"So Jake was asking if we were dating." Liam says breaking a silence. We were still sitting on the couch and he said he would stay so I wasn't alone.
"And?" I urge at the mention of Jake.
"I said what's it to him and he laughed. Apparently you guys had a thing or-"
"No. We didn't." I say abruptly, trying to make it as clear as possible.
"I don't care if you did, but I do care if you're lying to me. I don't think there's a reason why you should lie-"
"I'm not lying." I said in an even more defensive tone. I'm not lying. "It's just...," I struggled with stringing my words together. "We talked over the summer and he invited me over to his house when school started. If he had sex with me then he would win a stupid game between him and his football friends." I tell him with no emotion.
"I'm going to kill him." I heard Liam mutter under his breath. "How could someone be such an asshole?"
"I don't know, but it's fine. It's in the past and nothing happened-"
"Yeah, besides him breaking you. Making you into some little game when you're so much more than that." He said in an increasingly louder voice. It was a side of him that I only saw that one night at the beach.
"Liam, really I don't-" a knock on the doorbell interrupted my sentence. I get up to open the door and see Autumn.
"Hey," I say softly, she was fragile. More fragile than anyone else. She was carrying life for gods sakes.
"Hi." She breathes as the corners of her lips turn upward. "James said that I needed to get out of the hospital. And he's right, the stress isn't good for the baby anyways." She said. It was a new side of her. A more accepting side.
"Yeah, of course." I tell her stepping aside to let her in. "Autumn this is Liam, my friend. Liam this is Autumn, my brothers girlfriend." I say.
They shake hands as Autumn takes a seat on the couch. She was the knife that was cutting through the tension that was created prior upon her arrival.
"I wasn't interrupting anything..." she trails off, realizing that she was in fact the knife.
"No. What's there to interrupt?" I say with an awkward laugh involved. Following that awkward laugh was an awkward silence. That is until Liam broke it.
"I should get going." He said softly. "My Dad wants me home soon anyways." A part of me felt guilty, but I wasn't sure why.
"I'll walk you out." I offer as I follow him to the door. After closing the door We start walking towards his car. "We're cool, right?" I ask hesitantly.
"Why wouldn't we be?" He said it in a tone that was unreadable. "I mean we spend so much time together, and I feel close to you. Like there's nothing to hide from you because that's how close we've gotten, and you still hesitate to tell the truth."
"What do you mean?" I ask, even though I knew exactly what he meant.
"You know what I mean. I've asked if anything happened between you and Jake before and you said no. I asked again today and still no. I had to guilt you into telling the truth, instead of you just saying it." He took a pause and a breath before continuing. "Why?"
"I'm not open to people like that. It takes a while for me to fully trust-"
"I've given no reason for you not to trust me."
"I know, but it's not like that." I say in a strained voice.
"Then what's it like." He said it as a statement rather than a question.
It's like my mom. Someone betrayed her trust somehow in some way, and that prompted someone to murder her, kill her, take away her life, and take a mother away from her kids. Trust is complex thing that I'm not just going to give out to anyone and everyone. If I do, then I'm potentially putting my life on the line.
"It's complicated." I say suddenly emotionless. "And I can't tell you, but know that it's nothing you did. I'm just messed up."
I stare into Liam's eyes and watch them soften. He knew that he hit scar tissue. And when you hit scar tissue, it hurts even more than the injury that caused it to scar in the first place.
