Only of You

Chapter Five

When I woke up for school the next day my mom was all in a mood, I hadn't even seen her since the weekend, when she punched me in the damn eyebrow. She hadn't even came home the night before, and Greg was even worrying about her. He kept lurking around the house like some damn imbecile, I think he was trying to get some sympathy from me or something, but I just sat in my room, pretending I was doing homework.

Funny thing is, I was sitting there doing absolutely nothing, so I probably should have just done my homework, but I couldn't stop thinking about Billie Joe, so I decided not to even bother with the homework. If I failed I didn't really care. It seemed like a damn waste of time to me.

So anyway, I was sitting on my bed thinking of Billie Joe and the way he had brought the shirt for me. I was wearing it, I put it on as soon as I got home from school. I was cheery as hell, I even danced around my bedroom in it. It smelled like Billie Joe, so I kept smelling it every now and then, as damn weird as that sounds. It smelled of weed, mixed with what smelled like washing detergent. At least I knew his mom had washed the shirt before he gave it to me. It still smelled like him though. I kept grinning about that.

It was about ten o'clock at night when Greg finally gave up lurking around, and I started to feel sorry for the guy, so I decided to give him some company while he was watching the tube. I had never in my life watched TV with him before, but like I said I was feeling sorry for him. He was kind of a loner, I don't know why my mom started dating him, it's not like he was good looking or anything. He was older than her too, and he was fat as hell. He didn't even try to make himself look better, he just walked around the house in this white shirt with stains all down the front of it, and a pair of blue jeans. He looked like a real old creep. It's weird, you can just tell someones a creep by looking at them sometimes. But, for some reason, even though he was a damn creep, I felt sorry as hell for him. Maybe he was just a creep because nobody liked him. He didn't ever even talk about his family, so I figured they didn't like him either.

When I came out of my room and walked into the lounge room, he was so damn shocked about it that he stood up, like it was the polite thing to do in my presence, like I was superior to him or something. I didn't say anything, I just sat on the ground in front of the coffee table. I didn't really wanna sit next to him on the couch, y'know, because he was weird and all. I kind of sat there, staring at the tube for a while, not even paying attention to what was on the screen, before I spoke to him. I asked him a question I had been thinking about for a while, because like I said, he never talked about his family.

I tilted my head a little, to peer over my shoulder a bit when I spoke. "Hey, Greg.."

His eyes flickered toward me quick as hell, "what is it?" he asked, making his eyebrows press together.

"Where is your family?" It kind of slipped out of my mouth without me thinking it out properly, maybe I shouldn't have said it so blatantly, but I wanted to know, so I wasn't gonna beat around the damn bush about it.

"I don't really - why? why do ya wanna know? what's your mom been saying?"

For half a second I thought he was gonna tell me, but I didn't understand what he was so on edge about. He was a damn lunatic. "Nothin', nothin'. Don't worry, I was just curious, is all."

He went silent after that, and I kept sitting there for about ten minutes. He didn't seem to enjoy my company, so I figured he was a lost cause. It wasn't like I cared about him that much anyway, I just felt kind of sad for him for some reason. But, that feeling went away when I realised he wasn't going to even appreciate that I was trying to be nice to him, so I decided to go back to my room.

I didn't even look at him when I walked out of the room, but he called out my name as I reached the hall, so I turned back to see what he had to say.

He kind of just stared at me, like he was either trying to think of something to say, or he was trying to figure out what the hell I was thinking. Then he said, "I don't have parents, it was always me and my brother growing up. He died last year though. Your mom... she knew him."