(The Weekend by SZA)

| 3. | defining relationships and pretty girls

A hangover had to be the most head-splitting thing in the world... a hangover after a week of nonstop partying with Parker, well, my brain was a slushie. I'd been home, trying to sleep off the headache since both my mother and my brother had been roaming about and lighting up really wasn't an option. Of course the mountain of covers hadn't been enough to deter Oliver Remmer from trying to speak to me about the argument that we'd apparently had and my teenage angst.

How he wasn't over that dumbass situation and it'd been a full week was besides me, for a man that made money off of being pretty, he sure wasn't self centered. Oh how I wished he was..

"Elliot, I know you're up." His voice had no hint of condescending-ness but maybe it was the fact that I'd already been so incredibly irritated and he wasn't helping. Rolling my eyes at that, I ripped a pillow from underneath my head and tossed it at the doorway where he lingered. I wanted to be a-fucking-lone but he didn't get that. "you missed."

He was laughing and I was even more irritated than before.

"Get the fuck out!"

"Elliot!" Mom's voice was loud and I sighed heavy before yelling out an apology. I often forgot when she was home since most of the time she wasn't. Working two jobs had to have been stressful on her: leaving at four in the morning and working until two in the afternoon at some collections office and then three to nine at a bank.

Most of the time I felt so guilty for not helping her much, only giving half the profit I'd made because I knew that if she caught wing of what I was doing, she'd actually kill me.

This time, I was just a little happy that she didn't have the energy to come smack me for my language.

But then I felt guilt again and I sighed heavy. Wasting whatever money I'd made doing odd jobs instead of helping her pay the bills out was a bitch move and I knew that. Trying not to feel bad for it, I shut my eyes again and turned over. I was a fuck up, such a huge fuck up.

"Get out of bed." Oliver had instructed but I didn't care less about the sternness in his voice, he wasn't my father. "Eli, we need to talk, it's four o'clock."

"We don't need to talk about shit." When I didn't move, I felt the blankets being ripped off my body. A chill ran up my spine as I laid there in my boxers, instantly I went to cover my body, wrapping myself in the sheets instead. "I need a fucking blunt."

"What?"

Ignoring that, I'd reached for my side table and grabbed at my depleting box of cigarettes. Pulling one out, I wished it wasn't tobacco but it was the closest I was gonna get to a stress free morning... well, afternoon. As soon as I sat up though, I could feel myself dry heaving, the food I'd eaten the night before coming up and I found myself grabbing at my trashcan and dropping the cigarette on the floor. Nearly missing, Oliver watched me blow chunks and I'd never felt as disgusting as I did when some of it landed on my bed.

"You need to take your insulin." And he was right, I hadn't taken it since the morning before, maybe that was why I felt so drowsy and even more nauseous than usual. Shaking his head, Oliver left me alone in my room and I sat there on the floor, vomiting, my head feeling so spacey, despite it being years since I'd been diagnosed, I hated this feeling.

When my brother had gotten back, he'd stripped my bed, moving me up to it as if I wasn't capable of standing myself. He stayed concentrated, unpacking my medical bag and going to place a cold rag in my hands. If he wasn't there, I didn't know what I'd do, mom was all the way across the house and I could already feel myself shaking.

Oliver knew exactly what to do and I laid back, trying to cool myself down and calm down my nerves before I felt like throwing up again, anxiety brushing up on the sides of my conscious and I attempted to breathe easy. He let me stay like that for a little while, prepping the needle and I wondered how long it'd take him to fully give up on me.

• • •

After Oliver had given me my insulin, he made sure to bring some cereal and a bunch of fruit from the fridge, he sat in my room eating with me for a little even though we barely spoke. I'd thrown up once during breakfast and he sat there with me rubbing my back until all that came out was me gagging. As I went to brush my teeth again, he took the trash out and I was so embarrassed.

Once I felt better, I'd left that embarrassment in my house, going to the park to clear my head. Oliver didn't like that but he allowed me to as long as I promised to eat and come back on time that night. After that morning, I didn't have the energy or the urge to go out at all so I agreed, pulling my shoes on and leaving my cigarettes with him.

Heading to the park right down the street, I tried not to think, my life had been so rocky lately and I wasn't getting anywhere new, it'd been so gray recently and I was sick of going in circles. Everyday was the same... well, I mean, I didn't always vomit on myself but essentially it was the same cycle: a downward spiral.

I was an asshole, that's just that and I didn't see any change for my dull life, I saw me trying to get by for the rest of my life. Often times I'd think about what would kill me, maybe how I'd die although it wasn't in a suicidal or abnormally morbid way. I thought about death a lot but if I told anyone that shit, they'd think I was crazy.

Part of me said I'd die prematurely, either killed by some guy I owed or my diabetes, or maybe I'd all of a sudden get sick, something no one could foretell. And I was almost certain I'd die alone just as I'd always been because that's who I was: I had trouble building lasting relationships and I also had never found anyone who would be okay with my problems: everyone thought I was crazy even I did.

When I'd gotten to the park, I went to hop the fence, sitting on it and staring back at my house. From there I waited for Oliver to leave, I'd go back in then. Although it was annoying to have him always around so recently, I don't think that I'd be able to function properly if he wasn't: I probably would've went another day without my insulin, possibly would've ended up in the hospital.

Pulling out my lighter from my pocket, I went to grab for the blunt I kept in my wallet. The street was empty, it mid-day, almost evening and it was hot, extremely muggy, not park weather. Explained why all the kids weren't out, this park rarely got visitors and was often my smoke spot. Oliver used to smoke on the swings but when it shifted from that to his date nights, it ended up being the spot where I rolled up.

No one really came here when he got back from juvie and it'd stayed the same since.

Going to light what was in my hand, I placed my lips on the strawberry flavored rolling paper, it was Mackenzie's favorite. I rarely bought my own weed since the guys I used to go to didn't want to sell to me, the ones who worked with Lopez... and if I had to fuck Mack to get it, it wasn't really a problem.

Inhaling, I held it in, my throat tingling with the feeling of smoke and then I exhaled. Due to it being so old, the paper was a little ripped around the edges but it still stuck together and I found myself hopping the fence completely and sitting back on the ground behind me.

I couldn't get high off of one blunt but I could get a little more careless and maybe that's why I didn't pay mind to the girl that'd joined me halfway through.

"Hey." The first thing I noticed was her eyes... well, first thing I noticed was how insanely long her hair was and then her big eyes. Looking up at her, I saw the inviting smile on her face and although she wasn't my normal type, she was pretty. She was tall, around my height and her body lacked curves, she was lanky as well but despite her not being the traditional kind of attractive, she was still really pretty.

"Um, hi?" I'd responded, not understanding why she'd talked to me. So many things around me, so many other places to sit but she wasn't even derailed by my rude response as she sat down a good distance but still right beside me. Her shirt resembled something I probably had in my closet and she wore it with ripped jeans with cutouts at the thighs and they reached mid calf.

She wore hightop vans and sat elegantly despite her tomboy appearance, crossing one stretched out leg over the other. Her legs seemingly ran for miles.

"It's pretty out here." She spoke and I could tell right away she had an accent, it sounded American but something in it was off, maybe the way she pronounced out... she stretched the sound, I think the 'o' but there was something so different about it.

Confused, I looked over at her, just wanting to hear her say it again so I could figure out what her accent was. "What?"

"It's pretty out here." She repeated with her eyebrows raised, looking at me as if I was dumb and she had a little attitude...

"What?" I repeated, wanting to see how far I could push her, see if I could irritate her but instead she kept talking to me as if I was slow.

"The trees?" She pointed at them, nodding slowly to make sure I was following. Leaning back on her back she held both her hands out as if she was presenting something. Her bf brown eyes blew wide in mock shock and I couldn't help but scoff, "The sky? Wooooow." With a light laugh, she nodded again and spoke gently, "It's pretty," Was she high?

"I guess." I shrugged and I liked her smile, I liked it a lot.

Feeling the corners of my mouth pulling up, I looked away before looking over at her and biting my lip and then down at the ground with a smile. I knew her for ten seconds and I already felt myself calm and laughing with her, I didn't laugh that much, never did and maybe that was because I never met anyone like her before.

She was cool. Holding her hand out, she gave me a soft smile again, "I'm Cilla." Cilla... was that short for something? Why did I care? "You?"

I didn't care, I didn't even know her so wiping the smile off my face, I nodded short and kept my eyes off of her. Something about her made me want to smile. "You must be new here." I'd said matter-of-factly as if I couldn't already tell due to the accent. She didn't sound like or act like anyone around here, it was fresh.

"Yeah... My family just relocated, got sick of the maple syrup."

Maple Syrup, Maple Leaf, Canadian, she was Canadian. "Was that a Canadian joke?"

"Mhm..." smirking, she looked over at me and I found myself turning to meet her eyes even though I didn't want to. She had some light bags under her eyes, as if she didn't sleep that often, even through that tiredness, she looked happy.

Happiness was rare to see for me, everything in my life was so dull and she felt so full of life. "So, you must be either pretty big around here or very arrogant." Raising her eyebrows, she kept that smirk on her face and I couldn't help but match it.

"Why do you say?"

And she read me carefully and collectively, "Well, you assume that people know you." That didn't hit me until then, I saw myself as a huge pariah and she just saw me as some random guy in the park. "Why do people know you?"

"I'm the pyromaniac in town."

Her brows were furrowed, lips pulled together in a small frown and the look in her big, brown eyes showed nothing short of amusement. Rolling the joint in between my fingers, it had died out sometime through our talking and I hadn't relit it yet, I watched as she questioned my claim. "Pyro?"

Chuckling at that, I looked back at my house, watching my brother exit it and move to his car, he only showed up every few weeks. I found myself thinking more so, hoping to scare her off. "What can I say? I like to set things on fire."

"You're not much of a maniac." And she didn't even budge, if anything she'd stayed put, her calm eyes settled on what I was looking at and I watched her through the corners of mine. The hair framing her face, dark like my clothes and licking her brown skin much like a flame.

"Danger runs in my family."

"I don't think that's really who you are," she'd decided as if she knew me, leaning back on her elbows and I decided that I liked her. She might be good company even if she wasn't in my bed, "that's what you want people to believe, though." Who was this girl? She didn't even know me.

But fuck, she was hot, "smoke?" She'd made a face at that.

Rolling my eyes, I exhaled, marijuana was legal but cops still found it in them to bug me, fucking some doctor's daughter's lights out got me a medical card to flash the cops whenever I was caught. A slap on the wrist and being reprimanded not to do it outside and I was free to go.

Cops never caught me, probably the fact that I was white, male, and Oliver Remmer's brother. There was no way in their minds that I wasn't exactly like him and Oliver had turned his life around, no way I hadn't done the same.

"That's disgusting." She spoke as I placed it back in between my lips, going to light it again.

"It's just weed, babydoll." Taking it out, I looked down at it and my eyes stayed locked on the burning. I'd been completely chill at that moment, something I didn't think this trip would do, I assumed to still be tense and just go back to sleep but being around this girl just talking felt a little serene.

Shaking her head, she joked, "I like to appreciate plants and not inhale them, thank you."

But I still didn't know her and the thought that her vibe calmed me down was weird, I was calm because I was smoking. "You're different." And she was but something about that made me anxious, change wasn't something I was good at.

"I guess."

"A good different." With that, I distanced myself, going to stand and she didn't follow suit. "Well, I've got a prior engagement my fair ally." Looking down at her, I finished smoking and threw the bud down, putting it out it under my shoe. Going to smell my clothes, I stripped off the jacket I'd been wearing for this case, I didn't want my mom to notice.

Sure, she knew I used to smoke I'd definitely told her I stopped though.

"Was that a Canadian joke?" She rolled her eyes with fake anger, laughing instantly afterwards.

"Sorry." Sore-e, I'd mocked her accent, he accent was growing on me though.

"What's your name?"

My name was weird but hers was kind of too so she couldn't really judge. "Elliot Remmer."

And I expected her to nod, say goodbye and that'd be the end of me knowing her but she didn't. She said something weird and kind of interesting and it wasn't something I'd ever heard before but I liked it. "You have a name like a book character."

"Huh?" She'd been making me laugh a lot and I hated it.

"You know like Jack Sparrow or Will Grayson. It's unique, something that you don't hear everyday." At that, she pushed her hair behind her ear and I could see the little scar on her chin. She was real and I hadn't realized it until then. "I won't forget it." She was something special, I could tell that just from meeting her once and I wanted to talk to her again.

We'd exchanged numbers then, her saving her name in my phone with a sun emoji beside it. She typed all lowercase and took a quick picture, joking about how she was hot at all times and didn't need to take another since that one was so fire.

And she wasn't wrong.

"You go to school around here?"

Hoping she didn't, my hope was shot down when she spoke, "We just unloaded. I'm starting Monday at Westfield or something."

"Westward." Once she heard the rumors and the truth really, once someone told her...  "By Monday you'll never wanna see me again, Cil."

• • •

"Elliot."

"What?"

"I'm trying to have a conversation with you." And looking up from my phone, my eyes caught blue ones framed by thick lashes and an uncomfortable frown on her pink lips. I'd been paying more attention to scrolling through my social media than Mackenzie, really that was all the time, she should've been used to it by now. "You never have time for me anymore."

You see, Mackenzie and I had a... different type of friendship. It was a friendship where we fulfilled each other's needs and neither were left in the dark, we told each other everything and maybe that wasn't healthy because exchanging feelings led to developing more intimate feelings and more intimate feelings led to her wanting a real relationship. Sure, she was pretty but I wasn't one for dating because dating led to being more dependent on her.

More dependent than I needed to be and I'd turn into my brother.

But she was hot, she really was, her slightly-wavy blonde hair had reached just past her tits which looked hot as fuck when she was sucking me off and her pretty body was a nice shade of tan, toned from her years of skating. She wasn't very needy normally, the few times she'd confessed wanting more than a quick-fuck, she'd take a trip to the skate-park and hook up with some sleazy kid that barely knew her name.

And I'd fuck around with another one of her.

"What are you talking about? We're hanging out right now." She was tripping now, acting out over some random shit and my finger hovered over Jovie Nichols' contact. I used to like her, Jovie that is, and that carried on my entire freshman year but after a few parties and a few hot cheerleaders, I realized that she wasn't anything special.

She was still hot though with her big brown eyes and curly hair, huge ass and slightly dumb. Throw her a few compliments, kiss her neck, and she was mine for the night.

"It seems like whenever you come over all you wanna do is fuck and if we're not, you don't even pay attention to me." She wasn't wrong but our relationship wasn't romantic nor was it supposed to be. "We were friends before we started having sex, Eli."

Shrugging, I kept my eyes on my phone, we were still friends, I just hadn't been in the same mood as before, things changed. "I've got a lot on my mind." And I thought about texting Cilla, she would be cool and wouldn't ask too much, Mackenzie was acting like an annoyed girlfriend and it wasn't attractive in the slightest.

"I do too."

"What do you mean by that?" That didn't sit well with me, something about the way she said it made my stomach turn. Something about it told me that she liked me, I wasn't stupid, but we also weren't dating and I wasn't going to date her just so she'd be happy. "Mackenzie!"

"Nothing." At that I sighed, we were good friends, what we'd been doing was easy. Relationships made everything complicated and I definitely wasn't looking for anything special with her. "I see you've been hanging out with Jovie again."

"And?"

"Nothing, El." That'd been her nickname for me for years now. We'd never been extremely close and around the last year we'd drifted a lot to just hanging out, smoking and having sex... really. I didn't mind.

Furrowing my brows, I tried to get that in my mind, I didn't like her. "It's not like we're dating, Mack. You're not my girlfriend, you don't get to dictate who I hang out with."

"I assumed you wouldn't be fucking other girls." And why would she have assumed that?

Maybe it was my fault for never setting guidelines or talking about it. One day we'd gotten so high that we ended up fucking and then it happened again and then t just became a routine. "Do you have a problem with it?"

"Does it matter?"

I was sick of her attitude, I hated people talking to me as if they were so much better, they always had this patronizing smile. In her eyes, I could see the hurt but I didn't care and that really showed how close we hadn't been, "Listen if you have a fucking problem with it-"

"I don't care who you sleep with, Elliot." That was a lie.

"You obviously do."

"Why would I?" Rolling my eyes, I went back to my phone, not paying attention to her. She wasn't gonna piss me off with this because she felt hurt by a relationship that didn't exist. "Besides, I've been fucking other people, you're not that special."

"Oh really? Like who?" I laughed, Mack had been so hung up on me, I knew with the way she was acting, she thought we were exclusive... she probably thought it for a while.

"Your brother's dick is pretty big."

That hit though, "He's engaged, you know that."

"What do you think happens when you leave me in your room to go fuck some girl?"

And she knew how much I hated people comparing me to Oliver, I'd told her countless times how much it pissed me off. "You're fucking lying." My brother was annoying but I didn't want anyone portraying him as someone who didn't care about his girlfriend... he really fucking loved her and he respected her.

"Am I?"

"That shit's not cute, Mackenzie." There was this look on her face that made me feel the need to calm her down though, I could tell she was getting worked up.

Mackenzie was like me though, maybe that's why we connected so well and why we always found ourselves going back to each other, she understood me and she had a shitty past as well. Maybe that's why I pulled back, tried to navigate around her feelings again and not yell. "You know Oliver's not like that, we both know."

"I'm sick of this." She's grabbed her blond hair in her hands and she was crying then, I didn't know what to do anymore.

"What?"

"Just fucking." And when I stood to grab her, I'd forgotten everything she'd ever told me. Fear in her eyes, she stepped out of my reach before I could even try and hold her to me and I remembered how much she hated being touched in instances like that. "Don't touch me."

I went to apologize but she's cut me off. "Mack-"

"You're always high when you come over."

"And?" I didn't see the problem, we got high together all the time, she rolled for me as my head was in between her legs, that was our thing. We made out while shot gunning and fucked once he smoke had made it too hard to see each other without a blur, until we were too high to talk at all.

"I don't wanna just have high sex, I wanna talk."

But talking always led to opening up, talking was so hard for me because opening up always led to me fucking UP and them hating me. All my friendships, my one serious relationship... they were all fucked up because of me. "We don't need to talk."

And knowing that Mackenzie wasn't stable enough to talk, I tried not to go further into depth.

"We do." She cried, "Whatever this is, it's stressful. You wanna fuck other girls, why're you here? I don't need you." And I didn't like her but that fucking hurt. I was never needed, I couldn't ever help anyone and no one cared.

But that was okay, I saw where we stood so with a "Fine," I grabbed at my things and headed for her door.

"Where are you going?"

"You don't need me and I'd rather not overstay my welcome." Leaving her room, I'd slammed her door, my anger being released in that and I tried not to let it sink in but all I could think about was how much she didn't need me. I'd fucked up, I always did and that sucked.

A/N:

Been a while, huh? I'm getting back into the flow of writing this book.

Updated: Thurs, June 29th

Do you like Pricilla? Mackenzie? Elliot?