The Heartbroke Club

8

I tried to hurry as much as I could in the shower. I'd let a stranger in my house without my parents' permission for whatever reason, and my anxiety increased as my time waxed on.

Mark was probably a sociopath or something. The kid didn't even talk.

But he cried. A few times. And I wanted to know where in his tough exterior those tears leaked out from.

And I was kind of tired of ignoring my feelings. I'd always felt a lot, but I'd never felt so much negative emotion. I didn't know where to place it, and things had been even worse since basketball conditioning kicked up.

My lips felt extremely dry and I looked at my lipgloss sitting on the sink on the other side of the glass door. It was time to get out.

I put my lip gloss on and rushed my clothes onto my body. I tried acting like I wasn't rushing out of there when I made my way back into the living area and saw him sitting on the couch with his nose in his phone.

I went and sat on the love seat across from him and crossed my legs in front of me.

My living room had very large, gray furniture in it. The love seat had only one cushion, but it was big enough to easily fit three people on it. He sat in the large sectional right across from it, and a glass coffee table divided us. 

"Hey," I said.

"You said Cara was rich? This place looks pretty big. Everyone here must have money," he looked around, eyeing the white and gray interior. My mom's touches.

"If they don't have it, they're good at finding it or acting like they have it," I snickered.

"No parents?" He asked as he put his phone in his pocket and out of sight.

"Mom's at work. Dad's away on business. He does real estate across the south so he has to go away when demand is high."

Mark nodded.

Now that I thought about it and now that he'd asked, I realized just how empty the house had felt lately. Like most people who lived well, the house usually was a rotating door of people coming and going. I was an only kid, and my parents were often gone. I'd never felt lonely, before though, and André was part of the reason why. Whenever my parents were gone, I'd just spend time with him. For the past few weeks, I'd been forced to sit alone with my thoughts in that house that felt a lot different than it did for my past 17 years.

I rubbed my lips together to make sure the gloss didn't build up in the corners of my mouth before I went for the jugular. "That girl was your girlfriend, wasn't she?" I said, referring to the girl that stood next to him in that group picture I saw in the cafeteria. "People don't keep their friends as their home screen, I'd like to think."

But it wasn't about him. I called him there because I needed to vent. Desperately.

"I don't mean to put you on the spot. I mean, I do, but not like, like that. I just said that to say I know what you're going through. My ex-boyfriend went to college and forgot about me."

"And I could talk about it with Quentin, you know? But he's hated André since he moved here freshman year. And I can't talk to anyone without getting the 'he's an asshole' reassurance. And you're a stranger, but for some reason, I feel better venting to you than I do with my friends," I stammered out.

"Because you don't know me?" he asked.

"Yeah. Is that weird?"

"Lil' bit. But I get it."

I looked at him warily and he cracked a little smile. "I'm serious."

"Okay," I smiled back at him.