"Not exactly," she said, drawing out the words. "Her brother was my ex-boyfriend. Things didn't exactly, um, work out between the two of us so I decided to leave."
"I see." She had run all the way of Atlanta because of some guy. I guess that made sense as to why she was sad all the time. But weren't high school relationships not supposed to last anyways? I was certain there was some pie chart out there that supported my theory. "So have you lived here your entire life?"
Her head nodded against the pillow and she finally looked up from the blanket. "My parents bought this house when they found out my mom was pregnant with me," she answered, around a giant yawn. "My dad had just gotten hired at the station and they had him working second shift."
"Shit hours.”
"And of course, I decided I wanted to be born on his first day on the job at two in the morning."
I chuckled. "Why does it not surprise me that you were even a pain in the ass still in the womb?"
"Hey! I'm not a pain in the ass.”
"Yeah right! I remember the first day I met you and offered you a simple, friendly ride to school. You looked at me like you wanted to cut my balls off and grind them in your blender."
She shook her head trying to keep her smile at bay. "Uh yeah, maybe because I had just witnessed you getting your freak on like eight hours before."
I squinted my eyes at her. "You were watching me get my freak on," I corrected, tilting my head at her and chuckling.
Her arms crossed her chest, covering up my perfect view. "I was not watching," she yelped, and then covered her mouth when she realized how loud her voice carried through the room. She moaned, making my dick throb at the sound. "Okay, what would you do then? Here I was alone, on my balcony hanging out then I hear some loud moan and I think one of my neighbors are watching porn on TV. Instead, I look over the railing and see you two doing," she paused, searching for words she wasn’t too embarrassed to say, "your thing. I completely just froze up, unable to move."
"Your face was priceless. You looked like you had just got caught with your hand in the cookie jar."
"Hey buddy, your hand was the one in someone's cookie jaw," she teased back, giving me a sense of relief at the brief glimmer of a real smile twitching on her face. She yawned.
"You should probably get some sleep," I said, settling into my pillow. She nodded and my eyes practically bulged out of my head when she dipped her body down further into the blankets and settled down next to me - still in my bed.
“He’s dead,” she said, out of nowhere, and surprising the shit out of me.
“Who?”
“Tanner, my ex-boyfriend, he’s dead,” she said, her voice soft, but clear. Well fuck, that sure complicated things. No wonder she had problems.
“How did he die?”
“He got shot.”
“I see.” I wanted to wrap her tiny body into my arms and comfort her but I was scared she would stop talking if I did. “Was it an accident? How did it happen?”
“It was a school shooting,” she paused, and took a breath. “The guy who did it. I knew him. We all knew him. We’d been going to school together since kindergarten. I cheered with his girlfriend, but he cheated on her all the time. She finally got fed up and broke up with him. When she started to date someone else, he just snapped. His dad was actually on the force with mine, so he just grabbed a gun from his dad’s collection and shot everyone in her class.”
She paused, inhaling a deep then exhaling. “He killed twenty kids and our Geometry teacher. I knew every single person that died in that classroom and heard their screams while he killed them because the class was right next to mine. I can remember how scared I was that he was coming to get us next.” A few tears dripped down her face and she sniffled.
“Baby,” I said, dragging her body closer into mine. “I’m sorry you had to go through that.” My fingers ran down her arms, attempting to comfort her. How did you comfort someone who had to listen to their boyfriend get murdered in the room next to them? “What happened to the kid?”
“He killed himself by putting a bullet in his own head.”
“Wow, what a waste,” I whispered. And an asshole. I hated when I saw shit like that. If you want to kill yourself, just do it. There was no need to take others out with you.
“The sad part was, he was actually a decent kid until he started hanging out with the wrong crowd. He started doing drugs and partying all the time, and I mean hard partying. I guess it just messed with his head. They said when they did his autopsy, his system was loaded with a deadly combination of drugs, they were surprised he could even stand.”
“Is that why you don’t talk about your life here? Because you don’t want people to know?”
She sighed. “If people knew, they would have treated me like a porcelain pony. Everyone here acted like I was some freakshow after everything, which is what I didn’t want when I moved to Atlanta.”