Yours Truly, Ramona

chapter thirty four | before.

*possible trigger warning*

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How I convinced Owen to let me go to Luis' house is beyond me. He's convinced I'm going to try to kill myself again, so trying to leave the house is a big no-no. The only reason he let me go is because I let him track my location through his phone.

I don't blame him. After the stunt I pulled this morning at the bridge, he should be worried about me trying to kill myself again—I probably will. I'd do it today if I didn't actually have somewhere to be.

I walk down the upstairs hallway of Luis' house with silent steps and approach his room with my feet sinking into the fluffy, ivory carpet with each step. I took the courtesy of letting myself in, due to the fact that both of his parents aren't home, and I knew that his deaf ass wasn't going to hear me knocking from upstairs in his room.

I step over to Luis' doorway and push on the cracked-open door to reveal his bedroom. He's standing at his desk and rearranging his stack of vinyls, although when he sees me standing in his doorway, he puts the records down.

"Hey," I state with a sheepish kind of wave.

He looks more tired than usual, with his baggy hazel eyes and tuft of brown fluff sticking up from his normally combed down hair.

His room is actually clean for once, too, which is an unusual sight. From his newly organized vinyls on his desk to the absence of dirty laundry, it's clear that he's taken some time to clean his shit up.

Luis shoots me some kind of awkward smile as he reaches up to rub the back of his neck.

"Hey."

His awkward composure is something that I pick up on, but I try to keep from making things weirder and instead I try to act as normal as possible. My feet bring me over to his neatly made bed and I plop down on his navy blue sheets with a friendly smile.

"You needed to tell me something?"

I watch Luis approach me from his desk, and he takes a seat next to me on his bed. He's not as carefree as I am, though, and he looks tense and uneasy as he stares at his hands.

I will say, from the angle that I'm looking at Luis from, his jawline looks like it could cut glass. You never notice how sharp someone's jawline is until you look at it from up close.

"Are you really cutting yourself?"

His words split through the quiet air and make my grin drop. I sit up in his bed with a heavy sigh, and for a moment I think about lying. I think that maybe, I can save my image and make it all out to be a stupid rumor. But Luis deserves to know, and no matter how badly I want to save my image, I don't want to lie anymore. I'm sick of the games and the manipulation.

"I wish I could lie to you," I begin. Luis turns to look at me in pitiful disbelief. His look makes my heart drop in my chest, and I can see from the pain in his eyes that this hurts him more than I would've thought. He looks like someone's just broken his pure little heart, and I hate that that person had to be me.

I curl my fingers to the edge of my jacket sleeve and pull it up only about an inch, revealing the lines that dot and cross my wrist like an old cutting board.

"Why?" he whispers. He brings his stare up from my wrist and looks into me with glassy eyes. I almost feel like joining him in the crying, just because of how heartbroken he looks.

But I force myself to look away from his intense stare to keep from breaking down, and I wish more than anything that he didn't have to know about it. It would be so much simpler.