Without Her ✓

Hold You

Tessa

"Girl, for real?!" I exclaimed, "You need to invite us over"

After Serenity's dad died, there was this strange man who made an appearance at the funeral and it turned out he is her guardian.

To be honest I was happy her dad was gone. Cruel I know, but with the way he treated her he deserved to rot in hell. Serenity didn't like talking about it and refused any help we ever tried to give her, but we knew.

"Tessa don't be rude" Jane scolded.

"Who are you? My mother?" I
challenged her squinting her eyes. We all knew we were just play-fighting. We did that often.

"Girls. Enough" Serenity said sternly. Jane and I looked down and stopped fighting. "You'll come over some time soon, I promise"

"So how is this man treating you? Any weird gestures? Anything we should worry about?" Jane asked.

What a mom.

"No, he's really kind actually" Serenity smiled warmly.

I was so happy to see her smile like that. She deserved it.

"I see you smiling" I said in a sing song voice bumping her shoulder.

"He's just really sweet, that's all" Serenity said shaking her head.

"He doesn't look like it. He seems dark and dangerous almost" Jane said raising an eyebrow.

Don't ruin it for her.

I couldn't argue with her though. He did seem dangerous at first glance, but so did Leo and Leo was really sweet.

Sometimes.

"Well to me he's really sweet and  looks can be deceiving so I don't care. Plus he's my guardian, I can't do anything about it" I said, "He even cooked dinner for me"

Suddenly I heard a notification sound and I checked my phone. I got excited thinking it was Leo. I had asked him to hang out today because I hadn't seen him in a couple days and I really hoped he would say yes.

He kept texting me all these days telling me he wants to see me, but he was really busy with work. To be honest, it bothered me. The secrets, the excuses, it all bothered me.

I opened the text and once again, he was saying he's busy.

All my excitement and happiness was now gone and I was disappointed.

"Everything okay?" Serenity asked me putting her hand on top of mine. I  looked up at me with a forced smile. She already had enough on her plate.

"Yes, everything's fine"

"You know, just Leo and his mood swings" I chuckled.

Maybe if I make jokes about it, it won't seem that bad.

"You can talk to us you know" Jane told me.

"There's nothing to talk about. It's okay" I said and then changed the topic.

After a while the bell rang signaling we had to get to class. Serenity and I said goodbye to Jane and started heading to class.

"Tessa I know you're not okay with Leo" Serenity told me "You need to talk to him about it"

She didn't know. She didn't know about what was going on. The situation was against us but I wanted to be with him, I wanted to be understanding, it was just so frustrating.

"You don't understand" I shook my head.

"I won't ever understand if you don't tell me about it" She said.