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"Hey, Cullen?" Rose knocked on his bedroom door, opening it a moment later as he looked up from his bed. "You wanna order a pizza?"
"Why?" he shut his laptop, because pizza did sound good.
"Well, Demetri is at his friends house and your dad is working a little late." she shrugged in return, leaning on the doorway. "Figured you're a little sick of eating cereal you store under your bed."
"Pineapple?" he rose his eyebrows.
"Sure." she nodded, disappearing to the kitchen to grab her phone. Cullen exhaled, getting out of bed as he looked for a shirt to throw on. He left his phone in his room, walking toward the kitchen. "Should be twenty minutes."
He nodded, flopping down on the couch and looking toward the christmas tree. Rose hesitated, walking over and sitting on the chair. Cullen rose his eyebrows her way, getting an awkward smile. He had to laugh. "Rose, you're terrible at small talk."
"I know." she admitted, looking toward the tv. "I added your name to the netflix account if you wanna watch something."
"Okay." he said back, but didn't move. "Demetri is at a friends house?"
"Yes, he has a lot of friends now." she said back, seeming pleased. "I haven't seen Eli in a while though."
Cullen assumed she had no clue about the karate war, about anything with Demetri and Eli. He wasn't gonna tell her either. "Maybe he just doesn't like coming over here anymore because he's embarrassed about pissing the bed all the time."
Rose tried not to laugh. "Probably so."
The silence was back, and it was awkward. Rose cleared her throat. "So, your transfer scrips came from your old school. We can get you all signed up on Monday."
Cullen nodded, Rose went on. "Your grades looked really good."
"Not much to do there so, naturally." Cullen hummed, bitting the inside of his mouth. "It was either that or go hang out with a bunch of drug heads in the green houses."
Roses face fell as Cullen nodded. "Yup, even when you guys send me away to be a better person, there's still bad people. Know that might come as a massive shock. But, hey, at least I got a school uniform."
"I can't keep doing this." Rose shook her head with an exhale. "I know you're extremely mad at us."
"Mad doesn't even cover it, Rose. You sent me away. Hours away, I knew no one, didn't know the town, I was completely alone." he sat up, and he felt his face heat up in possibly anger or sadness, he wasn't totally sure. "Do you have any clue how that feels? Or to have a creep of a roommate? All because of what? Because I was acting out?"
"Cullen, we gave you so many chances. It wasn't just getting in trouble at school anymore, we didn't want you to get arrested after all you did." Rose tried to reason, her tone stayed soft. "Boarding school was the only way we knew that would keep you from acting out."
