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At her words, I still. “Excuse me?”
“Yeah.” She nods. “Young handsome guy came and said I should give this to you.”
She passes me a folded piece of yellow paper. I take it with hesitation, but my curiosity wins out. I unfold it.Skylar call me please. We need to talk. Liam 347-289-1175
Is he freaking kidding me? We do not need to talk. I have nothing to say to him. I crumple up the paper and throw it in the closest garbage bin. Dream on, Liam Bozeman.
CHAPTERFOUR
Liam Sophomore YearHigh School
I get back from hockey practice and head up to my room. Mom is cooking dinner, and Dad isn’t home, so the house is quiet. I walk by my brother’s room. He has this stupid sign on his door that says danger with flames around it. Where I’m an athletic guy, my brother, David, is an artist. He spends most of his time in his room drawing. I give his door a light knock and then I open it. He’s on his bed staring up at the ceiling.
“What’s up, dude?” I ask.
When we were little, we were close. He’s only two years younger than me, and we used to play together all the time, but ever since he’s started junior high, he’s been different.
“Nothing,” he replies. He doesn’t even look at me.
“Why don’t you get out of bed, and we’ll play some Xbox?” I suggest this because he spends too much time holed up in his room. He doesn’t really have friends, and I worry about him.
“Nah,” he answers blandly. Sometimes I just want to walk up to him and shake him and tell him to wake up, but I won’t do that obviously.
I go to take a shower since I’m sweaty from hockey practice, and then I get dressed in a pair of jogging pants and a sweatshirt. I head to the kitchen.
“What’s for dinner?” I ask Mom.
“Sloppy joes,” she replies.
I make a gagging face.
“What’s wrong with sloppy joes?” she asks, looking insulted.
“Technically, there’s nothing wrong. I just don’t like sauce in my burger meat,” I say dryly.
“Well, your dad was complaining I don’t make anything he likes, so I was trying to appease him,” she says as she stirs the pot. It smells like literal puke.
Dad comes home and is pleased to see the sloppy joes in the pot. He kisses Mom’s cheek, which doesn’t happen too often because my parents like to fight a lot.
Mom calls David to dinner, but he doesn’t answer. A look is passed between Mom and Dad, and then Dad gets up to bring David his food in his room.
When Dad comes back down, he’s in a mood. The three of us eat our meal in silence, which feels uncomfortable. I much preferred the times Dad would ask me how practice was or he’d come out to games, but he stopped doing that this year.
After I finish eating, I clean my plate and thank Mom for dinner. Then I head to my room. A bunch of my friends are texting on WhatsApp. They want to go hang at one of the guys’ houses, but I’m not up for that. Instead, I climb out my window even though it’s freezing outside. I head down the water pipe, which is covered in ice. It makes me slide faster, and I hit the ground a little harder than I would’ve liked to. I head over to the Pattersons’, only I don’t go to their front door because they told Skylar she can’t date any boys or have any boys over. They are a conservative couple who told her she should not have sex before marriage, and it would be in her best interest to do well in school since they don’t have money to send her to college.
Skylar’s room is on the main floor of the house. They converted their office into a room for her. It was nice of them to take her in, but they don’t act like real parents. They give her food and a place to stay. They make sure she does well in school, and they tell her what to wear, but you can see they don’t care about her. That makes me feel sick inside because for the last year and a half Skylar hasn’t just become my best friend, she’s become a person I care about. A person who is so loving and deserves to be loved and cared for after everything she’s been through in her life.
I tap lightly on her window. She’s working at the small desk they gave her with her lamp on. Her auburn hair falls on her face, and I take in the curve of her neck. I still think she’s the prettiest girl I’ve ever seen. The problem is all the guys at school feel the same way. They give her lots of attention. The girls have accepted her too because she’s easygoing and funny.
She turns her head when she hears the tapping and stands from her desk. She quietly opens the window and removes the screen like we’ve done so many times since we started secretly dating. Skylar doesn’t want anyone at school knowing we are together because she doesn’t want it getting back to her foster parents, who think we are just friends.
I climb inside quietly, and Skylar walks over to her radio. She turns on some classical music since it’s Patterson approved.
When she walks back over to me, I wrap my hand around her waist and pull her into me. We kiss, and I’m taken away from my troubles at home. With her sweet kisses the tension leaves my body, reminders of my parents fighting, and my brother’s mental health issues don’t exist.
I walk her over to the bed, and we climb on together without breaking the seal of our lips. Our kissing grows heated as her tongue comes out to tangle with mine, and my hands somehow slide under her shirt.
My eyes pop open when I feel she isn’t wearing a bra.
