Unspoken Desires

twelve.

Emerson Jenkins

Yesterday was one of the first days I didn't drown out my trauma and pain with alcohol. Instead, some boy found me on my tread back to the common room. After I stormed out of there with my heart beating a thousand beats per minute, Mina followed to see what was wrong.

I told her how Cal's words had triggered memories of the night he left. She knew what I was talking about because she was the only one who really knew what went down that night. Somehow I was able to convince her to go back to our friends and let me calm down. Once she left, my feet found their way to the courtyard.

Or the large wooden canopy just outside of the school, near the courtyard.

It was still pouring rain but I needed a smoke to relieve the stress coursing through my body. There were only a couple of moments of silence before a hand grabbed my shoulder and pulled me close. Thinking it was Cal, I leaned into his touch for comfort. But it wasn't Cal.

It was the other boy who hadn't seemed to ditch me just yet.

Ash.

"Want to come back to my dorm?" he asked.

I nodded, putting out my cigarette and following him. Asher had always been my distraction from all the noise in my head. He was enough to make the negative thoughts disappear for a couple of minutes. Sometimes hours. Depending on my mood and how fast he managed to piss me off.

Last night went well. I spent the rest of the evening with him watching Sherlock Holmes and eating popcorn after we made out for the first thirty minutes.

Brooks walked in a couple of hours later after I disappeared from the common room. Mina texted me saying that he had disappeared a couple of minutes after me. I wondered where he could have gone since he hadn't been here the whole time. Ash asked me if Brooks had given me the thing Mina had asked him to give to me.

My brows furrowed with confusion and he reiterated by saying that Brooks texted him asking for my dorm number earlier that day because Mina gave him something to give me. If Brooks had stopped by my dorm I had no idea. Plus, Mina would have just given whatever she needed to give me directly to me. She wouldn't ask Brooks.

If she did, she would have texted me about it but she never said a word about anything. Deciding not to push the subject, I just replied with a yes.

When the tall brunette boy walked into the dorm later that night, he looked mildly annoyed when he noticed me and his roommate in bed together. He was ready to go to bed so for his sake, Ash and I tried to keep our voices down for the rest of the night. I didn't even realize that I fell asleep until I woke up this morning with Asher lightly snoring in my ear.

Now, I sat in a terribly awkward silence a couple of hours later as Kai and I waited for Mina to join us in the courtyard. The rain had calmed down today so we were finally able to return to our usual hang-out spot. Mina invited Kai and me outside today to hang out but she was obviously running late. She'd never purposefully leave me alone with Kai. Not since we fell off at least.

Kai looked down at the time on his phone and sighed softly. It was ten minutes after we had all agreed to meet and there hadn't been an ounce of conversation. Well, I did ask him where Mina was when I got here to which he responded, "Not here yet."

That was it.

Kai and I could be civil. We had been for months. Sure he'd make a small, petty remark every now and then but it was rare. He was a man of very, very few words and he wasn't hotheaded. Not unless he had to be. I was a bitch but I left Kai alone. He never did anything to make me hate him. Do I like him? Not necessarily. But that's just because he doesn't like me.