Nothing like being mysterious.
Just then, I heard the latch of my front door opening, and I panicked out of instinct. My fingers clutched onto the straps of my backpack as my hair whipped around my face with the light breeze. I rushed past Eric, ignoring how good he smelled, and quickly climbed into my car without looking back. I was out of the driveway before he even made it to his Range Rover. I didn’t give the man climbing down my porch stairs once single glance—too afraid he’d see me and get a nasty idea in his head that I was just like my mother.
I couldn’t take another freaking nightmare roaming the halls at night and “accidentally” opening the wrong bedroom door. Being at English Prep was hell, but so was being at home.
Chapter Two
Eric
Hearing your own mother cry should be forbidden. It shouldn’t exist. It was a conundrum. What was I supposed to do? Comfort her? Pretend I didn’t hear her? She was in private, so the latter was probably the right choice, but something ignited inside me as I stood there listening. Every time I saw her sad eyes, I felt the burning. Like a fire that had just been put out, but the embers were still glowing. And every time I saw him—my father who I no longer addressed by name—I felt the flame catching. Like a fire roaring with anger.
“Mom?” I half whispered through her closed door. “I’m heading to school.” Her sniffle was deafening as I rested my forehead along the wood.
“Okay, sweetie. I won’t be home much this weekend. I picked up a few shifts at the hospital.” The fake cheer in her voice did not go unnoticed, but I wasn’t about to call her out on it. I understood her need to appear strong in front of me, but I wasn’t nearly as dense as she thought. Apparently, the same went for my father. How he didn’t think I’d eventually catch on to his behavior was beyond me.
“Alright, Mom. I’ll see you Sunday, then. I love you.”
She cleared her throat. “Love you, honey.”
I sighed as I turned around and headed downstairs to my car, noticing all the housework that needed to be done. Dishes were piling up, and laundry was overflowing from the laundry room. The blanket on the couch was messy, likely because my mom had slept there the night before. She didn’t think I’d noticed that she continued to sleep on the couch instead of her bed, but I did. I assumed it was because she didn’t want to be anywhere that my father had been, even if he hadn’t slept in their bed since she caught him fucking someone else, but it probably bothered her all the same. Just like it bothered me when I’d watch his name flash on my phone.
We’d talked a handful of times since I saw him railing Madeline’s mom from behind, and each time, it ended the same: him threatening to cut me off and me hanging up on him.
Only, his last threat was no longer a threat. He had cut me off. He was still trying to make amends with my mom, but she cut him off in her own way. She went back to work, and she refused to take a single dime from him.
You could say our family dynamics were slightly complicated (read as: completely fucked up).
Before closing the front door, I made a promise to myself that I’d clean up the house before going out tonight.
Just as I was pulling my phone out to tell Jesse—last year’s football captain who went to UCLA, aka the guy I now partied with since both of my best friends were knee deep in their girlfriends’ vaginas—that I’d be at the party later than usual, a flash of platinum hair caught my eye.
Don’t do it. Don’t look over there.
I glanced over at the side of the whore house—I’m sorry, I mean Madeline’s house, and saw her dangling from her window in her English Prep uniform. Her short, plaid skirt was pushed up way past her hips, and my tongue unknowingly darted out of my mouth to lick my lip. If it were anyone else, I’d indulge in the sight of smooth ass cheeks split down the middle with a lacy piece of pink fabric, but it was Madeline, and that was a no-fucking-way zone.
Regardless, I made my way over there to see what the hell she was doing hanging from her window.
Madeline. The girl who kept getting herself into sketchy situations that I seemed to always be present for. As of late, Madeline was my favorite pastime.
For months I’d sat and watched her, trying to decide how I wanted to proceed with my threat. I’d always had a soft side for Madeline, giving her a slight pass on her behavior and changed personality from the girl I used to know to what she became. I’d make excuses up in my head even when, deep down, I knew I should have hated her all along. We were close once—really close—but then she changed. She started ignoring me, distancing herself, pretending I didn’t exist all together—and I did the same to her. Even when she dated Christian—my best friend—I pretended she wasn’t a part of our group.
And somewhere along the way, my denial of living in a world where Madeline existed caught up to me, and it bit me right in the ass.
Every single memory of her flooded me the day I found my dad fucking her mom. Her words had sucker punched me. “Your dad has been fucking my mom for years.”
Hate. I hated her in that moment. I hated her because I let my guard down, and it was the wrong move. Hurt flashed in between the bones of my rib cage when I’d realized she knew all along that my father was a cheating bastard, and she didn’t tell me. A whole fuck-ton of hurt could have been avoided if Madeline had thought of someone other than herself for once.
So, for months, I’d been contemplating what to do. I’d been waiting, pacified by watching the Queen Bee of English Prep turn into the school leper. It definitely bought me some time. It was nearly every single day that someone bullied her in the same way she bullied them.
I wasn’t going to lie; Madeline deserved everything she got, which is why it annoyed me that there was a small, and I mean really fucking small, part of me that felt bad. Maybe it was because I knew the old Madeline—the nice girl with two french braids and metal braces on her teeth. I didn’t know. Regardless, I pushed away that pesky feeling and indulged in the feelings of raging anger and hate.
After all, it wasn’t hard to hate a girl like Madeline. The pretty ones were always the meanest.
“Need some help, Maddie?” I loved using her old nickname. I knew it bothered her beyond belief. I basked in watching her shrink into herself every time I used it.
She barely glanced down from holding onto the rain gutter. “Like you’d ever actually help me.”
I grinned, staring at her ass once again. “You’re right. I wouldn’t help you even if it was the last thing left to do on this earth.” I began walking closer to her, taking my traitorous eyes off her dangling body, and pushed myself up against the side of her house. “But I think I will casually stand here and watch you fall. That sounds like a great way to start off my day. So, please, carry on.”