Your Sweet Talk Always Was A Bit Much

Your Sweet Talk Always Was A Bit Much Chapter 4

Picking me up from school became a habit for Lex. On average he’d text me three days a week to tell me he’d be waiting for me. He usually took his car and left the motorcycle at home, after I told him I preferred the car. Truth be told, I didn’t mind riding on the back of the bike, but I hated having to take my hair out of a bun to put the helmet on. My hair had gotten ridiculously long, and I didn’t want to cut it short, but I also didn’t want to wear it down. I wasn’t even really sure why, so I didn’t give him that as the reason. He probably thought I was scared, and I think he liked that. It made him feel manly or something. Which was just another reminder of why I wasn’t entirely comfortable being with him. But he was perfectly nice to me, and even though I expected it to stop any day now, he looked at me like I could do no wrong.

Eventually I decided he could come along with me to some performances of my band, although that didn’t turn out very well. The main venue we played at was Joe’s, this old music bar that I had been going to for years with my brother. Joe let my brother’s friends play even though they were underage, and I had always tagged along, even when I was eleven.

When I got older and the boys’ band actually took off I started performing too. Joe was like a father to me, and Carl, the manager, always had a soft spot for me. So they let us practice in the afternoon a couple days a week and in exchange we filled in when one of their bookings backed out. Although recently Carl had started booking us in our own right, which meant he must think we were improving. That in itself was golden praise – if Carl knew anything, it was music.

I let Lex tag along to a few performances, but the reception he received from Joe, Dave the bouncer, and others was less than welcoming. I wasn’t sure why, but I assumed it was something about our age difference, although that had never been a problem in the past. Lex was twenty-four while I was just eighteen, but I had been fifteen when I started dating Noah who was eighteen at the time, and that seemed like a more relevant age difference than eighteen and twenty-four.

Lex also didn’t know much about music. He never complained, because I think he was happy to come with me, but I could tell he didn’t appreciate the music. He’d say it was good, or that I looked sexy on stage, but that was about it. That was another way I knew I didn’t really care about Lex: I didn’t write any songs about him. Not even any of the solo acoustic songs that I wrote but didn’t perform with the band. I felt kind of bad about that, but I pushed it back.

Yesterday afternoon Lex told me he couldn’t pick me up today, although he had been pretty evasive as to why. I had to get over to Littleton for practice, so I was a bit disappointed. He offered me his car for the day, which I gladly accepted, but he acted weird about dropping the car off. I would have driven him home, but he quickly declined and said he was meeting a friend a couple blocks down and that he’d get a ride from him. Come to think of it, I had never seen Lex’s place. He either took me out or we were at Damien’s place, but never his place.

I shook my head to rid myself of that train of thought, but not soon enough. My chemistry teacher had already noticed me being distracted and immediately gave me detention for it. I sighed. Henderson was known through out the school as being quite the bastard.

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            I got out of detention and walked to the parking lot, glad that Lex had lent me his car for today, I would never have made it on time otherwise. I spotted Blake coming out of the school and as I was feeling sociable, called over to him. “Detention?”

            His head snapped in my direction and once he recognized me he smiled. “Yup. Keller. You?”

            “Henderson.”