Cruel Kisses (It's Just High School #2) - Thandiwe Mpofu Page 0,47
open every morning, the hollowness of what I did eating at me.”
That’s a shitty thing to say because it’s true.
We stare at each other, breathing hard and deep, debating whether or not to beat the shit out of each other as we’ve done twice before. I knew a third time was hovering close but that third time had to be earned properly.
“Are we fucking done with this shit?” he growls. I stare at him, then nod, looking away from him to the ocean.
“Yeah.”
“Good,” he scoffs. “Now shut up and let’s go through this again.”
“Please, you have the floor, asshole,” I mutter.
He shoots me the finger but leans back on his car, still looking out at sea like he’s still contemplating the balance of probability of pushing me over the cliffs. If he did, I wouldn’t put up a fight. He’d be doing me a favor by putting me out of my misery.
Cole takes a puff, then passes the blunt to me. I inhale the damn thing, knowing damn well that we’re not supposed to be doing this, but fuck. I pass the blunt back and watch as he blows out rings of smoke. He isn’t even aware that he’s doing it.
“I think we’ve been going at this fuck-up the wrong,” he says. “If your mother…”
“Courtney,” I grit out, cutting him off. I refuse to refer to that woman as my mother. Like I told her four days ago, she forfeited that right.
A lot of people go through life without mothers, and have done well. Needless to say, that has been true in my case. That woman doesn’t have a maternal bone in her body anyway. If she did, she wouldn’t have… FUCK!
“Okay, if Courtney talked to Mia…”
“She didn’t talk to her, she planted seeds in her head and fertilized them with the shit that comes out of her mouth.”
“Are you going to cut me off at every turn, jerk?” He glances at me and I know he’s probably giving me a withering look. I’m glad I can’t see it.
“When it’s necessary,” I mutter, passing him the blunt. “You phrase your thoughts slower than a spelling bee full of stutters.”
“Tell me something, does your assholery ever take a day off?”
I take a moment to actually think about that. There were days when I would actually try to be a decent human being. But when I was with Mia, she never asked me to be anything else other than who I am to the core.
“Not since she left,” I mutter.
“Since you made her leave, you mean?” he fires back. I can’t see his eyes as they’re now hidden by his Ray-Bans but I’m sure he’s hard gaze is judging me, seriously contemplating on whether or not to throw me over the cliff. I bet the vote is close and honestly if he did, I wouldn’t fight him.
“Fuck you!”
“It’s the truth, isn’t it? You wanted her to leave when you blurted that sappy, pathetic drunken shit that night.”
“I thought we were done with this shit.”
“Yeah well, I’m still bitter.”
“Evidently,” I mutter.
“You do know that you could’ve talked to her like a normal human being, but you didn’t, so now you feel shitty inside your cold, black heart because you’re finally facing the consequences of being an insufferable jerk with a mouth that makes the devil sigh.”
“I hardly use mouth that much,” I grumble. “Maybe Mia. She’s the one with a mouth that dirty and fiery anyway.”
She’d made the devil proud. Everything about her, is an act of war, like she was designed to set me off and make me obsess over her. I still didn’t like that she had this much power over me.
He tilts his head to the left as if really thinking about it. “Yeah, that’s probably true.”
“Exactly.”
He shrugs, passing me the blunt. “For real though, when last did you actually make an effort to not piss someone off?”
“Not since Aiden passed.” The admission passes through my lips, leaving an ashy taste on my tongue.
The truth is, I don’t want to hear whatever my best friend has to say because it’s probably the ugly truth. But unlike that fucking romcom movie Liam forced Cole and I to watch with Aiden a few months ago, this doesn’t have some cute happy ending that made Cole and Liam cry like little girl scouts.
This was real life, straight out of the Fitz mansion.
“Anyway, back on track, again, Courtney said she talked to Mia, and that she apologized and set the record straight, do you