She picks up on the third ring.
"Hello?"
There is some shuffling around on her end of the phone, followed by a recognizable whine in the background from someone all too familiar, and it doesn't take you long to understand that she's not alone.
She repeats herself, tone changed into one more curious. "Hello?"
"Can I come over?" You manage to choke out the question that's been hanging off the tip of your tongue for the past fifteen minutes, the one that's been making your heart beat an irregular rhythm against your ribs. You anxiously pace the length of the cramped phone booth.
Your knuckles clench on the cold plastic of the receiver as you await her response and the tender skin that is now split and raw and bleeding aches in protest to your actions. You grit your teeth to fight off the pain, but it makes it worse.
You're always making things worse.
Seems to you like it's the only thing you're good for nowadays.
"Now?" Her voice sounds off in your ear, but it's not at all annoyed or bothered. She's worried, but not necessarily about you. She's still not alone.
"Now." You confirm.
There's more shuffling where she is, a grunt here and there, a few quick whispers, then an obnoxious, "But it's my room too!"
Then there is complete silence, and you know that you've won.
"Make sure you're quiet." Her voice is back, clearer this time.
There's a click, and then the line is dead.
You know her room better than you know yourself, so there isn't any trouble in flashing in and silently creeping your way around all her unnecessary pieces of furniture and mounds of unwashed, unfolded clothing to her bed, where you know she isn't sleeping.
She's clearly lying there though, facing away from you, the outline of her body curled into fetal position beneath the thin fabric of her blanket. Her hair is splattered in helixes across her pillow. For a brief millisecond, you hope she's naked.
But the thought quickly passes, (because her parents are in the next room, duh), and the silvery sliver of moonlight shining in from her window is just enough light for you to see what you're doing as you peel back the cover and, after kicking off your boots, sliding into bed beside her.
Her skin is hot to the touch, but its sanctuary.
Your heartbeat thumps quickly the moment you touch her, first on the shoulder but then your fingers gradually glide down until your arm is encircling her waist, and you can feel her stomach expand and retract with each breath she takes.
Her hair smells faintly of fruit, and the creamy expanse of her neck is too tempting for you. She lets you get away with nibbling on it for a few lingering moments before she finally speaks, one of her hands curling around yours.
"Please stop."
She isn't talking about the kissing.
"You know I can't do that."
With her fingers, she traces the cuts that she didn't have to see to know that they were there. They have stopped bleeding long ago, but it still stings, and you withdraw your hand, cradling it to your chest.
She shifts, so now she's looking at you, dead on, and you can't avoid it.
"Stevie," She says your name. "This is getting more and more dangerous by the second. Today it's minor cuts and bruises, but what if next time … what if next time …"
She can't say it. She won't. It may come true, and you know it. You both know it, that's why she wants you to end it, to stop.
But that it completely out of the question. Beating an innocent pedestrian to a near pulp is what it took to get in, what is it going to take to get out? You only agreed to this kind of life because Warren took off, and your mother abandoned you, leaving you to fend for yourself for most of your life.
You were only fourteen when you joined, what did you know? You were a child, a child trying to become an adult. You still are.
But she doesn't understand. She never has, and she never will. She has a family that loves her so much it sickens you, and plenty of friends to spare. She has opportunity, and potential.
She doesn't know what it's like to be on your own. Alone. Starving for more than food, craving to be accepted, to be loved, truly loved. She'll never know. But you do.
To calm her nerves, you say the only thing you can think of.
"It's okay."
"This is okay?" She clutches onto your injured hand and brings it up to eyelevel, staring hard back at it then and at you with watery eyes. "You being hurt is okay?"
You yank your hand back a second time. "Stop making such a big deal out of everything."
"I'm scared, Stevie," She places a hand over her chest like it pains her to see your face. "Every single night you're not here, I'm scared. Every morning after those nights, and I watch the news, do you know how much I pray that I don't have to see your name come up with Missing Persons? Or see you being mentioned as one of the lives lost in a shooting?"
"Alex, stop it!"
You didn't know that you were angry until you heard the sound of your voice and the way your words cracked when they escaped your mouth. Inside, your heart is humming, and your stomach is churning. You don't like the feeling, not at all.
Smoothing a stray wisp of hair out of her face, she bites the inside of her cheek. "I just don't want you to do this anymore. You don't have to."
"Yes, I do."
"No." The word bites down into you. "No, you don't. Jerry and Teresa may not like it, but I don't care, you'll sleep here every single night for the rest-"
"I'm not a baby, Alex," Your words are mean again, and they strike her emotionally. You can see it in the way the lines on her forehead crease. "I'm not a fucking baby, so stop treating me like one, alright? You're my girlfriend, not my mother. Stop telling me what to do."
"If I don't, then who else will?"
"No one," You spit, and you can already feel yourself sliding backwards on her bed, hand already outstretched behind you in a blind attempt to reach for your boots. "That's the point of being on your own. You're fucking alone."
You know where this going. You've been here before, with Ashley, with Rebecca, with Claire. There were all the same, they all wanted the same thing from you. They all wanted to control you, to mold you and shape you in to what is was that they wanted. It was always about them, and not much to your dismay, she was the same.
You had genuinely thought different about her. First, she was the first girl to approach you, straight forward with no hesitations. She had told you what she wanted, and you had applauded her assertiveness. It was extremely attractive, and it was one of the many, many reasons you had fallen for her in the first place.
But, she was changing. She was changing, slowly but surely, and it's making you more and more comfortable by the second. This was a mistake, coming to her for comfort. That's part of being a loner, you're better off by yourself.
"You're not alone, Stevie."
It takes you a second to realize that's she's holding onto your wrist, and that her eyebrows are pulled down, and that's she crying. Transparent tears are leaking out of her the two wide pools of chocolate she has for eyes, running down the caress of her cheek, dripping down her chin and onto her purple bed sheet.
It takes you even longer to realize that you're crying too, or (because you're Stevie Nichols, and you do not cry) rather water has been let loose in your tear ducts, and it's streaming down you're cheeks too. You can taste it, and it's salty on your lips when you run your tongue over your mouth in an attempt to keep your cool.
It's not working one bit.
You don't resist when she pulls you closer to her, and you sure as hell don't pull away when she presses into you, her lips on yours, soft and warm and perfect.
Multicolored fireworks explode behind your eyelids when you close your eyes, and when you breathe deep through your nose, you can only smell her and her fruity shampoo. You've never been so happy to be suffocated in your life.
Somewhere below you, Harper is tossing and turning uncomfortably on the pull-out couch, and Justin is practicing algebra problems in his sleep, and Max is probably buried underneath piles of garbage, and Jerry and Teresa are watching some romantic comedy that neither of them have any real interest in.
But they're below you. They don't matter.
The only thing that matters is here, and now, and she and you and warm, kiss, touch, feel, love, sanctuary.
"I love you so much." You breathe into her hair when you both decide to pull away, and finally, quite possibly for the first time in your short life, you don't feel so alone.
Hm.
I don't really know what this is.
Somewhere between a drabble of fluff and a drabble of angst.
I don't even know where this came from. You decide.
But reviews still make me sing. And dance. And bake cookies. Tons and tons of cookies.
Songs of the hour include:
I'm Not Calling You A Liar – Florence and the Machine
I'm With You – Avril Lavigne
How To Save A Life – The Fray
The Only Exception – Paramore
The Reason – Hoobastank
Vanilla Twilight – Owl City
Meteor Shower – Owl City