betty ↳ conrad fisher

seventeen.

"So what'd I do to deserve the pleasure of your concern tonight?" Betty Graham asked, her words slurring as she spoke them. It had been a few minutes since they had left the party, the girl refusing to stand by Conrad after he had pulled her away from the event. So she walked ahead of him, the boy several steps behind but close enough to see that she was 1) shaking, 2) wobbling, 3) very drunk. He hadn't even realized she had gotten a beer bottle and brought it with her, the brown bottle peeking out from her right hand. He was kind of drunk himself, but not as much as he wished he was, his mind torturing him with the images of the night.

"You did that on purpose didn't you?" He answered her question with a question, her footsteps slowing as she furrowed her eyebrows. She tried to think of what he was talking about, trying to see if maybe she could make some sense of his question.

"Did what?" She came up with no explanation, Conrad catching up with her now that she had slowed down. His jaw was clenched like he was angry and she didn't like that, the girl grabbing him by his sleeve and pulling his attention to her. "Did what?"

She stressed the syllables of the word, the boy seeing a drunken rage that was just fighting to be ignited. It was now that he realized they had stopped on the sidewalk, his flannel balled into her free hand and the two of them facing each other. It was harder to say what he wanted to say now that he was gazing into her eyes, but he mustered up the courage thanks to  his bad drinking habit and said what he intended to say anyways.

"You let fucking Robbie be all over you...knowing I was standing there. Knowing I was watching you." The air between them changed at his admittance and she realized that deep below his bad mood was a boiling pool of jealousy, unwarranted jealousy, due to the fact that they weren't  romantically linked anymore. She looked up at him in confusion for a few moment before she shook her head, letting go of his shirt and taking a swig of the beer in her hand. She took off walking again and he followed her dutifully, extending his neck so that he could see her face as she answered.

"No, I didn't do it on purpose to make you mad but...if you are I can't help that. And if that's what you think then I also can't stop you." He didn't like her answer, how she put it back on him like she didn't know what she did to him. He felt a burning begin in his lungs and he felt the argument rise in his throat, and for a moment it felt like they had never parted at all, the same fiery passion moving to erupt from him.

"It's not what I think...it's what I know. You know what you do—you do it to make me jealous...to—to punish me or something." She scoffed at his quick remark, hurrying to effectively call him out.

"Punish—oh like how you parade Nicole around all the time. Today at the pool." Something deep inside him clicked when she admitted that it bothered her, and for the first time since he had seen her again he actually did believe that she cared.  He couldn't help but let the corner of his mouth lift with pride that he had earned a fitting reaction from her, his heart feeling like someone had pumped some kind of steroids directly into it.

"In my defense...I didn't know you were there. So you cant blame me for that." He said, gesturing to himself as she rolled her eyes. She took a long sip of her beer and then shrugged her shoulders, finding the ability to be some kind of bigger person.

"I don't blame you for anything...you can do whatever you want." Somehow he didn't believe her, and it frustrated him that she closed that caring part of herself away and instead put on this tough front. His head wasn't clear but he remembered this vividly...she was almost as closed off as he was. Her show of vulnerability on the beach  where she apologized had been a big deal...he understood that once it was over. She never did things like that. She was strong and she was tough and she was out of reach...her family had made her that way.