AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Thomas didn’t say anything in reply, he just walked away from the door. It sat open. I didn’t dare walk inside. Past the living room, I could hear him rifling through some boxes. And then there was the jingle of keys.
He walked back with a cardboard box, full of everything I’d been missing out on.
But Thomas strolled right past me to the driveway and I was forced to follow after him.
"He got me a suspension, Piper," Thomas threw behind his shoulder.
With a turn of his hand, the cardboard box crashed to the driveway and I hurried to pick up things before they rolled down to the road. I didn’t need to. The CDs were broken, the stuffed animals were ripped apart, and the postcards were in pieces. My heart pounded in my chest as I picked among the leftovers.
"You two deserve each other," Thomas snapped, yanking open his car door. "A vulture for a vulture. Fuck, Piper. It’s fucking pathetic. You’re nothing more than a bleacher bunny that I stayed with for too long. You did nothing but drag me down."
The San Juan Island postcard at the bottom was torn apart. I slipped them into my pocket and felt the pepper spray.
"I should’ve cut it off with you a long time ago," Thomas said, shutting the car door behind him.
With slow movements, I pushed myself up to a standing position and walked over to Thomas’s car. He gave me a hard look through the window. I rapped my knuckles against the window, harder than I’d been at the door. Thomas narrowed his eyes and rolled down the window two inches.
"What is it?" he demanded.
"Thomas?" I took a deep breath and flicked off the top of the pepper spray behind my back. "You can go fuck yourself."
His mouth fell open. "What?"
I pressed the nozzle of the pepper spray to the two-inch space and sprayed the inside of the car. Thomas flew into a rage of curses and tried to shove the door open but I sprinted away. I scooped up the cardboard box and yanked open the door to June’s car, barreling in.
"Holy shit!" Zariah sucked in a breath. "Piper, did you just pepper spray that dude?!"
"Drive, drive, drive!" Kassie shouted.
June slammed on the accelerator.
The girls were ecstatic but I stayed silent in the backseat. The adrenaline kept me up for a few minutes. Then the farther we drove past Thomas’s house, the more I looked into the box of things. The box of stuff I had wanted to show Adam.
"You didn’t come up with this yourself, did you?" I asked softly.
"Kassie invited us." Zariah bumped my shoulder with hers. "If I would’ve known, girl, we would've come a long time ago. It could’ve been a weekend project for Elijah."
June turned a hard right. "Yeah, why didn’t you tell us?"
But Kassie was quiet in her seat and I knew what that meant. Adam told her I needed this. And maybe I did. But it was time to play that horrible game Adam’s dad taught him. What was he trying to accomplish with this? What did he want?
I brushed away another few tears and gazed out the window.
104
Adam
Don’t Fall Asleep
The only thing I could think of to push past the pain was to dive into a party. The fun dude, the party guy, the man who knew how to have a good time. I sent out a mass message, looking for anything with bottles, and I collected a list of them. It was time to get shitfaced and forget all about her for the night.
I went to all the parties.
Which ones?
Who fucking knows.
It was a bender unlike anything I ever put myself through before. The more places I went, the more people flocked to me, trying to party too. My mood was supposed to be getting better. But from one party to the next, there was an unbearable weight on me and I was ruining it for everyone.
