Faster Than Your Bullets

Chapter 22

"Yeah...yeah." In the end he nods, as if paying an effort to be persuasive. "The bloke's your best mate. You should be there." Then, after a while of hesitant consideration, he adds. "I'll drive you."

Incredulity rises in me. "You will?"

With a note of a suppressed groan in his voice, Drew leans his head backward and mumbles. "We had a deal."

In the next five minutes of scurrying out on the street and climbing on the first taxi I hitchhiked, Drew has really proven himself and his perfect ability to be an annoying asshole at the worst times possible.

"Bradley spelt 'boulevard' wrong." A mocking whistle escapes his lips as he scans the text. I kick his shin, accidentally leaving a dirt print of the sole of my shoe on the cheap leather seat cover, earning a frown from the driver.

"Well his chick got burned, what the hell d'you think he was like?" I pause for something bitchy to spark. "And shut up. People's known you're the fucking male version of Jane Austen already."

Truth is, I'm not one hundred percent sure how to spell "boulevard", either.

Drew shrugs and mutters something about he'd very like to be the male version of Jane Austen. I aim for his shin again and the taxi driver threatens to chuck us out.

Silent hangs over the atmosphere. The discomfort pokes my stomach from inside every once in a while, somehow created the feeling as if my head is whirling around on my neck. It eventually becomes too realistic I involuntarily grab my hair and shut my eyes, mentally securing myself. But in the darkness behind my lids, images and thoughts explode again, chill and heat simultaneously jump and roar their way through my body, along my spine and arms and legs. I might have killed Scarlett. What if she doesn't make it? Acid burns can be bad on many levels. What would I tell Peter if something terrible happened? Would I even tell him? He would hate me for the rest of his life if I did. In his mind, I'm still his little vulnerable princess in pink or some shit like that. Not a ...maleficent, nefarious psychopath throwing acid on people. Most definitely not on his girlfriend's head. Maybe I just won't tell him. Then what? Live with a lie until death? I can do that. I've lived with lies and secrets since forever. But to look into his eyes and say I'm sorry for what happened to Scarlett is not in my ability. It's too hypocritical. I spent more than ten years of my life with a hypocritical family and have vowed to never blend in with them. And it strikes me that I can't. I can't lie to Peter. Peter is Peter. He's my best friend. The biggest part in my life. And I treasure him more than any person I've ever been with, at least next to my mother. But she's dead. She wasn't there for me like he did. She didn't teach me how to kill people on video games. She didn't freak out with me when I learned what a period is in the hard way. She didn't hold me until I fell asleep in her shirt with her hand in my hair on the worst night of my life. She didn't. Peter did. And though I'm no longer a weakling that needs attention from him every one and a half hours, we both know very well that I need him. And he needs me, too. I was there when no one was around, when his parents were out of town and he was afraid of booming thunders. I crawled onto his bed and told him that lightning were the hidden brushstrokes angels painted on the sky with the ink so secret that on rain can make it visible, and only for splits of seconds. I was his wise adviser when he had his first crush ever. We went out with his mother to buy him a suit; he trusted my judgement more than his mom's; and I picked him a bouquet of roses for him to present to the girl. I watched him practiced kissing his palm in his bathroom when we were fourteen and ensured him that was okay. And when his first girlfriend dumped him, I was the one who took his hand and dragged him to the zoo, where we rhymed her names with almost everything at the place. The friendship has been dramatic but we're kinda okay with that. And now I am going to ruin it. Confessing or hiding result to the same thing after all.