Shattered

Chapter 15

**3 months later**

     "Bye Kate! I gotta go," I yelled grabbing my bag from the back room as I clocked out and ran towards the exit of The Black.

     "See ya Scout, you have fun out there kiddo," she yelled from behind a rack of clothes. "Don't let Michael get too crazy! Be safe and I love you!"

     It'd been a while since I left California, hell it'd been forever since I'd even left San Diego. But after Michael helped me get my job back at The Black, we'd both been saving up to go to Las Vegas for a "surprise" that Michael had been planning for weeks. We weren't "Facebook official", but Mikey and I had definitely gotten closer in the past few months than I had ever felt with anyone before. I'd practically lived at his house for the past 3 months and if we weren't there, it was spent at the beach running around the sand until sunset. On the occasion, he'd try to get me in the water but I haven't been able to get  myself to touch it since Max died. The ocean was our thing and I wasnt ready to share it with anyone else yet...

     I threw my long board down on the hard cement sidewalk and skated my way down the block to where Michael had planned to meet me that afternoon. Sure enough he was no where to be seen when I arrived. I pulled out my phone and check for any missed calls or texts, only to find that I had 1 missed call from my mother and 4 frantic texts from Michael giving me a play-by-play on his afternoon fiasco with his missing band t-shirt.

    The disrupting sound of a car horn brought my eyes away from my phone as I saw a familiar gray pickup truck  turn the corner onto the street. I laughed and tucked my phone into my back pocket, picking up my board and threw it into the bed of Michael's truck as he pulled up to the sidewalk next to me. 

   "Fucking shit! I'm so sorry Scout," Michael cried as I got into the passenger seat of his car. "I knew I was supposed to pick you up at 2:30 so we could stop by your house and head to Vegas before traffic hour, but I started looking for my clothes last minute and ended up half way to Narnia looking for my Green Day t-shirt to wear to dinner tonight and-"

    I laughed, cutting him off and glanced down at the baggy shirt I'd snagged from Michael's floor before work this morning. "It's not funny Scout. I enjoy wearing that shirt from time to time and," he looked over at me and the look on his face was priceless when he noticed the recognizable piece of material I was wearing. 

     "Are you fucking serious?!" He laughed.

     "Apparently I enjoy wearing it from time to time too," I blushed. "And I was running late to work this morning it's the first thing I found."

    "Keep it," he said flashing a smile in my direction. "It looks better on you anyways. But now this means I get to keep something of yours."

     "I've got a Team Jacob shirt from middle school that might look good on you," I joked.

     "Nah," he chucked. "I was more Team Edward anyways."

-

     We pulled in my driveway and I bolted out the door, grabbing my board from the back of Michael's truck and headed towards my house. I ran through the front door and up the stairs to my room, ready to grab my suitcase I'd packed and stored on my bed the day before I left for Michael's'. 

    I opened the door to my room and found my mom sat on my bed with my old photo album I'd thrown into my closest after the accident. It had old pictures of me and my friends in high school and a bunch of Max and I on family vacations and just hanging around the neighborhood with his friends. My mom had her face submerged in a section of middle school pictures of Max and I and barely noticed me enter the room.

     "Mom?" I said quietly sitting next to her on the bed. "What are you doing? Where did you find those?"

     "I-I just." She looked up at me teary eyed and closed the book. "It was like I'd forgotten what his smile looked like and I just wanted to feel something." She sobbed, falling into my lap.

     I placed my arms on her back and slowly ran my fingers through her hair, trying to choke back the tears. "Mom, you can't be doing things like this. It's not part of the healing process your doctor told you about. You need to get out of the house and do things. You can't just sit in my room and mourn over the past."

She stopped crying and slowly rose, looking me in the eyes with a furrowed brow. "Are you serious right now? I can't believe you Scout. Have you forgotten that your brother is dead? Does that not bother you?"

"Mom, stop. That's not that I was-"

"NO!" She shouted, standing up. "I'm sorry I can't just throw away my child like you can your brother. I don't have anything left. Don't you understand that? I can't hide in some fake reality like you've got going on with that boy of yours-"

"Stop it." I said angrily.

"You think you can just run away from your problems Scout?" She snapped grabbing the photo album from my hands. "Well you're wrong young lady. Your boyfriend wont fix anything. He can't turn back what you did-"

"FUCK YOU I'm not running away from anything. I can't change what happened mother, nobody can. But I'm not just going to sit in this house for the rest of my life and cry over how fucked up my life is. And he's not my boyfriend," I shouted. I could smell the alcohol on her breath as she stood over me. 

   She stood dazed at my response and eyed me as I got up from my bed and grabbed my suitcase. I watched as the expression of anger dropped from her face and she dropped the album, making her way towards me. "Scout," she whispered. "Baby, I'm so sorry. I don't know what I was thinking. Sometimes I just-"

    "Save it," I snapped, grabbing the rest of my stuff and made my way out of my room closing the door behind me. 

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**A/N: one freaking eternity later.... so yea, im back? i think... maybe. hopefully. but who knows ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ shout out to the crew for giving me some feels for inspiration tonight. you know who you are :}