My Friends Step-Brother

Ch. 2- "Jer"

JOSHUA'S POV

I hop off the fence and walk back to Jerimiah, who I was playing catch with.

"Jeez, what took you so long?" He asks.

"What the hell!" I say back to him.

"What?" Jerimiah says with a grin and a confused look on his face.

"You didn't tell me you had a hot neighbor 'Jer'." I say, raising my hands in the air, putting emphases on 'Jer'. His face drops immediately. And his face turns a little flushed.

"You met Rory?" He asks. I can tell by the look on his face that he has a thing for her. So I guess that's her name. I like it, it fits her.

I deflect the question and reply with, "Jer? I haven't even heard your mom call you that."

"No one calls me that. Only her." He says a little defensively.

"You like her, don't you?" I ask, I was a little sad, but I didn't show it. I don't know why I was, though. I have never been sad about a girl. Especially one I just met.

"No," Jerimiah says quickly. I raise my eyes.

"She is one of my closest friends, I have been friends with her since kindergarten. She sat next to me. She told me that Jerimiah is too long and that she would be calling me Jer from now on," he says, smiling at the memory. I almost caught myself smiling, too, but I refrained.

"That sounds like her," I replied. From the minute I met her, I could tell she drummed to her own beat, I like that. She wasn't afraid to say something.

"You don't even know her," Jerimiah said. I didn't mean to make him mad it was supposed to comfort him. And besides that, the statement stung a little. Cause even in the little time I talked to her, I felt like I knew her.

"Wow, getting jealous, aren't we?" I said, joking. But of course, Jerimiah took it seriously.

"No, I'm not, I have nothing to be jealous of because one I don't like her like that, and two, she would never like a guy like you, Josh." He said, turning around and going back inside.

I just stood there like a dope watching him walk back inside. His line repeated in my head, 'She would never like a guy like you, Josh.' He is probably right about that. I have done some stuff I wish I could take back, but sometimes the anger becomes so built up that it becomes a part of me.

One of my favorite authors, Emily Carroll, wrote in one of her books, "But the worst kind of monster was the burrowing kind. The sort that crawled into you and made a home there. The sort you couldn't name, the sort you couldn't see. The monster that ate you alive from the inside out." I liked her so much cause I could relate to her on a different level.

My anger is built up from when my mom left us... me, when I was 5. One night, she was there the next day, she packed all her things and left.

Guess I was too much to handle. Dad says it wasn't me. It was her own battles. But how could you leave your husband and kid just like that.

There is one thing she instilled in me... books. She would always be reading. She was my role model for so long, I loved reading too. When she left, she took so much from me. I wasn't going to let her take books, too. I liked them because I could escape reality.

I used to get made fun of because my mom left and because I was always reading. Till I made them respect me, in not the best of ways. Which then turned me into someone who would smoke and drink and get in trouble all the time. It was one of the main reasons my dad wanted to move. And when he met Jerimiah's mom- I guess my step-mom now he knew things had to change.

All I wanted was my dad to be happy because he doesn't deserve a son like me.

I was the one who told him to propose to her. She made him so happy, and I really like her and Jerimiah. So we made a deal that if I shaped up and stayed out of trouble, he would. And the rest is history.

That's why I do lots of sports it gets my mind off of things and keeps me out of trouble mostly. I don't really like talking about that stuff.

But one thing is for sure, with Jerimiah mad, dinner is going to be just as fun as school tomorrow. At least I get to see her. Hopefully.