All The Odds

Thirteen

//And take me away to someplace else, cause I don't wanna see you with anybody else. Maybe I'm selfish, I don't know. // Hudson Taylor.

She couldn't get out of the car fast enough when he got them home and he watched her leave with a sense of déjà vu.

Hasn't this happened before?

Though no one was pulling her through the crowd this time, he had stood like a loser and watched her ran out of that café too, on that blasted night four years ago.

He spent two months after then, stewing over the matter, he told himself he deserved an apology and would lay in bed with his phone at around the time they usually talk, waiting for her to do just that. But the heartbroken look she gave him as she left kept playing in his mind, that he eventually went from derserving an apology to wanting an explanation and later he was just,

'crap, I shouldn't have let Jasmine hit her. She expected me to defend her didn't she? Is she expecting me to call her first?'

It wasn't easy and it took all his teenage pride to convince himself she had no right to expect anything from him, not after using him for some female ego, not when everyone in his life already expected something from him.

He couldn't openly touch a guitar because his father expected him to be more business minded, as the only son and with Ivory gone to chase her dreams.

His mother expected him to be the son his father wanted, whenever Ivory came home, she expected him to put the big boy pants on and defend himself against their father constantly smacking him around, telling him how worthless of a son he was because he preferred Music to Calculus.

The coach expected him to always be available and on time for games, his teammates expected him to get the ball in the net.

Bella expected him to defend her from Jasmine that night even though she'd spent the past months lying to him when all he did was opened his heart to her.

Jasmine didn't expect much, she only wanted him to be the pretty face beside her to keep her ridiculous 'head cheerleader dating the basketball captain' status, even though it was often an awkward silence when they were alone. He knew Jasmine loved him alright, he loved her too. Things were just sick.

Iverson rarely drink because he doesn't do well around alcohol. He has a ruined relationship and friendship as evidence, but now his throat craved the burning of a strong stuff, his finger tips tingled for their due feel of the guitar strings, while his hands twitched with the desire to punch something hard.

Unfortunately, his guitar was in the house, so instead of turning around and driving away like he wanted, he got out of the car and walked with steel like legs.

Thanks to his father, he was familiar with suffering in silence and still loving those who made him suffer. He was also good at loving from afar, the moment he escaped Kadeville after highschool, he never looked back until his father was bedridden and Ivory haunted him down.

There, on the death bed was where his father told him he loved him, for the first time ever and apparently the last. He handed him the key to a Ferrari and told him about a duplex no one else knew of, Downtown.

And then he died, right in front of Iverson. That coward.

Ivory would always tell him to toughen up and cover the damn heart he wore on his sleeve, it was her gentle way of telling him he was an emotional weakling and he appreciated her discreet effort, but he made peace with who he was a long time ago.

It was one reason he wasn't on Instagram and hardly ever uses his twitter. When he was fourteen and followed his sister's rising fame keenly, a séx tape was leaked, Ivory held her head high and walked through it with a smile and no one could have traced Marie Ivy back to the Benson family in Kadeville, yet Iverson was depressed for months by the comments and opinions he read about his sister on line.