Push & Gravity

1

"After all that's happened, a class is worth shit."

He stayed in place— He couldn't argue with that and she knew it. But he still refused to look at her.

"I needed to thank you," she started, voicing the words she'd practiced a hundred times in her head. "I want you to know that, no matter what anyone in this school thinks, you guys are my heroes. Without you, who knows what would've happened to me. And... and I know that it was you who fought to use the money on me—"

"We all wanted to avoid you getting killed," he said flatly. His eyes were on hers but gave away nothing. It hurt to see that, to contrast it to the warm, sweet way he once looked at her. "Except Raúl, but he's a selfish asshole. So save your thanks."

He tried to leave again but she blocked his path.

"I wanted to return this to you." She pulled out the stack of bills from her purse. "It's your money. The one you got for me by selling your phone. Since you guys ended up using Raúl's money to pay the dealers, I didn't use it, so..."

"I don't want it," Javier said with disdain. "You can give it to Raúl to repay him if you want, but I don't want anything from you, and even less from him."

"Javi..."

"Don't call me that," he spat.

He walked away from her, right some steps through the entrance.

"I didn't sleep with your dad!" Natalia said, in one last desperate attempt to get him to listen. Javier stopped, so she reached him and kept talking as fast as she could. "The plan was for Maria to film him kissing me so we could get the money by threatening him to give it to the media, it was never going to go further than that."

Javier turned around, his face the image of contained hatred. "Assume I believe you. That only means that while I was trying to help you, you sought out my dad to extort him. You realized he was the one with the money so you went after him, huh?" He accused.

"I didn't seek him out, he... he called me."

Javier's face contorted in confusion. "...What?"

Natalia gulped. She didn't want this, but if she didn't tell him the whole truth now, she never would.

"I met him through an app of Sugar Daddies. I was desperate, I really needed money, so I talked to old men. One asked me out to dinner and it turned out to be your dad— But Javier, I swear I didn't know it was him, I swear, I left the moment I realized who he was. But then the days went by, and they were going to kill me—"

"Wait, wait, wait. You're saying my dad was on a Sugar Daddies app?" He said incredulous, and a not short amount of perturbed.

"I have screenshots," she said, quickly reaching for her phone and entering her gallery. "Tons of proof. He deleted his profile after, but I had already recollected it." She showed him the screen, swiping through images. "He didn't use his real name, that's how I didn't know at the beginning. You can see how he asked me out to dinner. María went with me that day because she was worried. She can also—"

"When was this?"

Natalia looked up to find him staring at her phone with a strange, blood-chillingly neutral expression.

"...What?"

He looked at her, serious and piercing. "The day you met with my dad, when was it."

Natalia retracted her phone slowly. She felt small, so small under his gaze. For the millionth time in the last months, she wished she could go back in time and stop herself from making so many stupid, life-ruining decisions.

But she couldn't take any of it back any more than he could. And she owed this to him, owed her life to him.

So she ruined it all over for him.

"The night you invited me over to your house."

Silence.

Nothing.

Then Javier's back was to her as he walked away rapidly.

She sped after him and grabbed him by the arm. "Javier—"

"Don't touch me," he all but growled as he broke free, his eyes shining with hurt and his face red with barely contained emotions. "My dad disgusts me but at least I always knew he was a bad person, but you? You kept quiet about something as big as this, and not content with that, you got your sister involved and went to hook up with him. So I'm telling you again what I did before: stay away from me."

"But I like you," she sobbed pathetically, but she needed to say it, her heart yelled for her to just beg until he forgave her.

But her tears had made no difference then and they made no difference now.

"If you really liked me, you would've told me," Javier sentenced, like a knife in her gut, before turning away one final time.

Natalia could do nothing but stare through misty eyes as he walked away from her. 

...

..

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