Ain't No Mountain High Enough

"Wanted Dead Or Alive"

The rest of the party went by quickly (and awkwardly). I spent it trying not to make eye contact with Valerie, or anyone else for that matter. I felt like at any moment, someone would mention the fact that Valerie and I had been in a room alone together. Surely Arjun knew, since he had been in the kitchen when his mom asked me to get the tablecloth. Surely they would know what must have taken me so long to get it whenever they realized Valerie had gone with me.

But no one said a word about it. Maybe they hadn't even given it a second thought. After the party was over, Keto, Veronica, Arjun, and myself all took to cleaning up the house. I found myself in the storage room again when I put up the tablecloth, and it made me blush to think about what we did. Technically, Valerie had cheated on Stephen — she had cheated on him with me! Surely that meant something!

"What's been bugging you?" Arjun asked when I returned to the kitchen. "I know having Stephen around is awkward, but you seemed even more nervous than usual." He tossed a stack of cups into the sink and turned on the water to start washing them.

I sat in my wheelchair behind him. "I don't know if I want to say."

Arjun shrugged. "I guess you don't have to, then."

I thought he would say more, but he was quiet long enough to make me change my mind. I took a deep breath and let it out. "Valerie told me why she didn't date me before," I said. "It was because of my mother, believe it or not."

"I figured it was something like that," Arjun said. He rinsed off one cup and put it on the dish drying rack by the sink. "What did she say?"

I explained everything Valerie had told me in the storage room, and that I knew something was bothering her, but she wouldn't say what it was. When I mentioned that, he turned off the sink and dried off his hands, even though there were still dishes left. He turned to me, and there was a look in his eyes that told me he was debating with himself in his head.

"What?"

Arjun shrugged. "I think there was something bothering both of them. Stephen and Valerie, I mean. They seemed different somehow. Mom thought so too. She said..." He trailed off and looked away, swallowed, then looked back. "Mom said she thinks there's something off about Stephen."

Well that wasn't news to me. I thought about how suspicious he was of me for the entire party, and how much he stared at me with this weird gleam in his eyes. "What do you think?"

"I'm not really sure," Arjun said. He dropped the towel onto the counter and rubbed his hand over his mouth. "I noticed something on Christmas Eve, when we went to the ballet, and something again today." He seemed to think about whether he wanted to tell me what it was or not, then shrugged. "Did you see her when that guy bumped into her?"

I thought hard, but couldn't recall anything like that. I must have not been paying attention.... But a realization suddenly flashed through me the more I thought about it.

Yeah, I had anger issues. The internal volcano had a name because it was so easy to set it off. But nothing, and I mean nothing, had ever set it off so fast before. In an instant, I felt ready to blow. If she had flinched when someone bumped into her... "You think he's been hurting her?"

Arjun held up a hand. "It's possible," he said carefully. "Today I...I noticed she had a bruise on her shoulder. When I asked about it, she said she got hurt at dance practice. I want to believe her, but she seemed so nervous about it, I'm not sure I can."

"We need to call the police, then!" I cried. My hands turned to fists. I wished more than ever that I could get up from my wheelchair and personally go beat up Stephen. "We can't just let him take her off to Boston!"

"We can't just throw accusations, either," Arjun said calmly. "We'll have to be careful about this. We need to make sure that's what's actually happening first."

I groaned and rubbed my hands over my face. "Arjun, they're leaving in a few days! We don't have time to be careful!"

"Just calm down, will you!" Arjun shook his head. "Why don't you try and get her to come over here without Stephen for a while, and we can talk to her about it? Maybe if he's not around, she'll be more open."

I paused to force my temper to cool down. "I-I guess," I mumbled. "I'll talk to her."

Arjun nodded curtly. "We'll go from there, and I'll talk to my mom about it, too. After all, she was in an abusive relationship before." He turned back to the sink to keep washing the dishes.

Sighing, I left to go get my phone. As much as I didn't like Stephen, I was praying that he wasn't hurting her and that their relationship would turn out just fine. I wanted to be with Valerie, yeah, but I didn't want her to get hurt. She seemed so happy with Stephen before. Why couldn't it stay like that for her sake?

As I typed out the message asking her to come over tomorrow (without Stephen), something Arjun said made me stop and think. He said he had noticed something off about Valerie after the ballet. That was after they had all agreed they didn't want to be around Stephen. That meant that whatever Stephen had done to make them dislike him might not have anything to do with him possibly being abusive.

If that was the case, what else had this guy done?

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Thank you all for reading!

Listen to Bon Jovi's "Wanted Dead Or Alive"!

Peace✌️~ A.J.