AN: Let this song be forever commemorated as the song in which Eminem said "puppy" :) Seriously, read and review, it's just starting to get interesting!
~AmbyrRose
...
Try and touch me so I can scream at you not to touch me
Run out the room and I'll follow you like a lost puppy
Baby, without you I'm nothing
I'm so lost, hug me
Then tell me how ugly I am, but that you'll always love me . . .
~Eminem, "Love the Way You Lie (Part II)"
...
The way André Harris looked at it, giving birthday presents on birthdays was redundant. What's the point of a surprise present when they already knew it was coming? So he tried to mix it up a bit; he picked a day within a week of his friend's birthday, before or after, and surprised them at their house with a present.
He didn't bother ringing the doorbell or even knocking; it was an unspoken rule between them. He wasn't sure when it had started, but somewhere along the road they'd stopped knocking at each others' doors and just come right on in. He paused at the door, fixed his t-shirt the best he could, and burst in.
"Haaaaaaaaaappy Birthday to yoooou . . ." He trailed off as he realized he was singing to himself. The entire house was eerily silent, abandoned. "Tori?" His own voice echoed back at him. But why was the door unlocked? "Tori, you in here?"
She didn't answer, but he heard the faintest of noises from upstairs. A tinkling noise. Like broken glass.
Intruders.
He grabbed the first weapon he saw; Mr. Vega's tripod. Folding it up in as menacing a manner possible, he sneaked up the stairs. The glass clinked again – definitely Tori's room.
He silently counted to three, hefted the tripod, and kicked in the door, charging in with a shout.
Tori screamed, dropping the dustpan full of glass on the floor and stumbling back. They both recognized each other at the same time; he let the tripod fall to the ground as she heaved a sigh of relief.
"André, you scared the fudge out of me!"
"Sorry," he mumbled. "Why isn't anybody else home?"
"Trina insisted Mom and Dad provide an entourage to her audition." She rolled her eyes. "I'm alone for the weekend."
There was something in the way she said it that made him hesitate. He stepped into the room cautiously, looking around in sudden alarm. From the hallway, her room hadn't looked much different. Standing in the middle of it, however, reminded him of footage he'd seen of tornado wreckage. Tori herself looked different, harsher. Since when did she wear so much makeup, or look at him like she was afraid of him?
"Whoa," he said, jerking back with eyes wide. "What happened here?"
She didn't want to relive it. She didn't even want to think about it. But maybe telling him might help her believe it was real.
"It started over something trivial," she said woodenly, stepping around so that her feet were precisely planted. "He was here." She stepped back and around. "I was here."
André watched in dawning horror.
"It got worse. We were screaming at each other – if Mom and Dad had been home they would have broken it up a long time before. But then I said something . . . I don't know . . . think I might have called him coward . . . but anyway, he got fed up and shoved me." She stepped back, between the splayed legs of the table. "I was caught off-balance. Hit the coffee table, fell, came down on top of it." She sat down slowly. "Caught my back, bruised it." She stood up slowly, brushing herself off. "Now I was really pissed – jumped to the right, away from the glass." She stepped sideways to stand in front of the closet.
André felt sick.
"Now I'm here." She crossed the room and turned so she was facing her original position. "And he's here." She blinked slowly, composing herself. "He was so pissed he started really losing it." She ran a hand along the dresser, and then the adjacent bookshelf. "He started raking stuff off the shelves with his arms – I had my little crystal-cut animals on here, that's where the rest of the glass came from." She swallowed, hard. "He grabbed a book – A Midsummer Night's Dream, remember how Sikowitz made us read that? – and threw it at me." She traced the book's path all the way across the room. André's hands were shaking.
"I dodged to the right. I was more scared than mad now – I didn't think he'd do something like that. He was still trashing my stuff." She shook her head, but her mouth kept moving tonelessly, as if the words were coming involuntarily. "I didn't know what else to do." She walked forward, quickly, raising her hands. "I lunged at him." She turned. "He raised his arms to protect himself. I started slapping them."
Now she reached up with her right hand, staring at someone only she could see. "It was self-defense – he grabbed my arm and shook me off." She stepped into her own position and spun into the shelf as if thrown by an invisible hand. Her knee barely touched the shelf, and André saw her wince. Another bruise beneath her jeans, then. "I screamed. He couldn't help himself, he doesn't like hearing me scream – he . . ." She trailed off.
André found his voice. "He hit you?"
She closed her eyes. "No."
Liar.
"I fell to the floor, anyway," she continued, hurrying slightly now. "I crawled away, backwards, toward the wall." She walked over to a patch of wall by her closet and slid to the floor with her back against it. "He realized what he'd done, he was really sorry . . . He held me, told me he loved me . . . and somehow we ended up asleep together." She didn't go into the morning's fight. That was still too raw.
André was staring at her like he'd never seen her before. Not knowing what else to do, she walked over and sank down on the bed, propping her uninjured cheek up on her hand. Slowly, carefully, he sank down beside her.
"I brought you a present," he offered up lamely; it seemed so stupid now, anyway. "Happy birthday."
She perked up slightly. "Aw, thank you! Can I see it?"
"Oh . . . sure . . ." he fished the rumpled box out of his shorts pocket and handed it to her. Even bruised and tired, she still managed a smile as she tore bright-colored paper aside and lifted the lid.
"Oh, André," she said softly, dangling it at eye level. "It's beautiful."
"Try it on," he said dully. He had so looked forward to seeing this, but he'd never dreamed it would be in the wake of something like this.
She clipped the chain behind her neck and stood, turning to the crooked mirror to admire the silver music note hanging just below her collar bone. "I love it. Where'd you find it?"
"Remember when I went to New York for that internship over the summer?"
Her eyes lit up. "It's from New York?"
"Yep." At least that was something special. Anything he said or did at the moment felt woefully inadequate.
"I'll wear it to school tomorrow," she announced, laying a hand over it gently. Almost instantly, though, her face clouded over awkwardly. "Thank you so much, but I seriously need to clean up before my parents get home and all . . ."
"Here, I'll help," he said, stooping to right the coffee table. She flashed him a grateful look, but didn't say anything. In silence that settled somewhere between comfortable and awkward, they started sweeping up glass, straightening papers, picking up books. She felt horrible about lying to him, but preferred his accusing stare to the explosion she knew would come if she told him what Harrison had really done. So she shrunk down, avoided his eyes, and focused wholly on eliminating every last piece of shrapnel from her carpet.
Just as André was fixing up the lamp and she was trying to come up with an explanation for the lack of animals on her shelves, her phone rang. "Who is it?" André asked warily, eyeing it.
She picked it up, checking Caller ID. "Harrison."
He snorted. "Right. Like you're gonna talk to him after that. Dream on." She didn't say anything. "You're not gonna pick up." Silence. "Tori!"
She tapped the screen and pressed it to her ear. "What do you want?"
"Tori?" His voice was totally different. "Look, I've been thinking . . . I'm sorry, okay? I overreacted. You think . . . you think maybe we could start over? I know this great restaurant – you up for dinner tonight?"
"I don't know," she said uncertainly, feeling André's eyes boring into her back. "Maybe."
"Come on, baby." There was a smile in his voice. "I'll even take you somewhere really special afterwards. Just to show how much I love you." His voice grew wheedling. "Don't you love me anymore?"
She could resist the plea in his tone. "Of course I do," she sighed, shoulders slumping. "How about . . . five?"
"Whatever you say, babe," he said eagerly. "I'll pick you up?"
"Sure. Seeya then – love you." She hung up reluctantly. She was okay. The fight was over. He'd said sorry, and he was even picking her up for a treat. So why did she feel so horrible?
André was looking at her incredulously. "You're kidding me."
"What?" Her shoulders rose defensively.
"You're still going back to him? You're still talking to him? After this?" He swept his arms out to take in the whole of the room.
"I don't see anything."
"Oh, so that's what he says? Clean it up and it never happened?"
"It was a stupid fight, André," she said quietly. "We apologized. We've moved on. What's wrong with that?"
"But – but – he hit you!" he spluttered. "He hit you!"
"I never said that," she said softly.
"So you're telling me he didn't?"
She opened her mouth to argue, but he met her eyes and her voice died in her throat. "I'm sorry," she whispered, grabbing her purse. She headed for the door, and then turned around abruptly.
For a wild moment, André thought he had managed to change her mind "What?"
She grabbed him by the shoulders. "Promise me you won't tell anyone about this. Anyone at all." She gave his shoulders a little shake, eyes suddenly fierce. "Promise!"
At that moment, he hated Harrison Knopf. Because there was really only one answer to those gorgeous brown eyes, and it was going to kill him. "Promise."
She visibly relaxed. "Thank you," she breathed. Before he could react, she'd pressed her head against his chest, her heart against his ear, and then dashed out the door.
He stared after her for a long moment, and then went back to cleaning. At least she was still wearing his necklace.
...
Please review! I really want to know what you guys think!
