~23~ Your Love

(Angel’s POV)

Someone was shaking me awake. I opened my eyes, reluctantly, to see it to be Joey.

“Hmm?” I hummed as a greeting. Even from the makeshift bed on Zac’s floor, I could tell it was way before sunrise.

“My sister says I have to go home,” he whispered.

“Okay,” I said. And you felt like you had to wake me up? Ugh. My head was pounding. “Are you able to drive?”

“Yeah,” he answered. “I’ll see you Monday, okay?”

“Mhmm,” I hummed, trying to go back to sleep. He kissed me and then left. Grabbing the familiar Fantastic Four throw blanket, I migrated to Zac’s couch and tried to fall back to sleep, but my brain was literally pounding so much that I had to keep tossing and turning. I was getting so fed up with it that probably an hour had passed and I just pouted. Thank you, Joey, for having a need to wake me. Sarcasm included greatly!

“Here,” a voice said. I opened my eyes to see Zac standing in front of me with a pill and glass of water.

“This won’t kill me right?” I managed to joke, taking the pill from his hand.

“If I wanted you dead, I would’ve left you in that fire,” he commented. I gulped down the pill and chugged the water. “Better?”

“Yeah…” I answered.

“Good. Now go to sleep,” he ordered, dropping a pillow on me that was previously on the floor where Joey and I slept. I watched him go back to his bed, adjust Lacy, and spoon her to fall back asleep. I swallowed hard, thinking of how the h3ll he would go from Lulu to her…and more importantly: be stupid enough to not realize that she only liked him because he saved her.

But why did I care? He wanted to be a hero…maybe because he got obsessive, fake love as a reward.

***

“Wake up,” someone growled at me.

“Good morning to you too, Sunshine,” I grumbled at Zac, who had hair sticking up in all directions as he wore his muscle shirt and gym shorts as pajamas. I sat up, rubbing my eyes, as I looked at his bed.

“Where’s the sl*t?” I thought.

“She left,” Zac hissed. Sh!t. Did I say that out loud? “Apparently I broke up with her, but I wasn’t drunk enough to forget anything. Eh, maybe it was about time.”

Wow…

I stood up and then immediately started to fall because of my headache.

“Still there, huh?” Zac asked. He left and came back with medicine and water, again. “You can stay here for the day if you want, so you don’t have to stumble through the streets with a hangover.”

“Thanks,” I mumbled. I ran a hand through my thick hair and sat on his bed. I looked around.

“What are we supposed to do all day?” I asked him.

“You can hang out with my sisters if you want,” he shrugged.

“I wanna hang out with you though,” I admitted. He stopped to look up at me. He shrugged and just lay on the bed beside me. Ugh. My head was pounding. “I’m never drinking again.”

He laughed.

“Why not?” he asked.

“Cuz my head hurts like h3ll and we both know I’m an easy drunk that can’t remember what the h3ll happened last night,” I answered. “What…did happen last night?”

“You fu**ed Joey,” he answered.

“W-what. No. I couldn’t have, could I?” I stammered. Sh1t. Sh!t. Sh!t. My first time and I don’t remember it. The last thing I remembered was playing ‘Never Have I Ever’. Fu**…I was screwed. I started to rub my arms; now that I knew what I had done, I felt self-conscious and repulsive. Ugh.

Zac started laughing.

“I’m kidding,” he chuckled. I punched him in the stomach and the movement caused my head to spin. I scoffed and shook my head. He stopped laughing and gave me a new look. “I’m sorry; I forgot you were…”

WHAT.

“How do you know that?” I snapped.

“Other than the fact that you and Brian wouldn’t have had the guts…” he dissed. I rolled my eyes. “You told me.”

“I did?” I asked. “What all did I tell you?”

He shrugged and then rose up, only to grab a paper and pen. He started writing and then balled up the paper and put it in his pocket. I gave him a confused look. All he did was hand me a piece of paper and a pen. Like I knew what to do with it, right?

“Write down exactly how you feel about me,” he instructed. I raised an eyebrow. “I wrote down what you told me and how I feel about that stuff, so now write down how you honestly feel about me.”

“You’re Lulu’s ex—”

“Don’t think of that detail then,” he shrugged.

“You have a girlfriend,” I reminded.

“I broke up with her,” he said with guilty wide eyes. Oh, right…

“I have a boyfriend,” I reasoned.

“I don’t care?” he answered. I rolled my eyes and looked down at the paper.

Lines. Nothing but lines. I really wanted to change it to “lies” instead of “lines”, but knew that I had to be honest. I gave him one last look before actually writing something down. I bit my lip and wrote, taking up the entire front side. When he was busy looking out his window, I ripped off the last line and shoved it in my pocket.

“What now?” I asked when I finished. He held out his hand and I reluctantly handed it over to him. He balled it up and grabbed his trash can. He threw it in there.

“We burn it,” he answered.

Great. More fire.

He leaned down to light the paper ball on fire, but then he grabbed my hand with his left and…something washed over me; protection?

I slightly nodded to myself that it’d be alright, but then he tried to light the lighter and not a single flame came. He placed the lighter back in the drawer on his desk and shrugged.

“Guess it’s outta fluid,” he presumed. Sure…

He bent over to reach a bottle of water on the floor.

“I need to go do something, so can you please just…sober up and take a nap or something while I’m gone?” he asked. Sounds like a good idea to me. He handed me the water, but it took me seconds to drink it all. He gave me a crazy look. I flashed a smile and then it faded. He moved so that I could lay on his soft bed in the place where his attractive body had laid hundreds of times before. It was…comfortable.

“Sweet dreams…” he muttered before grabbing his bag and leaving.

“Have fun…wherever you’re going,” I replied, nicely. I don’t know how a guy can drink so much alcohol and act like it didn’t even faze him! Lucky.

He left his room, making sure the TV remote was to my side in case I couldn’t sleep, or woke up before he returned. Shifting myself in his bed for a wanted sleep, I looked to see the drawer where he put his lighter. I raised up to make sure of something, and then realized that my “confession letter” was left untouched in his trash can…and that his lighter was nearly full of fluid.

(Zac’s POV)

“Where’s Angel?” Joey asked me.

“Sleeping,” I answered as I took a seat at the restaurant. I was the last one to arrive of all of us, but I didn’t care. I rather tend to Angel then meet with people that hate me. “Or did you want me to bring her to this…meeting?”

Joey flashed a look up to me full of plain hatred because we all knew that he didn’t want Angel to know anything about us.

“I thought she was at your house,” Devin said to Joey. He shook his head.

“We went to Zac’s and crashed there. My sister needed me this morning so I left her there…” he explained. Then he gave me a new look. “Hopefully he didn’t do anything to her.”

“Such trust,” I said with a hand over my heart.

“Can we get back on topic?” Brian asked, finally getting ticked off.

“What is the topic?” Devin asked.

“Yeah…” I added.

“I’m moving,” he answered.

“Why?”

“Great.”

“So what?” I asked. Great. My accomplice: Lost.

“My brother’s getting into too much trouble here,” he said, looking over to me.

“You’re taking my boyfriend with you!?” I dramatized. “Who will he do stuff with—sh!t. How will he survive without me!?”

I can see why people acted this way on a normal basis. It was fun to see reactions.

But all Brian did was nod.

“What do I do about the secret?” he asked Devin. Now he shrugged.

“Keep it a secret, I guess,” he answered. No sh!t…

He’d be in a new place, with no reputation…that’d only raise suspicion more and he’d surely crack under pressure. He didn’t have anyone to defend him down there. Even though we hated each other, I’d protect him in the fear of my own secret slipping out. And plus, we were accomplices against Joey together.

“Have you told Angel?” I asked. He looked to Joey.

“That’s a no,” Joey answered.

“Maybe because she spends every waking moment with you outside of school,” I commented. Joey’s eyes narrowed at me.

“Not just waking moments,” he denied. Devin got furious.

“If you hurt my sister, I’m hurting you,” Devin hissed at Joey. He rolled his eyes. “I don’t care if you’re my best friend; she’s family.”

“Well there’s nothing to worry about, okay?” he settled.

“Of course not; it’s not like they slept together or anything,” I admitted.

“Wouldn’t you like to know,” he sneered.

“I do know,” I reasoned. “She’s a virgin.”

“No she’s—”

“Yeah she is,” me and Brian both defended. I gestured at Brian.

“See,” I reasoned. “And she told me last night that she was a virgin.”

That came out wrong. Maybe that was to my advantage though.

Joey snarled at me before standing and leaving. Devin and Brian raised an eyebrow at me. I rolled my eyes and stood.

“Well speaking of Angel, I gotta get back to her,” I winked before leaving. But don’t think I didn’t notice the swirling water in all of our glasses. Great.

***

“Hey, I brought you back some ice cream, but I didn’t know what flavor—” I started to tell Angel when I entered my room, looking down at the container, but then I heard her on the phone.

“Fine,” she said in a huff and then hang up. She had straightened up from tying her shoes and gave me a sad look.

“What’s wrong?” I asked. “Where are you going?”

“Nothing; Joey’s gonna pick me up in a little bit,” she informed. I gritted my teeth.

“Why?”

“Because he’s my boyfriend,” she answered with a hint of confusion.

“So what?” I asked, walking over and sitting on my bed with her. I opened the pint of mint chocolate chip ice cream and handed her a spoon. I got ice cream myself as she stayed quiet. “The way I see it is that you guys spend too much time together.”

“Meaning what?” she asked, keeping her eyes on the ice cream that she scooped. Great. Honesty time. Cuz God knows I can’t lie to her…anymore.

“Do you fall in love with him for each second more you spend with him?” I asked, honestly wanting to know the answer.

“Maybe so; after all, I don’t know him well and the more I get to know him, the more I like him…” she answered. I handed her the container and rounded my bed to pick up her paper from earlier.

“You sure?” I asked. Her face just held desperateness for me not to read it now. But then of course she acted like she didn’t care. “So if I gave this to him, would you care?”

“Not really,” she shrugged. I sighed. That only meant that she had no admiration feelings to hide from him. Just my luck…

But of course I just shrugged and played it off as if I didn’t care, either. Angel crawled across my bed and stared at the ball of paper that she wrote on.

“Well, I got a new lighter,” I said, pulling out one that was really just in my car. I handed it to her this time. With her here, I already knew that I wouldn’t be able to light it. She immediately bent over and lit the trash’s containments on fire, but didn’t look at it. She only flinched back and grabbed my hand.

“It’s okay,” I told her as I hugged her into me. She started to vibrate—her phone I mean, and then stood up, acting as if she never jumped to me for protection.

“Well…I’ll see you in school on Monday, alright?” she said.

“Alright,” I said saddened. She smiled faintly and then left. I threw myself back on my bed, but then shot up when I looked to the trash can. I leaned over and picked up her paper.

Her perfectly written-on paper with no burn marks, or fringes, or ashes, only the way that we left it…only, there was a piece torn off the bottom.