Rich Bitch // malum & lashton

fourteen

May be triggering, I’m sorry

MICHAEL WAS MAD. Calum hadn’t talked to him in a whole week. To normal people, that would’ve been nothing, but to him, it was like a year because he liked him a whole lot. They kissed. Surely that meant something to the rich boy.

Apparently it didn’t, because he avoided the poor boy like he was the plague. Michael grew self-conscious. Was it his hair? His smell? Was it just him? He started to get Luke to bring smelly boy deodorant to school and he took care of his hair more. Mrs Hood still hadn’t paid him for some reason, so he just had to keep on asking Luke for things (which he really, really hated). He started to smell like Luke and he liked it a lot. It was like Luke was permanently hugging him, except it wasn’t as warm as usual.

Michael hadn’t gone home for a while. He was too scared that his dad might be there. He didn’t want Luke to worry, so he didn’t stay at the blonde boy’s house that much, claiming that his home life was better. Sometimes he just walked around town, all heartbroken and confused.

He was an idiot for thinking he could have one good day without the rest being ten time worse.

He cried too. He didn’t want to admit it or anything, but he did it a whole lot that week. By Wednesday, Luke had gotten very distracted by Ashton because of obvious reasons, but Michael took it badly. He believed that Luke didn’t like him anymore, just like Calum didn’t.

“E-Everything’s just so b . . . bad.” He sniffed. It was a week later on Thursday. He hadn’t gone to school in two weeks, and he knew his mum would be disappointed. “Bad. Bad. Bad.” He cried.

He wasn’t thinking straight when he started walking to the beach. He wasn’t drunk or anything. He didn’t need to be drunk to realise he was a failure. It was just what he thought was his final act of desperation. He took off his pants and left his shirt on because even in his last moments, he was still insecure.

He sobbed, walking into the water. “Fuck . . . fucking hell.” He shivered at the temperature of the water, but he kept on walking. It got up to the end of his ribcage in water, and it was then that he realised that he was actually doing this.

“Wait!” he heard from the shore, but he ignored it and sunk down to his knees.

He tried to hold his breath at first, but then he opened his mouth and let the water flood in. He could feel it fill up his throat, and he resisted the urge to gag. Suddenly, he was pulled up out of the water. Michael coughed and spluttered while water was still in his ears, so he couldn’t quite hear what the person who was yelling at him was saying.

He looked up. The light on the beach was lighting up his lifesaver’s face perfectly. Tiny droplets of water were falling from his hair, and his pink lips were puffing oxygen in and out they moved quickly to form incoherent words. Michael couldn’t stop looking at him.

“What . . . What the fuck were you doing, Michael?”

“Calum,” he whispered in awe as his eyes started make some salt water of his own. “What are you . . . What are you doing here?”

“Answer my fucking question, Michael!” Calum yelled, tears bursting out of his eyes.

The pale boy was in such a state of shock, that he dropped to his knees again. Except this time he’d fainted. Calum panicked, quickly dragging him out of the water and lying him down on the sand. He came back into consciousness a minute later and the Kiwi felt like he could breathe again. He started to cry over Michael’s sobbing chest.

“Why . . . Why did you do that?” the tanned boy asked. “You know I like you and everything.”

Michael pushed him away, his face reddening a little in anger. “Like me?” he spat, standing up and looking down at him. “You’ve ignored me for two weeks!” he kicked him. “For no fucking reason, may I add!”