I'm Fine

Chapter Sixteen - Bryson

February

I dropped my pencil and looked at the girl in front of me. We had been sitting in Avery's room for almost twenty minutes, and yet we've barely spoken to each other. I still felt the fire deep down, but it seemed off, she seemed off lately.

Grabbing her phone, unaware that I am analyzing her in that moment, she begins to scroll through her apps. She started playing some music, her favorite thing to do when she's working on homework. I can't stand it, and we've discussed it, but I didn't feel like fighting tonight.

It felt like every time we were together lately, some kind of fight broke out. I just wanted one night to go smoothly like it did some time ago.

"How's the work going, kids?" A voice boomed from the doorway of her room. She pushed herself further away from me as she turned her attention to her dad, peering me down from the hall.

"Great! I think we finally picked our charity." She lied.

We hadn't even started talking about charities yet, so why did she feel the need to lie? It wasn't like I was sitting here wasting time, or I don't know, maybe the fact that I'm her boyfriend and I am allowed to just spend time with her.

"Oh yeah, what charity is that, honey?" He asked, still refusing to remove his eye contact from me. This should be good.

"Kids with cancer." She stated without hesitation. Honestly, I wasn't mad, that was a good charity, but we didn't even get a chance to discuss other potential charities.

"That's great, honey. Remember, curfew is nine, so you both have one hour." He stated as he turned and left the room, purposely leaving the door wide open. As soon as he was out of view down the hall, she turned her attention towards me. I couldn't help the expression that tattooed my face.

"What now?" She sighed.

"Are you kidding me? Your dad hates me, that's been clear but when will he understand that I am your boyfriend and he's just going to have to accept that." I tried to yell-whisper as best as possible, trying to get my frustration across and making sure he doesn't hear me.

"Seriously?" She sighed. "You two are just going to have to figure out a way to get along."

"I don't think that can happen; he won't let it." I grumbled in frustration as I picked up my pen and wrote down 'kids with cancer' since, apparently, that was our charity.

"Bryson, that's not fair to me that you guys can't get along." She whines. I dropped my pen and snapped my head towards her.

"Fair for you? I am doing everything I can. I respect his rules; I let you hang out with them an ungodly amount, I mean, when was our last date?" I complain. She didn't respond. Instead, she grabbed her pencil and also wrote down our newly-picked charity.

"Can we just get back to our drive idea, we only have an hour left." She asked quietly as she began to write down some ideas.

Yet again, a fight broke out, and yet again, it wasn't resolved properly. But like always, I take a deep breath in and try my best to let it go. But I knew that this would add to the fire I had deep down inside about her parents, the whole situation at hand, the future, everything.

Time ticked away as I tried to get lost in our work. I couldn't stay as focused as she was, if anything, she had everything completely ready to go already. I was still fighting with this burning anger deep down inside, and I knew I wouldn't be able to get a good night's sleep with it there. So I grabbed my phone and sent a text to the one person I knew could help.