nepenthe

Nora

My dad pulling the curtains of my windows open forcefully pulls me out of my precious sleep. I squint my eyes against the bright light as I sit up.

"Get dressed and come downstairs," he orders and before I can answer, he's out the door again. I sigh, putting my face in my hands. This is going to be horrible.

I do as I'm told, though. And when I reach the end of the staircase and peak to the right, my parents are already sitting at our desk. There's coffee in front of them but no cup for me. They probably think I'm hungover even though I drank nothing.

"Morning," I say as I make my way toward them and take a seat.
Mom isn't looking at me. Dad isn't, either.

"You will work at Jim's Steakhouse on Tuesdays and Thursdays and you will come home immediately after. The other days, you're not grounded for now," dad tells me in a strict tone and all I can do is nod my head 'yes'. This isn't as bad as I thought it would be.

"We also talked to Marcus and think that it's best if you two don't meet with those other people from yesterday again. They're a bad influence on you."

I can live with that.

I nod my head again. "Yes," I say.

I spend the rest of the Sunday cleaning the whole house and then studying for a Spanish test. I'll have to bring that topic to Grey before Friday. I know he's bad at this.

The next day in school, everyone throws me weird looks. And when I see Greyson, I know why. His face is bruised to the heavens again.

How is that possible? He didn't bruise when he had that fight on Saturday. I sit down in my seat next to him and he turns his head towards me.

I open my mouth to ask him what happened but he shakes his head, forestalling me. "Not now," he tells me under his breath and before I can see it coming, his lips are on mine.
Oh my god.

Someone whispers behind me but I couldn't care less as I lean back out and straight out blush at him.
Fuck.
What the hell happened to me? I hope he feels the same about himself.

"What do we have now?" He asks, putting his arm on my backrest and settling into his chair.
"Maths," I answer. "Like every Monday."
"Right," he nods his head.

The teacher, Mrs. Gambly, comes in and sets her bag down. She's the typical young Maths teacher.
Today, for example, she's wearing a pair of beige smart trousers and a white T-Shirt tucked into it with high heels.

"Good morning guys, I see there's a lot of you missing today?" She states as she opens the class book and scribbles something down, her eyes scanning the room.
"Alright," she says and gets up when she's done checking the attendances.

She starts to pace the length of the blackboard, playing with the pen still in her hand. "I wanted to start on a new topic today but since so many people are sick, we'll do a few exercises. We're pretty fast with all the [stoff] so far, so I think it's okay to start on Wednesday."

"Probably better. I suck at this topic," I whisper, making Greyson huff out a laugh. "This is as easy as it gets, baby."

My heart skips a beat. For a moment I think I heard him wrong but he really did call me baby. I think I could get used to him treating me like I'm his girlfriend in public.

"I'll pass around those sheets and you can do them either alone or with your partner. If you need help, you can just tell me," Mrs. Gambly says as the hands Greyson the staple. He grabs a sheet of paper for himself and one for me before he turns around and passes it to Brody.

"I'll be in the next room for a few minutes because I have to look after that class too. Stay quiet and do the exercises, please."

When she's gone, I lower my gaze onto the sheet, trying to read into the first exercise. Greyson watches me from the side.