Non Verbal

10

Hi i know i said i was on a break but i needed to write to distract so:)

Chapter 10

I am sat with my head ducked sheepishly as Sutton get's back into the car and then laughs at my guilty look. 

I look up at him and he looks me dead in the eye.

"What did you do?" He groans.

I throw my hands up in frustration.

"Someone needed to tell him the truth."

He raises an eyebrow at me. "And that needed to be you, someone he hardly knows?"

I frown. "He was on about how I didn't help him, how I just made his parents send him into a programme."

Sutton nods. "Yes, Lottie. That's his truth right now."

I cross my hands over my chest. "But it's bullshit."

Sutton starts the car. "I know you meant well, but he doesn't... He thinks you're some entitled brat from his school."

My lips part. "He said that?" I exclaim.

"Not so much in words."

"He signed that?" I exclaim in the exact same tone I just did.

Sutton sighs at me. "No Lottie, I was paraphrasing. I just-"

"Wait, you think that?" I ask, suddenly growing very quiet. "Woah what?"

"No." He says. "No I don't, I just think that whatever you said to him was too harsh. You need to remember boundaries."

"I feel like we are too new friends for you to be telling me off."

He side glances me, pulling away from the curb. "Exactly Lottie, we are, but you also just met Roe, you can't be telling him off either."

I nodded a little. Frowning.

"I guess I don't really talk to anyone who- I can't say stuff like that too."

He hums in acknowledgement. 

"Like my friends, we don't really um... we all talk pretty honestly and call each other out on our bullshit."

"That's good, but you don't just meet someone and assume you can do that."

I nod.

"I feel like I could do that with you though... is that wrong?"

"No." He says. "Because we've spent pretty much every day seeing each other since we met. We are good. You can say anything to me, and I know you to understand that you mean it from a nice place."

He looks at me. "But he doesn't. Roe's pretty fragile right now. And he's my family Lottie, even though his sister wants nothing to do with me. The kids my friend, I am also the only person he talks to right now, so we need not to make the fact that you and I are friends, an issue for him."

"I am sorry Sutton." I say. "he just annoyed me, I wanted to make things clearer for him."

"He doesn't have clear right now, he literally just started to talk again. Which is great. And he's trying to get his life together. But damn, you have to just let him-"

"I feel like letting him just be, coddling him, is not what he needs though."

"Respectfully, you don't know him."

I nodded a little. Ok. He's right.

"You recon he's mad at me?" I ask quietly.

Sutton laughs. "He's pissed off. And he wont join us on nighttime adventures again, that's for sure."