No More Tears, Julian (Indignation)

Pull Release (14)

Pull Release

   "Hey. How are you feeling?" Jim asks Alyssa when her eyes finally open from her hours of sleep.

She sits up with a new smile. It's a smile of acceptance towards the future she'll be leading from now on. "I feel guiltless."

He scrunches his eyebrows at her. "What?"

"Ignore me." She says before she admits why she feels guiltless. Her eyes widen when she really sees Jim. With everything that has been happening to her lately, she didn't notice his recovery. "You look new." She states with excitement raising her voice.

He chuckles. "It's taken you long enough."

"I'm sorry. I feel so lost now." She chuckles.

"You should. That psycho looked like he was going to kill you three days ago."

She frowns. "Three days ago?"

"Your dad came here with some IV and put you to sleep. I'm not sure what he gave you, but he said that you needed your rest. He actually took out the IV a few hours ago. He was going to stay until you woke up, but he had an emergency at the hospital."

"Oh."

"Look I know that you might not want to hear this, but Brandon and I don't want you to ever see Julian again. Not after what we witnessed."

"You don't understand Jim. It's not his fault."

"He had a sword against your neck." He argues. "In battle, that's called being life threatened."

"If you only knew."

"Then tell me."

"I can't. All I can tell you is that Julian isn't who we thought he was. Everything is my fault."

"You're not making sense."

"I know." She nods. An idea starts forming in her head. "Remember that pool party we were talking about?" She sits up, letting her bread spread slide down to the waist of her body.

"Yes, I do."

"We should have it tonight." She really needs a distraction for at least one night.

"Actually remember the day you had that important talk with your parents?"

"Yeah? You left with Brandon to do some guy stuff and then get ice cream, which you both never brought me."

He ignores her whining. "We went to talk to Vince, Daniel, and Joey." He's talking about the band members of his old band before he left for the military. "We set up a date for the pool party performance and it's actually tonight. Brandon commented on it to Dev when he was here and Dev pushed us to have it tonight. That's why he took out the IV. He said that you needed the distraction so... house party tonight!" He faked a cheer.

"Wow, a lot has happened since my Dad knocked me out with his medicine stuff."

"Not a lot has happened. The decorations still need to be put, but-"

"No, no, and no. You and Brandon can go play while I do the decorations. Remember last time you both planned that surprise party for me?" She remembers how excited they were at hiding the surprise from her. It was sweet, but when she saw the decorations in her yard she wanted to cry. They had set up everything in pink. The entire theme was Barbie. She never saw so much pink in her life. What was ridiculous about it was that she was sixteen. She left the Barbie doll stage at the age of seven. It just didn't make sense.