You know that awkward moment you sometimes experience after a random kiss. Those kisses that are had outside of relationships often end in these because you don’t know where the kiss is going to take you. Well, you would think that this kiss would end in a big one, because a) I had spent a long time trying to convince myself that Josh absolutely wasn’t into me, b) we weren’t in a relationship or anything, so this could completely destroy our friendship and c) the kiss was totally not allowed to happen, since he was my teacher and all. So yeah, all that should add up to one mega dot-dot-dot moment, but when he pulled away, he smiled, I smiled, and he kissed me again.
“You have no clue how long I’ve been waiting to do that,” he sighed, with a shaky laugh, tucking a strand of hair neatly behind me ear.
“Ditto,” I agreed, pulling him back to me. I threaded my fingers through his hair, tugging gently and pulling it on end. He smiled against my lips, pulling me closer, making me fall back against the couch. I laughed, my arms tightening around his neck as he deepened the kiss.
His touch gave me an unbelievable thrill, a thrill that I never could have imagined. It was all so new, the passion that I was feeling, paired with the deep feeling of hunger and desperation I could feel bubbling up inside of me. It’s not like he’s my first kiss or anything, I mean, I’m 19 after all, but I’ve never felt like this. It’s cliché right, the way he sets my body on fire? But for something so clichéd and overdone, the feeling is so original, unique.
“You should get that,” I told him, pushing against his chest as the phone started to ring.
“They’ll leave a message,” he mumbled, leaning back down. I couldn’t resist the kiss, and it would have been pointless to try, but I pushed him away, again, before he got another in.
“Answer it Josh,” I sighed, rolling my eyes. “It could be important.” Josh groaned, but picked himself up a little, leaning over me and pulling the phone off of the receiver.
“Hello?” he asked, sounding enough like a moody child to make me laugh behind my hand. He glared at me, sticking his tongue out before reply to whatever the person on the other line said. “And this is regarding?”
There was a long pause and Josh stood, moving completely away from me to the other side. “What do you mean?” he asked into the phone, his voice low and confused. “And you’re sure?....... Not that I know of know, we had never spoken….... I’m free next weekend…… Yea, that’s good……. Thank you.” He walked back to the couch, putting the phone back down on the receiver. I was tempted to ask who it was, but I didn’t want to impose. He had a stricken, disbelieving look on his face.
“Josh?” I said hesitantly. “Are you okay?” He looked at me then, and a smile broke across his face.
“I’m fine,” he said, laughing slightly, his smile turning to a grin. “Perfect. Just a little shell-shocked.”
“Can… Can I ask what that was about?” I asked, pointing to the phone.
“It’s a surprise.” He smirked, leaning down to kiss me quickly. “And I’m really sorry, but I need to take you somewhere else. Not home necessarily, if you want to go to Nicole’s or something, but there are some things I really need to get in order.”
“Okay…,” I said, confused, but going along with him. “I can go home.”
“You sure? I’m fine with taking you somewhere else.”
“I’m sure Josh,” I laughed rolling my eyes, and he pulled me up off the couch.
“Go get your stuff then. The sooner I get this done, the better.” I shook my head at his strange behavior, but went to grab my bag, which already had everything I needed in it. He rushed me out to the car, still strangely giddy.
“I am expecting an explanation for this eventually,” I told him as he jumped into the driver’s seat.
“You’ll get one soon,” he replied.
“So, uh… What are we?” I asked nervously as we stopped at a light, honestly confused as to where we stood.
“Honestly, I’m not sure. But we can sort that out later. Right now all that matters is this.”
I was about to ask what he was talking about. I mean, we were sitting in a car, behind two other cars, at a stop light. It wasn’t the most amazing, marvelous thing I’d experience. If anything, it was just annoying, because the sensor in this light was broken or something so it literally took about ten minutes to change colors. But the question was answered before it was asked when Josh leaned over and pressed his lips lightly against mine. He pulled away before I even realized what he did, a triumphant smirk on his lips as he directed his attention to the now moving traffic.
“That’s not cool,” I muttered, crossing my arms.
“What?”
“Going away before I can kiss you back.” He laughed, shrugging.
“I don’t control the traffic lights!”
He pulled up outside my house, parking at the edge of the road.
“Bye!” I said, opening the door quickly and jumping.
“Wait a minute! So I don’t get a kiss goodbye?”
“No,” I said, with a smirk of my own, slamming the door in his face. I jogged a little ways up my drive way before turning to wave cheerily at him, running the rest of the way. He totally deserved that.
I closed the house’s door, received by silence like usual. I dumped my bag off to the side, after getting my hair dye out of it. Black really did suit me better. I went up to my bathroom and went through the process until my hair was back in the style it was before Sophia made me go all normal on Josh’s ass.
“Where did you go, Cynthia?” Marcus asked, speaking from my bed. I guess he had come in while I was in the bathroom.
“A friend’s,” I replied vaguely.
“You weren’t at Nicole’s,” he pressed.
“A different friend’s.”
“You don’t have any other friends!”
“Thanks,” I said, rolling my eyes. “My ego can always use a knock down.”
“So where were you?”
“It’s really none of your business.” He sighed leaning back on my bed.
“I just worry about you sometimes. I don’t know what I would do if anything happened to you. And I want to know where you were so I don’t have to worry when you go there again. I can just call or something.”
“Or maybe,” I said back, “You could just trust me, for once, and not have to know my exact location. You were the one who said I should leave, after all.”
“What?!” he demanded. “Don’t go! I know I said you should but…. You know I love you Cynthia.”
“I know Marcus. Calm down already. I wouldn’t have anywhere to go anyway.”
“Well you do have a mysterious new friend…”
“Staying at his house is one thing. Living with him though? That’s ridiculous.”
“Him?” Marcus asked, stiffening slowly.
“Yes Marcus, he is a him.”
“No,” he said simply, shaking his head. “You can’t stay at a guy’s house. How well do you know him anyway? You’ve never mentioned a guy friend. For all you know, he might try and rape you during the night or something.”
“First of all, I’ve known him for a while. Secondly, I don’t tell you everything, especially not everything about my friends. The last time I actively kept you up to date on my life, you ended up dating my best friend. You know, she still hasn’t spoken to me, even after three years. And lastly, he will not try to rape me, and that is just about the stupid thing I have ever heard you say in my whole life.”
“Just… Tell me where you’re going to be next time…”
“What ever,” I dismissed, brushing him off. “Now, I’m going down stairs to get some food, and I am going to come back up to watch TV. Alone. As in, get out of my room.”
Marcus jumped off my bed and followed me down to the kitchen, the whole way dropping aggravating hints on how I should tell him who exactly the guy was. I was more than slightly tempted to find something to tell him, since I could hardly tell him the truth. I’m sure saying “Oh yea, I slept over at my teacher’s house, but got upset with him because he didn’t want to kiss me, but, good news, it turned out he did! And then we made out and he dropped me home,” would just go perfectly with him. No way he would turn murderous and, not only kill Josh, but any other guy who looked my way. The only name that really popped into my mind was Gar, but I doubted he would appreciate that. I barely knew him, and if my brother called him up and interrogated him about his intentions to rape me, I highly doubted that he would ever speak to me again. All chances of friendship, out the window. It would be pretty fun though…
I laughed softly to myself as I walked down the stairs. That would be really funny actually. Gar didn’t really seem like a person who liked confrontation, and if one word could describe Marcus in his “big brother” mode, it was confrontational.
The kitchen was basically empty. Well, I thought of it as empty, even though there was food everywhere. I didn’t want to eat any of it. Most of it was Shianne’s low-fat cardboard crap, and I’m hardly going to put that in my mouth. I finally found a banana, which wasn’t ideal, but it would work. Peeling away the rubbery skin, I turned.
And immediately bumped into Marcus, making me drop my banana on the floor. How depressing.
“It took me forever to find that,” I growled.
“Just a banana.”
“Just a banana?” I demanded. “Just a banana? THAT WAS MY BANANA!” I ran away from him, which I’m sure he found quite shocking, into the living room, where I happened to know a nice, Styrofoam bat resided. I could beat him over the head with it without causing too much damage. A few steps in though, I tried to back pedal, but my forward momentum took me to the ground instead. I landed quite nicely actually, if not for the foot that immediately dug in between my shoulder blades.
I hand tightened in my hair, pulling me up off the ground. I winced, pressing my hands to my scalp, trying to relieve the tension.
“What is this?” he asked, his voice smooth and calm. My eyes focused through the pain, on what he was dangling in front of my face. My heart jerked, shuddering in my chest, and for a moment, I thought it was really going to stop this time. I thought that after all those beatings, and trips to the hospital, I was finally going to die. My heart jerked, and shook, and ached, but it did not stop. I wasn’t sure if I was grateful.
Hanging in front of my face was a CD. The exact CD that I now wished that I had destroyed, rather than sticking in my bag, where he had somehow found it. He must have watched it. He had to have watched it, otherwise he wouldn’t be so angry. He released my hair, only to grab my cast-encased wrist, twisting it roughly.
“What is it?”
“I-I don’t know!” I shouted out.
“Don’t lie to me you little whore,” he growled, his breath fanning down my neck.
“I’m not, I’m not,” I insisted, even though I was. Deny, deny, deny. “I don’t know, I don’t!” He pulled against my wrist, my knees buckling as he jerked me. My shoulder strained as I stumbled and I bit down hard on my lower lip, as if it would take away the pain. He dragged me, never caring of my pain, up the stairs, and I worked hard to keep my footing so that I wouldn’t have to feel each and every one of those sharp edges against my ribs. He jerked at the bathroom door, the wood bending and groaning, as he didn’t twist the handle right away.
“Look at you,” he growled lowly in my eye, forcing me to bend over the sink, leaving me eye-to-eye with my own reflection in the mirror. “You look just like her. If you look just like her, then why are you such a little WHORE?”
“I’M SORRY!” I sobbed, no longer sure what I was supposed to be apologizing for. What was I ever apologizing for? All these years, why had I constantly been saying sorry?
He gripped me tightly by the back of my head, slamming my face forward even further so that it met the cool glass of the mirror. It shattered under my skin. I could feel it, digging in. It was uncomfortable, but the pain had yet to hit me.
My father had let go of me, leaving me to fall to the ground. I could still feel the shards and slivers of glass stuck in my face, neck and arm. I passed out before I even felt the pain.
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You know, I'm honestly going to say two more chapters. Well, one and an epilouge. I have no plans on dragging this out, and I'm not going to make unnessassary chapters. They're are going to be some lose ends, but thats just because I added pointless things for now reason.
It shouldn't be too long between uploads, because of the whole two chapters thing...