After Harry left the next morning, Michael came fairly soon after to pick me up and drive. "He pissed me off the other night, you know." Michael said with his gaze fixed hard on the road in front of us.
"How so?" I asked.
"It's like he values his own safety over your peace of mind."
"What are you talking about?" I asked, rolling my eyes. Sometimes I thought maybe I was being stupid. Maybe it was a bad idea to be with Harry. Hell, even his own friends would tell me that.
"Well, obviously he cares about you, but the other night it was like he cared about himself more."
"I still don't know what you're talking about. He literally has tried to kill himself so I don't imagine that he cares very much about himself." I mumbled, looking over at Michael who just lifted an eyebrow. "And that doesn't mean that he doesn't care about me very much, ok?"
"When the officers showed up, they said that they wanted to talk to us so they could figure out who had done that to you. As much as I hate cops-"
"You really do. You couldn't just cooperate. You didn't even have any weapons on you and you were still going to put up a fight when they said that they were going to search us."
"Yeah, thanks to you kicking my knife out of my hand. You owe me a new one for that. I was never able to find it. Someone else probably has it now. And besides, if you'd let me finish what I was trying to say..." he glared at me and I held me hands up in defense. "As much as I hate cops, I was willing to go down to the station and talk it out with them. I'm surprised that they'd cut you. They always cut us but that's just because they know that we'd never go to the police. That would be essentially turning ourselves in. But you're not one of us. And besides that, it'd be the perfect way to get them off of our backs for a little while. Anyway, I would have gone. But Harry flipped the fuck out and refused. For a minute, I thought he was going to do something crazy and keep you from going. I want them to pay for what they did to you."
"Why?" I asked, suddenly, snapping my head in his direction. As much as I appreciated it, I didn't want any of them taking the fall for me deciding that I wanted to go to a fight with them.
"Because I care about you?" he said, almost as if it were a question. As if it were obvious and I should have already known that. "And Harry says he does, but he doesn't seem to act like it anymore." he scoffed.
"Yes he does. He just doesn't want any one of you to get thrown in jail. Especially not you. I don't know if you understand this, but you're literally supposed to be sitting in a prison cell right now, waiting until your trial date. You're so lucky that you get to walk around like a free man. You never should have been there in the first place and Harry was just covering your ass. If you went down to the police station with me, you would have been toast. Sometimes one of us has to take the fall to keep the rest of us safe and under the radar."
"And that's my problem, ok? You're not one of us, Charlotte. I don't want you to get hurt because of the stupid shit that I do." he replied. I looked over at him and glared.
"Ok, I get that I'm not one of your little honorary gang members, but I am one of you. You're all my family. And if something happens to any single one of you, it effects me too."
"You don't want that."
"Actually, I do. And even if I didn't, that's how it would be anyway. Besides, it's not a big deal. It's not like anyone tried to kill me. It's fine. I'm fine. It's just a little cut. It's not even as bad as what Niall did to me the night that we met."
"We didn't know you then."
"You don't need to defend him. I'm not attacking him." I said, simply. "It's just not that big of a deal."
"Then why did you go to the police station. If it's not that big of a deal, then why even do anything about it?"
"Like I just said, to keep all of you under the radar, Michael. It wasn't a gang fight, I got attacked. Do you understand?"
"You're working with the police to take this whole thing down, aren't you?" he asked.
"I have no idea what you're talking about." I said, but it obviously wasn't true.
"Fuck." he sighed, running his hands through his hair.
"Listen, we talked about this. And it kind of seemed like-"
"Don't say it seemed like I wanted you to. I don't want you to. All I meant is that you can do whatever you want and I can't stop you. This is going to put all of us under a lot of stress."
"No one else is going to know."
"Whether they know or not- which don't interrupt me- they're not going to know. Don't worry. I'm not going to rat you out. Whether they know or not, it's going to make things a whole hell of a lot harder for all of us. And do you know how much danger this puts me in? I can't believe-"
"Michael, this is literally going to clear your name. Once all of this is over, it's going to be so painfully obvious that you're innocent."
"Listen, I don't want to talk about this anymore." he said, turning his full attention back to the road. His grip got tighter on the steering wheel and he pulled into the nearest parking lot to turn around.
"Michael, this isn't fair. Don't take me home again."
"What do you mean it isn't fair? This is my car and like I just said, I don't want to talk about it anymore."
"Then we can talk about something else." I whined. I felt like I was going to cry so if I continued to talk about the other stuff, I probably wouldn't last very long anyway. He glanced over at me but then focused on the road again without saying another word. "Michael, don't do this. We're able to talk about things." I said, but he still didn't answer. "You're being like Harry."
"Well now I see why he acts like that." he answered, simply. Immediately, tears sprung to my eyes. So everyone was going to treat me like this for the end of all time? I wanted to yell at him and tell him that that wasn't true, but I didn't have the energy. I turned toward the window and silently stared out of it for the rest of the ride back home. Once he was parked in my driveway again, I took one last look at him to see if he was going to say anything, but he didn't even look at me. His line of vision was as fixed as it was before.
"I thought we were friends."
"I don't have friends." he answered, still staring straight ahead. I slammed the door of his corvette behind me which finally made him turn to look at me so he could glare. I grit my teeth and slammed my front door behind me just like I slammed his car door and threw myself down on the couch. I cried for nearly two hours before I started to get over it. Michael was one of my best friends in this world and now he wasn't even talking to me. It was as if this situation couldn't get any worse but it did. I picked up my phone and called Harry but of course he didn't answer. He was doing that more and more lately, but I knew it wasn't his fault. Everyone was extremely busy trying to figure this whole thing out. So I called Calum and he answered immediately.
"Charlotte, are you ok?"
"Yeah, I just wanted to talk to you a-"
"Are you crying? What happened, Charlotte?"
"Nothing serious. It's just that- I don't know... I think Michael's mad at me. We were hanging out and he got mad over nothing and he immediately took me back home and he won't talk to me. I don't know what to do. I feel like he's going to be mad forever. I mean, I've never seen him like this."
"Oh that's probably-"
"Probably what?"
"He got his trial date today. He's probably just on edge because of that."
"Well, why didn't he tell me that? We're friends!"
"Don't ask me. He didn't tell me either. I heard from Harry who heard from someone at the police station. Michael didn't tell any of us. He probably doesn't even know that any of us know."
"Well, i'm going to make him talk to me."
"I wouldn't do that if I were you. He doesn't exactly respond well to that."
"He's going to have to respond to something. He can't just not talk to any of us again. When's the court date anyway?"
"It starts on the fourteenth."
"Do we know how long it's going to last yet?"
"Of course not. However long it takes to prove his innocence is however long it'll last."
"How do you feel about this whole thing? I'm sure this is putting a lot of stress on you."
"It is." he sighed. "I mean, I knew from the very beginning that I was going to be called as a witness. They let me know that almost as soon as it happened. It's just that the situation is so complicated because Barker is dead, so he can't exactly be a witness. And who else was there besides me and Michael?"
"Shouldn't that make it easier to prove his innocence if there's no one against you?"
"It's not that there's no one against us. That actually makes him look even more guilty because it seems like it was done on purpose so that there wouldn't be any witnesses."
"Weren't some of his guys there too?"
"They're trying to get in contact with them to get them as witnesses, but even if they do show up, whatever they say will be a lie. They all scattered by the time Michael got there."
"So it'll be better if they don't even get in contact with the police?"
"Seems that way." he answered. I sighed. This whole thing was so fucked up. "I feel like this is all of my fault. If I just hadn't been in the area..."
"Calum, none of this is any of our faults. It's all Barker's and his guys' fault. Anyway, I'll let you go. I'm going to try and call Michael."
"He's not going to answer."
"Then I'll go over to where he lives."
"You don't know where he lives."
Twenty minutes later, I was getting in my car, headed to Michael's house. It took some intense manipulating, but I conned the address out of Calum. Although, now he was worried that Michael really was going to hate him. And even I had to admit that he might.
When I showed up to his 'house', I was disgusted. It was basically a shack, no bigger than a trailer. I knew that none of them still lived with their parents like I did, but I knew he had enough money, if only from the gang, to afford a place at least a little bigger than this. I knocked on the door, half expecting someone else to answer it. No one answered so I knocked again, louder.
"Hold the fuck up." Yeah, it was Michael. I saw him peak out from the blinds. "Charlotte, what the hell are you doing here? Go home."
"This is where you live?"
"If I were going to let you in before, which I wasn't, I'm definitely not going to let you in now."
"Then you come outside. I want to talk to you. You're my best friend."
"I'm not your best friend. I already told you that I don't have any fucking friends."
"Yes you do."
"Name one."
"Me."
"Typically, friends aren't a giant pain in your ass and make your life harder every single damn time they're around."
"Michael," I started.
"And now you're just going to cry and run away again so what's the point in even trying to talk to me? You already knew that it was going to turn out this way."
"I'm not crying and I'm not going to, asshole. You could let me finish what I was going to say or you can keep assuming you know everything. You think I act like Harry? You act like Harry, which I guess makes sense since you're practically his clone. Don't pretend like we're not friends when you JUST spent nearly a week at my house recovering from all this bullshit."
"Yeah, I thought maybe for once it would be worth having a friend. I was wrong."
"You weren't wrong. You're just scared. And you're only scared because you got your trial date." I said, confidently. Michael was finally quiet for once. His silence lasted so long that I thought he was going to ignore me and wait until I was gone, but then finally the door opened. His head was hung low but his eyes were looking up at me. It looked like he was going to cry, but I knew him better than that. Michael would never cry in front of anyone, not even me. He still didn't say anything but took a step closer to me. I closed the gap between us and threw my arms around him. He surprised me when he actually hugged me back. "It's going to be ok."
"You don't know that."
"It won't be the worst thing we'll ever go through."
"What do you mean we? This is my business and my problem."
"No it isn't. This involves all of us. Don't make it your problem only because it's not. We're doing this together whether you think that' what you want or not."
"Charlotte,"
"No. You're not going to isolate yourself. I know that's what you think you want to do because that's what your emotions are telling you right now, but you and I both know that that's not true. If you want to get out of this alive, you're going to need a team of support behind you. And you have all of mine."
"I told you. I don't even know if I want to get out of this alive anymore."