Counting Stars | ✔

Chapter Fifteen



Liam

"Where were you yesterday at lunch? Ryan keeps ditching us for Stefani, and now you? What's happening?" Elliot whines.

"I had stuff to do." I shrug.

"Were you with Jess?" He asks.

The fact that he thinks he has the right to know is as ridiculous as the face he's wearing.

"Yeah. Is that a problem?" I ask dryly.

"What is really going on with you and her? First, you said you were dating. Now what, you're friends?" He says it like it's the most ridiculous thing he's ever heard.

Whatever flicker of patience I have instantly dims.

"I don't see how that concerns you."

He notices the irritation in my tone and shrugs.

"I just think you should know. She's not the live-on-the-edge down-to-fuck no-care-in-the-world kind of girls you're used to. She has loads of baggage you can't even begin to understand."

"Don't fucking talk about her!" I'm suddenly on my feet.

"I'm just saying." He raises both hands up. "She's not your type, and you are definitely not hers." He says calmly. His voice measured, taunting.

I briefly imagine my fist connecting with his jaw and the satisfaction it'll bring me when I hear the crack. But I have a feeling Mr. Carter won't be so forgiving this time.

"You know what your problem is?" I look him dead in the eye. "You think you are better than everyone. Born with a fucking silver spoon in your mouth and mommy and daddy always so ever tirelessly catering around for you. What the fuck do you know about her baggage?"

He has the nerve to look perplexed. He looks around like he's afraid people might be watching. They are, but I don't give a fuck. I was never really known for my sparkling personality.

"Calm down. I just wanted to help." He says, recoiling back into his shell. God forbid people look over and see us having an argument. He can't go for five seconds without caring about what others might think.

"Vanity is something you and your dim-witted girlfriend have in common," I tell him before I walk away.

Things are starting to spiral out of control. When Jess said she was done with the pretending, I should have let her go. I saw the farewell in her eyes. I heard it in her voice. I expected it to be brief and easy because I knew it was coming. What I didn't expect was feeling the weight of her goodbye so heavy on my chest.

The dread of losing someone is something I felt only once a very long time ago. When I was nine, I went with my father to visit my mom at the Psychiatric Hospital. When she thought I left, I heard her tell my father she didn't want to see me again. She told him to stop bringing me around. And he never took me there again. But I did go back. I missed her to a point where I was willing to agree to go to Armenia for the summer with my grandmother if she would just take me to see my mother once.

When we got there, I feared she would refuse to come out and see us. But she didn't. She came and calmly sat down next to me. She told my grandmother to gives us a moment, and she asked me why I couldn't just accept the fact that she didn't want me coming around. She said I should stop thinking I had a mother because she was never coming back.

I still remember the calm in her voice. The way she looked into my eyes, so I knew that she meant it. The way she gripped my shoulders with her skinny fingers and sunk her claws in. Every detail of that day is permanently etched in my mind. After that, I never went back. To anyone who asked, my mother was dead. She died when I was nine.