Ride or Die

Chapter 6

Sleep made a mockery of you that night.

After a bright hot and glaring sunny day that did nothing to lift your spirits. The night came and it fell swift and light. It was also just as hot. A dry wind carved through and made everything feel stifling.

It felt like hell. You felt like hell-

Your mind toiled and rotted with worries. Every snippet of touch and every moment of him ran through your head like a never ending film reel. Snapping to the end, and then the frame burns out to sticky black when you think of how your morning came crashing down around you.

You'd had a languishing day. It felt like it spanned a year over the long dreadful hours. You kept listening out for the terrible roar of a bike. But nothing comes.

The silence is killing you. You know you're making yourself crazy with it.

The irony isn't lost on you that you'd spent your life dreading that bike sound. And now, you're on the edge of your seat praying to hear it.

You twisted and turned in your bed. Feeling sweaty and agitated. The window on the wall at the end of your bed was cracked open a tiny slither, curtains bashing around like flailing white ghosts, but it still didn't help.

It was suffocating hot in here. The fetid stale air wafting in didn't improve your overheated state.

You shoved the thin blue summer blankets off your legs and kick them down your tiny bed. You could smell the lavender sweet washing detergent that Grandma used on them. They feel too powdery and starched cloying on your skin tonight.

You lay there; half agony and half restlessness. Trying to get your brain to shut up and drift away.

You run through your torturous day, yet again, in your head in the hopes that one more time around will finally exhaust you. That your aching sore eyes will finally drop and grant you some rest.

After Quinn dropped you off, you trudged inside your house, miserable. Skating away the raw of your tears with your hand. You come in the door and the clatter of cereal bowls and the shuffle of slippers on lino make you sink further into dread.

You hide from Grandma in the hallway, back to that happy and bright blue kitchen as you hold the banister, nail idly picking at a groove in the wood.

You feel like a sneaky-dirty high school girl. Coming home in ruined panties with not brushed out sex hair, and morning breath, from your boyfriends house. You feel like you were out at a keg party with a boy they don't approve of. And now you're gonna get shouted at.

She speaks to you so kindly yet sounding so worried from the kitchen doorway. Her voice soft but curious. Asking you a million questions about your night. One after the other they keep coming at you in that querulous calming way she does. Wrapped up in her pink fluffy-towelling gown.

The insinuation that you'd spent the night in Kylo's bed having sex, hung in the air like a bitterly embarrassing afterthought. You were glad she didn't address it. For now, you'll just tell her about the date aspect of your evening.

You told her you were fine with a sour grimace of something hollow that had once been your grin.

You told her had Tacos and beer at the bar. Kylo's nice friend dropped you home. You didn't care to go into the particulars. And yes, despite everything you'd come to expect of him, Kylo was very nice to you.

Because rough animal sex none-withstanding, he actually was.

Waking you up by arguing with Quinn's cat. Wanting to take you out for breakfast and not just turf you out in the morning like a cheap whore sullying his sheets. The way he groped and gripped your ass and called every soft inch of you perfect.