He's holding my hand and I can't say that it doesn't make me uncomfortable. Maybe it wasn't such a great idea to punch him in the face like that but the kid puked on my favorite white jeans. He deserved it! The inner calm in me soon takes over and I snatch my hand away from Tyler's, holding it in my non-bruised hand.
"I was just trying to help," he protests.
"I think you've helped enough for this morning." I turn on my heels, headed back for the school. My mother will know what to do. I'm close to the door when the bell for the next class period rings. I stop in my tracks, my eyes focused on the door, and I look over at my shoulder at Tyler. They can't see me like this, hand bruised and jeans splattered with brown chunks. I turn back towards Tyler, who is climbing in to his truck, and wave him down.
"Thought I did enough for this morning," he says.
I roll my eyes in frustration, "look. I need new pants or something. And my hand is kinda useless."
He mulls it over for a while, making me stand before him while cradling my hand. This guy is such a tool, looking at him annoys me. He steps out of his truck, making his way around to the passenger side of the truck, opening the door. "After you." Am I seriously about to get in to a car with Tyler Morgan? My body answers the question for me because before I know it, I'm sitting on the cloth seats of his car.
There's trash piling the floor of the back and there's a blanket and pillow stretched out along the backseat. Jeans, that look like they're dirty, are piled in a heap on the pillow and what looks like a used condom lies beside the pants. "Gross." The word escapes my lips before I have a chance to think about it. He doesn't respond, probably because he knows it's true.
He pulls out from the school, taking a right on to the highway. "Where are we going," I ask because it looks like he lives right here in his truck. Once again, he doesn't answer me, annoyance plays on his face. Okay, so we're back to volume zero. I don't bother to ask any more questions until he pulls in to the driveway of a small trailer park. I've been here before, it's where my father lives. My parents have been divorced for almost two years, my father getting the lesser of the court agreement. We don't stop at my father's trailer, positively eliminating that Tyler and I are any type of related. We finally arrive to a small, yellow trailer, that I'm sure was once white. He turns off the ignition, stepping out of the car and slamming the door behind him. "You coming?" He yells.
I sigh, somewhat expecting for him to come and open my door but that doesn't happen so I attempt to open it with my right hand, realizing that it's useless, and then finally succeeding in opening it with my left hand, not that it's any more useful than my other.
The inside of the trailer is about as clean as his truck. There's coke bottles everywhere, clothes strewn about, and dirty dishes clogging the sink. There's a small sofa, the only thing that occupies the living room, and there's a large man passed out on it. I look to Tyler but he only shrugs, walking in to another room, beckoning for me to follow.
It's a bathroom. He's rummaging through a cabinet, eventually pulling out some rubbing alcohol and bandages. He starts rubbing alcohol on my purple hand, in all the right places. "You're scarily good at this," I say.
He glances up at me, "I've had to do it quite a lot."
"I've heard," I spit out. I didn't mean to say it, but the tendency of talking before thinking has become a characteristic that my family prides itself on. He stops tending to my hand, his eyes meeting mine in almost an instant. My heart stops beating. Not because he's insanely beautiful, it's more of fear. His brown, almost black, eyes pierce my skin. I can feel them on every inch of me, he might actually take back his previous statement of not hitting girls. The grip he has on my hand tightens, making me yelp in pain.
His eyes quickly snap to my hand. "Shit," he mumbles. "Sorry." He takes a deep breath, and once again goes to roughly applying the alcohol.
We sit, embroiled in awkward silence. Him tending to my hand, me nervously tapping a foot. "Rumors are a bitch," he says suddenly. I look up at him, only to discover he's already glancing at me. "I've heard them, you know, and if it means anything--they're not true. None of 'em."
I stop tapping my foot, "so what is the truth?"
He smirks, "something far too dark for a Princess like you to worry about."
YOU ARE READING
Bridging The Gap
Historia Corta"There are dreamers and there are realists in this world, you think the dreamers would find the dreamers and the realists would find the realists, but more often than not the opposite is true. See the dreamers need the realists to keep the dreamer...
