you can hear it in the silence

chapter eighteen

Wes

I hear her breathless voice from the other end of the phone.

"Adare? Where are you?"

She sends me an address and I quickly turn off the water and hop out of the shower.

I throw on a part of dark grey sweatpants and the first wrinkled white shirt I can find.

When I drive up to the address Adare sent me, I'm immediately taken back by how many cars there are.

Adare at a party?
That's not like her at all.

I don't bother locking my car and just walk up.

There's flashing lights, loud music, everyone is dancing and is sweaty and drunk.

No way Adare agreed to this.

I have no clue where she's at, but I'm assuming it would be somewhere away from all the people downstairs.

I head up the stairs and am about to pull out my phone to call her again and ask where she's at until I hear knocking on a door.

Turning, I see sweaty Jordan standing outside of a door.

"Adare what the fuck! Open the damn door!" He shouts.

What the fuck?

"Jordan what the fuck are you doing?" I shout.

"Wes, hey man," he stutters as he turns his head to me with his eyes completely blood shot.

He smells like weed and beer.

"What the fuck do you think you're doing?" I snap back.

"Dude, this is all just a totally misunderstanding. She wants me bro, she's just playing hard to get."

That pisses me the fuck off.

"Yeah?" I ask him, looking down on him with a scowl on my face.
I'm at least five inches taller than him.

I get closer to him and push him away from the door.
I want to smash his fucking head in.

"That's not your fucking choice to make."

He just stares at me, without a thought behind those eyes.

I get flashbacks to my dad when he would come home drunk off his ass. Didn't even know his own name.

"You think that how you get laid?" He doesn't respond.

"Hm? By cornering girls and scaring them? I mean what the fuck?"
"I just.." He slurs.

I give him a disgusted look and shove him gently, well a little harder than gently into the wall. "Go to sleep man."

I move my hand to the doorknob and shake it, locked.

"Wellsy open up it's me," I say lowly into the door.

A split second later the knob turns and I see Adare.

She's in jeans and a dark blue shirt with converse and a cardigan on. She's always got a cardigan on.

She looks distraught. Eyes wide, she looks fucking terrified but also relieved.

A small part of me likes that she's relieved once she sees me.
And I know that makes me an asshole.

"You came," she says so soft thats it's almost a whisper.

"You called."

Did she really think I wouldn't show up for her?

She exhales and gulps.
"Let's get out of here," I say lowly.

As we're making our way through the swarms of people, me leading, I feel Adare grab the back of my loose t-shirt as we measle our way out of the house.

When we finally get outside, I can hear Adare audibly sigh and I can almost feel the relief flood onto her.

We get into the car and she doesn't say anything.
I don't say anything either.
I just put the car into drive and go.

I could say a million things to her, but that would just piss her off and as much as I love doing that, now's not the time.

She looked genuinely scared.

"Wes."

And I don't even wanna think about what that son of a bitch would've done to her if he got into that door.

"Wes."

I suddenly am pulling out of my thoughts and see a worried Adare looking at me.

I gulp, "huh?"
"You're gripping the steering wheel," she nods down to my hand. "Your knuckles are white."

"Huh? Oh, I," I glance down and loosen my grip on the wheel. I didn't even realize I was.

She looks down, searching for what to say.

Instead of saying anything at all, we both stay silent and before I know it, we're in the parking lot.

Putting the car in park I sit back in my chair and Adare doesn't move.

She exhales and turns to me.

"Thank you Wes," she pauses, "for picking me up."

"Yeah Wellsy, anytime I," she cuts me off.

"I don't really know what happened," she shakes her head.
"He told me it was just going to be a couple of his friends," she keeps talking.

I wasn't going to ask but she just keeps telling me.

"Actually I didn't even agree to it really, he just kinda said 'oh I'll pick you up at eight' and then when we showed up it was a lot more than a couple of people and then people kept showing up and they kept drinking and then I wanted to leave and he wouldn't let me and then he grabbed me and I just, I don't know how it all went so wrong so fast," she finishes one long run on sentence.

She's not even looking at me right now, just starting out the window.

Almost like she's not telling me what happened, but trying to figure it out herself.

He fucking grabbed her?
I'm going to strangle this motherfucker.

"Wes."
My eyes shoot over to her, "what?"
"Your hand."

I look down and see my hand balled in a fist and when I realize what I'm doing, I open my fist and see my fingernail imprints inside of my hand.

"Talk to me," she says softly while pulling her legs up onto the seat to tug them under her.

Fuck.

I sigh.
"I just, I got so angry, seeing this drunk motherfucker and just started thinking about my dad again," I finish and move my eyes back to her.

And I'm met with the most caring, sincere eyes I've ever seen.

I gulp and continue. "You know, like," I pause, "seeing those dumb fucking glazed over eyes I wanted to beat him to a pulp." I sigh.

"That makes me just like him," I say, defeated, referring to my dad.

"Wes, no," she shakes her head and turns her body to face me.

Her eyes widen as she looks at me directly in the eyes. "You're not like him," she shakes her head.

"Not at all. Don't ever think about yourself like that."

I let out a laugh.
"Adare I wanted to kill him," I start but am soon cut off.

"But you didn't, Wes. You didn't," she says lowly. "And that means that you're not like him. Not even close."

We're both quiet before Adare finally breaks the silence.

"Anyways so, yeah," she exhales and gulps while she says, "thanks for picking me up."

"You ready to go in?" I ask.
"Not yet."

And so we sit there in my car.

Listening to nothing but the sound of each others breathing.

༉‧₊˚✧.*
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