Misfits (#2)

18.

Everest.

I kick the door shut behind me, tossing my keys onto the counter and walking in. There's a stupid looking smile on my face. I just drove Violet home after spending a day in a fucking bookstore.

A bookstore. If you'd told me that a couple weeks ago, I'd have laughed in your face. Everest has no business in an old-person bookstore but now, I'd stay there all day if it meant she talked to me like she did.

With her legs crossed and her light hair draped over her shoulders. Always getting a little more bubbly at the parts she liked best. Her hand would always find my knee without realising it and I'd have to do my very fucking best not to focus on it. She's killing me. That sweet little thing is more devilish than she know because I'm pretty sure I have permanent blue balls from being around her.

Whatever. People don't talk to me much, as fucking depressing as that sounds. I'm there to piss you off or make you laugh but never the one to be somebody's first.

Today, she talked to me and it felt like the first time somebody didn't want something from me. A laugh or a fuck or whatever.

Like she just wanted to...talk to me. I'll take blue balls if it means I get that from her.

I walk into the living room but don't spot her anywhere so call out, "Lila? Oú es tu?"

"Here!" She calls out and I hear her upstairs so make my way up the stairs towards her room. Walking down the hall, I open up her door and see her clasping her necklace on.

"Êtes-vous prêt pour le travail?" I smile as soon as I see her, walking over and standing tall behind her in the mirror.

"I told you to speak English with me." She says, "I'm trying to get better for the new job."

"You're already better, Li. You don't need to prove anything to them." I assure as I flop back onto her bed and sigh, "A job you're still not telling me about."

"It doesn't matter, Everest." She reprimands again, though every time Lila tries to sound mean, she still sounds gentle.

I prop myself on my elbows, "You're working two jobs now. You don't need to. I can help you out now that I'm working at the cafe-"

"Non." She spins around to me, "C'est pour ton lycee. No changing that."

"But-"

"No." She cuts it off and I grumble, lying back on her bed.

Lila Martinez.

My french saviour, as I like to call her.

I spent ten and a half years of my life in an orphanage. I was there before Hudson and Luca arrived and I was still there when they left. I guess that's what hurt the most.

The first six years, I never made a single friend. Alone was something that was as familiar to me as my own heartbeat. I didn't know friendship, interactions, contact but I've also always been a kid that hates moping, even when I need to. Even when my body needs to let out emotion and just feel like shit, I don't let it.

I prefer smiling. But in that hellhole, kids were sad and hurt. I was a happy kid and they hated me for it. I was like the runt of the litter, or the little lamb they liked to put down a peg.

Hudson and Luca were the first people, in my whole life, to ever protect me. I never knew what security felt like until them.

They were the first people I ever really spoke to, the first true relations I had in a friendless life. And they bordered everyone who tried to hurt me out, creating a little triangle in which I sat at the centre. The amount of beatings they took from kids I pissed off should be a fucking record.