Seeing Shane Gray ✓

ten | insignificant

*.*.*.*.*.*

September 26

"That asshole! That motherfucking asshole!"

"Hey, leave mothers out of it," I mumble, picking at my short-cropped nails.

"Really, Tay? Even at a time like this?"

I lift my puffy eyes and blurry vision to see Marla fold her arms across her chest and raise her eyebrows at me. I force a small smile, sniffing back the tears and mucus. I've stopped crying now, feeling so much better Marla's dramatic rant that was more curse words than actual speech. At least watching her pace around my room while performing theatrics with her hands made me feel better.

"I can't believe he'd do that," Marla repeats for the dozenth time. "I swear I wouldn't have let you go alone if I'd known."

"I wouldn't have gone at all if I had known," I add.

Marla bites her lip, shaking her head. "How can he do that?" she exclaims, clearly still not over it. "You're his daughter's age, like, what the fuck? And Riley's always saying what a great man he is and how terrible her mom was to leave him --"

"One side of the story." I shrug.

"-- he's an asshole."

"Being a good father doesn't necessarily equate being a good person in general," I tell Marla.

"He's an asshole."

I chew on my lower lip. "I've been thinking --" I say slowly. "What if he does something like this to Riley?"

"She would tell us if he did, though."

"You think so? I mean, I don't know. She might be scared or ..." I trail off.

She sighs, sitting at the edge of my bed where I sit cross-legged under the fluffy comforter. I pull at a loose string of the hoodie I'm wearing -- one of Carter's. I catch sight of my open hair and all the split-ends, realizing I need a haircut. Taking a strand between my fingers, I begin to break off the hair with double -- or multiple in most cases -- ends.

"Should we report him?" I ask Marla. I've been thinking about it and don't really know what to do. I don't really have any proof but raising the alarm might help.

"Maybe we should ask Riley first?" Marla suggests. "She already hates us because we hate her boyfriend. Imagine if her dad went to jail because of us."

I nod quickly. It's not like I want to go to the cops and talk about this experience. It was scary on its own and -- with neither Mom nor Dad on my side -- who would even believe me? I'm not even sure what happened.

"Okay, let's put this all behind us," Marla says after a while and I can tell she's finally moving on. "What can we do to make this day a little better and not a total waste of time?"

A smile slides onto my lips and I sniff again. "We can eat a tub of ice-cream," I suggest. "But I don't have any."

Marla smiles. "Okay, well, in that case ... I can drive to the local store and get some?"

I flash a bright smile. "You're the best."

Laughing a little, Marle gets to her feet and walks over to kiss me on the cheek.

"I'll be back in fifteen minutes," she tells me and I nod. "Don't think too much till then. How about you pick out a movie and I can stay the night?"

"I was hoping you'd say that." I beam.

"We can watch Pirates of the Caribbean again."

"Oh, no no no, we're not watching that. I'm picking out the shittiest, cheesiest, lowest-IMDB-rated rom-com I can find on the free web."