Spades and Angels

You Had No Fucking Right!

Lolita

I try. I try so hard to hold onto my anger after we split but it's not easy. I know what Mads did was wrong. Is wrong. I know that but at the same time, his words keep looping around in my head. Staring back at me from old messages. That same plea not to just blindly assume before he explained what he'd been doing. What and why. I knew, know, it was wrong. Not the way. Yet...yet part of me still wanted to listen. The confused, emotional part that seems to have made an agreement about him without me mentally knowing why.

That emotional difference makes the anger a little harder to hold onto. The aching emptiness makes it worse. Days and days pass and I still don't respond. He texts every once in a while but it's just to check I'm ok. That I'm doing okay or an assignment question. Never re-visiting the conversation/argument that caused this frosty silence between us. My dilemma of, seemingly, head and heart getting worse and worse until I find myself looking for him. At school. Around town. Restraining my hands from replying to his messages beyond somewhat curt yet fair replies. Letting him know I was ok. Re-reading old messages, arguments over movies and shit. Feeling the smile on my face.

"Get a grip, Lo," I mumble, turning my phone over where it's remained silent so far today. My friend not checking in yet despite it being almost the end of the school day. His normal window of checking in. Something that should have made me feel better, given it would mean he's backing off but instead makes me feel like I've done something irreversibly wrong. Lost a friend I hadn't had for long but missed all the same. "Just forget about it."

"Forget about what?" A pretty girl a few years younger than me stops near my tree and glances down at me. Blue eyes sparkling with greenish-silver flecks that are almost invisible except in direct light. "You Lo?"

I frown, "Yeah why, who are you?"

"Doesn't matter," The girl replies, leaning on the tree with her arms crossed, expression so much like my absent, silent, partner's that I idly wondered if this was the sister he'd mentioned before. "Doesn't matter, I just wanted to tell you to leave him alone. Whatever you're doing, whyever he cares, stop it. Leave him be before one of us makes you."

"I'm sorry, who are you?" I snap, angry and not able to be patient with whoever the fuck this was and their riddles. "Just leave me alone. I don't know who you are, or who you're talking about, just leave me be."

"Fine, just leave Mads alone and I will. I mean it, stay out of his life and whatever was going on will stop. Or I'll keep doing this." She looks at me with a mean stare then and despite being slightly tempted to be afraid of her, the girl's out-of-line bitchiness gets on my nerves instead. "Leave him be and I'll leave you be. Sound fair?"

"Would be if I knew who you were," I snapped, beyond wanting to be civil. The girl frowns, looking so much like him that I'm more convinced it is Mad's sister. "Whoever the fuck you are I don't know why you're sticking your nose in but kindly stop. Before I lose my temper with you. Kid."

The girl glowers at me, "You know what you nasty little-" She sounds like she has more to say but is saved from speaking her mind when someone else comes over. A tired sigh stopped her from finishing whatever threat she'd been about to aim at me.

"Luce stop, leave Lo alone," Mads sounds tired, his voice snapping my eyes from the girl leaning on the tree to where he's about half a foot from her. The other figure's eyes moved as mine had. "Please, Luce, enough. It's not what you think."

The other girl, Luce, gives Mads a firm look. "Really Mads? You'd take her side after all this? Ever since this obsession with her, you've been acting crazy. Don't think I haven't noticed. We all have."