The Bitter Start.

Chapter nineteen.

   "I don't see how you two could be so intimately close." Ronny said as we sat out at our spot. We haven't been here for months.

"Well, Blaine is serious all the time, and we're close." Abi said as I laid out.

  "But Dawson is so different from Blaine.. Dawson is worse than Blaine, and I saw him mess around with so many women, I just couldn't see him settling down." Tristan said as she laid beside me.

  "He's not the same as he is with y'all." I said..

"Clearly." Ronny laughed and I sent her a look.

  "Well Sawyer wasn't always the ball of sunshine like he is now." I and Tristan said.

"Sawyer, back in our home town, Sawyer used to be a different person. Totally different." I said and Ronny turned to me.

"What do you mean?" she asked and I glanced at her.

"You have to remember Ron, everyone in this group has had a bad past or a bad experience, one or the other.. At some point we were all bitter." I said and she frowned.

"Even you?"

"Especially her." Tristan said and I shrugged.

"I had my moments. Y'all will have yours to at some point. Our lives are more fucked up than others, and in this group, you'll reach a sort of breaking point that hardens you to a degree." I said and Abi and Ronny looked at me curiously, but Tristan had understanding. She'd had that breaking point.

"I had it when I first got in the group, it had been when you left, and my mother turned to drinking like my father had." she said and I glanced at her.

"Maddox?" I asked and she nodded. When you have a breaking point, you always seem to go to one person.. It could be absolutely random, or it could be your one. Either way, when someone in the group needed help with something serious, you couldn't just toss it aside.

  "I have no idea what you're trying to explain." Ronny said and I turned my head to her.

"It's hard to explain, but it will happen.. It could happen more than once. I know it happened for me.. When I first joined the group, I was already handling the bitter stage and I practically clung to Grusslie." I said as I turned over and got on my stomach, starting to tan my back.

  "You and Grusslie, did you two ever.."

 

"No, he had his one." I said, closing my eyes.

  "His.. One?" Abi asked and I glanced at her.

"Blaine hasn't explained that to you?" I asked her but she shook her head.

  "Sawyer hasn't explained it to me. Hasn't even brought it up." Ronny said curiously and I sighed.

"Blaine and Sawyer's a dumb ass." I said and they both sat up.

  "What do you mean?" Ronny said and I shrugged.

  "Dawson would literally have to kill me if I told either of you, so I'd rather not say." I said, closing my eyes again.

  "What, is it some made up rule?" Abi asked and I shrugged.

"It was a rule set in stone by the time I joined.. Someone told me, and then next thing I know, that person's disappeared. I never saw them after that day." Tristan sent me a look, knowing if I went too deep about the rules of the one, then bad things would happen.

  "What? No no, you're Dawson's girlfriend, you're intimate with him, he wouldn't hurt or send you off. You can tell us." Ronny said and I shook my head, sitting up.