Josh

After arriving to my empty house ten minutes after fleeing the game of What Are The Odds, Kendall and I go up the stairs in to my slightly messy room, leaving our lacrosse equipment in the garage except for our uniforms for the scrimmage tomorrow.

"Are your parents okay with me staying here?" Kendall asks when we enter my room, placing her bag filled with clothes for the next few days on top of my dresser.

I shrug my shoulders, having not asked them yet. "My dad will be cool with it. It's my mom that I'll have to work on and she's the final decision. I'll make her okay with it though, and even if she's not I don't care because you're not staying at your house alone."

"You're the best," Kendall murmurs, wrapping her thin arms around me.

"Let's take showers and then I'll order a pizza for dinner," I suggest.

"Sounds perfect."

I go in to the laundry room and grab a clean linen towel off one of the stocked shelves, handing it to Kendall. She disappears in to the guest bathroom and I wait to hear the water start running before entering the bathroom inside of my bedroom.

Thirty minutes later, after me sitting on the living room couch for ten minutes, Kendall walks down the stairs with her hair in a messy bun and wearing a t-shirt from last year's National Lacrosse Championship tournament, cut at the bottom, and Soffe brand shorts. She plops down on the cushion next to me, smiling at me.

"There's a Pretty Little Liars marathon on tonight," Kendall hints.

"Turn it on. I'll order the pizza and try not to kill myself," I joke. I dial the local pizzeria's number and order a medium cheese pizza, which should arrive in twenty minutes.

When I return to the couch, Kendall is already zoned in to the first Halloween episode of the show. I lie down, spreading my legs out across the fluffy cushions, and pull Kendall down with me, her eyes never leaving the screen. I nuzzle my chin in between her neck and shoulder, kissing her lightly. This draws her attention back to the real world.

Kendall rolls on to her other side so her back is to the flat screen TV on the wall and puts her lips on mine passionately. Her hands find their way to the back of my neck and mine to her hips, pulling her closer.

We stay like this for what seems like only a few seconds, but what turns out to be twenty minutes because the doorbell rings.

"Damn it," I curse, standing up. I go to the front door while Kendall goes in to the kitchen to get plates. I pay for the pizza and bring the box inside, setting in on the coffee table in the living room. Kendall has brought over two plates, two napkins, and two glasses of water.

After finishing up the pizza, we lie back down and pick up where we left off. Her hands run through my now dry hair, mine resting on her thighs.

"Josh?" a voice calls from the front door, it closing. "Josh are you here?"

My mother.

I pop my head up above the top of the couch and wave.

"What are you doing over there? And why's your hair such a mess?" she intrigues.

"Watching Pretty Little Liars," I say with a laugh. That's when Kendall pops her head up too.

"Hi, Mrs. Thompson!" Kendall squeals, smiling.

"Hello, Kendall," my mom replies, her voice losing all feeling except disappointment.

"Josh, can you help me put these groceries away?" She places several cloth bags on to the kitchen counter, all teeming with household items and food.

"I can help you if you'd like," Kendall offers.

"I asked my son to help me," my mom snaps. A hurt look crosses Kendall's face and I tell her to go up to my room and watch TV in there. She scurries up the stairs and I approach my mom in the kitchen.

"You can at least try to be polite," I hiss.

"You know I don't like Kendall. I never have approved of her," she scorns.

"You've been saying that for almost three years and I'm still with her so clearly I don't value your opinion," I spit. My mom did like Kendall at the beginning of our relationship. Then Kendall's parents invited mine over to their house for dinner after a few months of us dating. Once my mom saw Kendall's house, she stopped approving of us being together. My mom is what you can call a rich supremacist, meaning she wants the whole world to be rich, even though she refuses to help the less fortunate.

"I'm going to have to clean that couch now so none of the diseases she picked up from living in the trailer parks infect us too."

"Oh my god mom! She doesn't have diseases from where she lives!"

"Well maybe she got diseases from this then!" my mom hisses, yanking a large envelope out of her purse. She opens the envelope and dumps it's contents on to the counter. A few pictures scatter and she struggles to pick them up with her acrylic nails. Once she finally manages to grab them, she shoves them in to my hands. "She is cheating on you and probably has before!"

I look through the pictures and laugh ruefully in my mom's face. The pictures are from last night at the field, but taken from an angle unlike the ones that were placed on the fence. All you can see in the picture is Kendall on top of a boy kissing him, his hands underneath her bra. You can't see the boy's face or any identifying features, so my mom didn't figure it out. "If she got any disease from this then I am the one who gave it to her because I'm the one in these pictures with her."

"I'm taking you down to the clinic tomorrow morning to get you examined. I don't even want to know what that skank has given to you in the past three years."

"Don't you dare talk about her like that! She hasn't done anything to you or anyone else to make you hate her this much. She's the most amazing girl in the world and isn't what you're accusing her of being!" I scream.

"How do you know though? Who knows what she was like before you met her! Actually I do!" she starts rummaging through the papers spread across the counter from the envelope.

"She's a virgin mom!" I yell.

"Well before she came to Lincoln Central she went to a Christian middle school called Forest Isles Prep and she got kicked out of it! Do you know what it takes to get kicked out of a religious school?" my mom demands scanning her eyes over the papers in her hands.

"She didn't get kicked out because of her behavior! She got a scholarship to go there and she only had to pay three thousand dollars a year because everything else was covered. Her parents couldn't afford even that so she left the school since she was behind on her payments," I explain.

"And speaking of her parents did you know that both of them have been arrested for being thieves?"

"Do your papers tell you what they stole?" I ask.

"It doesn't matter what they stole. Stealing is stealing!"

"Her dad got arrested because after Kendall was born, they were homeless and living in their car. It was freezing so he stole a blanket to wrap her in so she wouldn't get sick. He didn't even serve jail time. And her mom, she stole a jacket for the same reason," I recall.

"Well they still stole," my mother objects, her voice sounding like a child that knows they have lost their argument.

"What are these papers anyways?" I ask, snatching them out of her hands. I allow my eyes to skim over the words and I realize what they are. "You ran a background check on my girlfriend and her family?"

"I didn't have to. Someone else did and dropped it off at my office for me and thank goodness they did. It just strengthens my objections to you dating that thief!"

"So now Kendall's a thief?" I question.

"The apple doesn't fall far from the tree," she spits.

"I hope I fell as far away from my tree as I could because I hope I'm nothing like you when I get older."

"I don't want that thief in this house!"

"The only thing she has ever stolen is my heart," I say, exhausted. I'm done fighting with this woman. She will never listen. She will never care. She sees Kendall the way she sees her and that will never change. I turn around and start walking out of the kitchen, towards the staircase.

"Do not let that piece of trailer trash sleep anywhere in this house except for in the front lawn," my mom hisses.

"She's sleeping in my room, in my bed, with me," I scream. "And she may live in a trailer but she is not trash."

"Joshua Jeffry Thompson don't you dare!"

"You know what you are?" I ask, not expecting a reply. "You're a piece of trash with no heart, no soul, and money that can never buy you love or happiness. Kendall is loving, caring, and happy just the way she is. You can learn a lot from her mom."