of everything that happened last night. I had to drive my brother here and now they won’t tell me what’s wrong! The fuck!
“You’re getting angry all over again.”
“Stop trying to read me,” I grit out.
“I’m not trying to read you. Your anger is palpable,” she starts after a while, her voice surprisingly soothing and airy. “So’s your anxiety.”
“Is that your own anxiety talking?” I counter, eyeing her from the corner of my eye.
“I don’t have anxiety.” She rushes to cover her face with her palms, massaging her temples. “Mom says anxiety gives people ugly wrinkles way too early in life. I’m too young for that!”
Figures that’s her motivation. I want to smile so bad, but I don’t.
“I guess you like your fairytales with more than a little sprinkling of glitter, with rainbows and unicorns, thinking the world is all good?”
“Eww.” Her disgust is as quick as her blinking. “Number one, I hate glitter, that shit is hard to clean out. And two, leave rainbows and unicorns out of this. You can hate everything else.”
I want to laugh at that, but the pain in my hand makes me wince instead. In a blink of an eye, the mysterious girl, without asking, grabs my injured hand.
I tense up, watching her through the slits of my eyes.
“What are you doing?”
“Checking your busted-up hand,” she murmurs, carefully unfurling my palm. “Please don’t tell me you play sports.”
“You really don’t know who I am?” I question, feeling skeptical all of a sudden.
“Please, the world doesn’t revolve around assholes who want to assert their need to let their anger out on inanimate objects in hospital hallways.”
Looking into her eyes, she shoots me a genuine smile that literally steals the breath out of my lungs. Good God, she’s stunningly beautiful when she smiles.
She doesn’t give me a moment longer to admire her as she gets up and turns to run down the hall, leaving a chilly breeze of loneliness and aching pain.
“Hey, where are you going?” I call after her. She spins around without actually stopping, looking like a butterfly in that moment, making my heart pound so hard in my chest. She might flutter away and be gone forever or…
“I’ll be right back. Don’t attack the chairs while I’m gone.” She turns around again, more like spins in a perfect ballet spin. But before she can run again, she looks over her shoulder. “Don’t even think about attacking that wall.”
And with that, she’s gone, her long mane blowing behind her. Who is this girl and why does she look like the face of my undoing?
My phone vibrates again. I ignore it, not knowing what I would say if I pick it up. Tell my little brother, who practically adores and worships the ground his older brother walks on, that said older brother is dying? I think not.
In her absence, my anger start building all over again, like a monster that was being held back by her presence. Fishing out my buzzing phone, I notice it’s not Liam, but the asshole who calls himself my father.
“What?” I snap.
“Julian, son,” he starts, blowing his breath through the phone. “Where are you? Your mother is worried sick.”
“Since when have you cared about Mom?” I bite out, remembering the devastated look on her face. I lost my mother last night and no matter what anyone will tell me, I know she’ll never be the same after seeing her manwhore of a husband parade around a twenty-one-year old, single brain-cell whore on national TV.
“Son, your mother and I…” he blows out another breath. I can imagine he’s running his hands through his hair. “It’s complicated.”
Sure, breaking someone’s heart and soul is always complicated.
“Stop using her as an excuse for your inability to control how many times you drop your pants to how ever many whores you sleep with, successfully ignoring your family. And we sure as hell don’t give a damn where you do it.”
“You saw.” It’s not a question.
“The whole world saw.”
Silence stretches between us for a second. There’s nothing he can say that will make me see him in a different light than the one he shone on himself.
He sighs heavily on the other end and I know he’s about to change the topic, again. He never answers a direct question, never admits to anything. I guess that’s a trait in cheaters.
“Where are you, Julian? Are you with your brother?”
“Which one?” I wait, feeling like I’m just a breath away from snapping. “Which brother are you talking about, Dad?”
I