my eyes and pull a sour face.

"Ugh, don't even mention his name," I mutter as I'm reminded of my last boyfriend who blew out of town without a goodbye.

He came to town for a few months, one of our longest stopping visitors, and we ended up going out for a while. He hated small towns but he stayed when he met me, or so he said anyway. He promised to take me with him when he left but, instead, I got stood up on our date and it was my neighbour that had to deliver the news that he wasn't coming back. He'd been spotted leaving town that morning and apparently hadn't felt it important to give me a heads up. He'd gotten bored with me and moved on, as they always do. Don't get me wrong, I wasn't in love with the guy or anything, it was just a serious like, but it still hurt nonetheless. There've been others besides Jonah, of course, I've never really been interested in the guys I grew up with so when someone new shows up and shows interest I'm usually all for it. They always leave, though, every single one of them. Jonah hit me the hardest, though, and I've given up hope of some Prince Charming riding in on a white horse to help me escape this town, as I used to dream of when I was a little girl. There is no Prince Charming; if I want to escape then I'm going to have to save myself, there's no doubt about it.

"Sorry," she says, and I know that she hates my ex-boyfriend just as much as I do. "Some guys don't know what they've got, babe."

"Yeah, I know," I reply, having heard that numerous times from numerous people. That's another thing that sucks about dating guys who often take off without warning, the whole town gets to hear about it and pity you for it. The amount of people that have come up to me and said that they'd break Jonah's legs if he ever came back here is ridiculous; Pete from the shop is the worst, though. I'm like the daughter he never had, or so he claims, and he can be extremely overprotective when he wants to be.

Thinking back to earlier when I was at Pete's, I can't help the way my cheeks heat slightly from embarrassment as I recall the way I hopped into Beck earlier.

I'm such and idiot.

It's been a habit of mine for as long as I can remember and it's only with Pete's shop but, every time I leave, I don't walk out and instead I hop through the doorway. Everyone knows I do it but that didn't make it any less embarrassing when I collided into Beck this morning.

Yep, I am such an idiot.

"Right, well, I should go to sleep now," Darcy says with a small sigh. "I'll see you tomorrow, though, yeah?"

"You mean when you're going to interrupt my work to perv all over Beck? Yeah, I'll see you then," I laugh and roll my eyes.

"Yes, that is exactly what I mean," she agrees, laughing as well. "Night, Al."

"Night, Darce," I reply before we hang up.

I haven't heard Layla get up so I'm assuming she managed to fall asleep okay, but I quickly poke my head in again as I go to brush my teeth.

Yep, sleeping like a baby.

After brushing my teeth and getting changed I climb into bed, briefly wondering how much longer mum and dad have left of their film. They should be up soon. With a slight yawn, I turn off my bedside lamp and roll over to the end of my double bed that's pushed up against the wall. It only takes a few minutes before I'm out cold.

(Hey guys!!! So this update took a lot longer than expected, I know, but I actually struggled to write this one. I've had Alexa's character in my head for AGEEEES, way before I finished writing OMEGA, and it's probably going to take a while for me to be able to capture her properly. Does that make sense? I don't know, maybe I'm just being fussy :')

So... this is the first chapter that you actually get from Alexa's POV, obviously. What do you all think of her so far? I think she's going to be a character that you either love or hate, the same goes for Darcy, so I'm really excited to hear your thoughts.

Sorry for any mistakes within the chapter, I've proofread but still probably missed some. You'll just have to be patient with me and I'll eventually get around to correcting them :)

In other news, my results day is on Thursday 18th which is REALLY DAMN CLOSE!!! :O I really don't want to know how badly I messed up my exams but I guess I'm not going to have much of a choice :') Is there any of you that are in the same boat? It sucks, right?

Also, I went and got my nose done in the time since I last posted. I know, right? R.E.B.E.L :') I love it, though :) There's a high chance that none of you even care about my life, though, so I'm sorry for boring you, haha. 

Okay, so I'm going to stop babbling about crap now. Thank you all so much for reading and if you think this chapter's worth it then go ahead and leave a Vote/Comment/Add/Follow, thanks! The next chapter will be in Beck's POV and I'll hopefully have that posted by the weekend, depending on how bad my results make me feel. It might be an entire weekend of junk food and being a sloth, and sloth's type slow, you know? Anyways, until next time, byee!!!)