I Love To Hate You

Chapter 28: "Don't be fooled, she could have hidden the body in the lift."

“What we are about to tell you must never be mentioned outside of this flat okay?” Noah said looking me dead in the eye and wearing a very serious expression on his face.

I bit my lip to stop myself from smiling and nodded.

“Sure, but dude, if you ask me to sign some contract in blood and sell my soul then…” I was cut off with Noah throwing a bottle cap at me.

“You can at least try to take this seriously Little E!” Noah sighed leaning back into the sofa and taking a heavy gulp of his beer.

“I am! You just take things too seriously, God! Noah who the hell am I going to tell? Santa?” I asked my eyebrows raised. He just shook his head and raked his empty hand through his hair.

“She knows what’s at cost mate, we just have to tell her now.” Jaden said also swigging from his beer bottle.

My own was sitting on the coffee table in case of emergency. Like finding out Luke was a murder or something.

“Yes, now can we please speed this up or are you hoping I will die of old age and you don’t have to tell me?”

They both sighed and gave me the same: “shut the fuck up” look. It was highly amusing.

“Fine! Let’s start at the beginning then, Luke’s family.”

Noah began and the atmosphere suddenly matched his tone. I leaned forward my curiosity spiking, I never knew anything about any of the guys family: well except Nicolas and a little bit about Noah’s Dad wanting to send him to boarding school.

I never expected to find out about his family.

“Basically, Luke is a lot like you Little E. He isn’t exactly rich. He got into school on a Math scholarship and is close to losing it, but our families have sorted things out for him.” Noah said indicating to Jaden and himself, I was guessing he meant Nicolas too.

“Yeah, and he was a right little geek too,” Jaden said smiling a little.

“Until his Dad went to prison. That’s when things started going to shit. Luke’s Mum was pregnant at the time and couldn’t work so Luke took on about five jobs to pay all the bills but it still wasn’t enough.”

Luke’s behaviour to half the people in school started to make sense now: he hated people who had money so easily. I wonder why he is such good friends with Jaden, Noah and Nicolas then.

“We offered to help him out, but he wouldn’t let us.” Jaden said his tone sorrowful.

“When the baby came things got worse and well that’s when Luke lost it. He completely changed, wouldn’t tell us anything, started not coming in to school and his scholarship was almost gone.” Noah said looking into his now empty beer bottle.

I watched their sadness and realised that this whole time they had been worried about their friend. So worried that they resorted to stalking him.

I was just extremely nosy.

“Then we found out he has been going to some dodgy people at all times of the night, now I know what you think about us Elly: that we are these big bad asses that probably know all the wrong people. Sure we get into trouble; but we have never gone into drugs or anything like that. Well...The rare joint and hash brownie an exception.” Jaden seemed really determined to make this point clear.

I chose to ignore the hash brownie comment.

“I know.” I said nodding my voice coming out all tight.

“One of these guys is the biggest drug dealers around Little E, and last month we found out from one of our friends that Luke was dealing at his party. Dealing drugs.”