Bandaged & Damaged {BoyxBoy & FIN & EDITING}

chapter nine

It was getting a lot harder to avoid Asher and his gang. I didn't mind being with Junior, though. Pierce and Nixon would randomly come around and try to talk to me about what happened after I left the room, but I didn't tell them anything. It was none of their business anyway.

Kiel never bought it up. I don't think the gang knew he was on the roof or his whereabouts. Dario never once tried to talk to me, but he would be in places that I would typically go. Asher was never around. It didn't make sense since he was the leader of the gang. I tried not to think about it too much.

Easton wasn't making it better, either. He treated like me. I was a plague and tried to give me every excuse on the planet that he couldn't hang out with me. But it didn't worry me too much since I had Junior to hang.

"Hey J," I greeted and patted his back.

Junior sent me a smile and greeted back. "Hey, Jas."

"Do you want to get Chinese? I'm done eating this shitty food."

"Not all of them are shitty."

I rolled my eyes. "Because you keep eating that garbage. Let's go get Chinese."

"Is it because I'm Asian?" Junior teased. I shook his head at his stereotypical joke and left his room. He shared a room with Kiel, which was odd that they had someone in their gang as their roommate, but I didn't question it. Before we left, Kiel and I glanced at each other, and he nodded. I didn't nod back because he usually wouldn't look at me after what happened, and I wanted to keep it that way.

We walked down the hallway, and I saw Easton coming our way. I felt a giddy feeling whenever I saw Easton. Still, it went away when he froze when he saw me with Junior and rushed in the opposite direction. I frowned and sighed.

"Is he still afraid?" Junior asked.

"Yeah," I answered. "It just sucks that he won't meet you."

"I don't care that he doesn't like me. As long as you like me, then I'm good."

I raised an eyebrow. "Why would you care if I like you?"

He sent me a bright smile that it blinded me. "Because we're friends, and you're the first person who wasn't afraid of me."

Why would I be afraid of Junior? I wasn't judgmental as Easton, but he had his reasons, and I had mine. Junior wasn't as strange as the others. He reminded me of one of Ma's friends.

Ma had those friends that nobody wanted to be friends with because they were either too weird or too intimating. Still, they were the sweetest and broken-hearted people that she ever met. She told me she felt sorry for them and wanted to comfort them in the way of kindness and friendship. I may be emotionless, and I didn't have many friends, but it wouldn't hurt to befriend Junior. If Easton was going to be a stranger around me, then he wasn't worth being my friend.

Oh, how wrong I was.

The truth damaged yourself to the core.

"Why are people afraid of you and the others?" I asked once we were seated.

Junior slowly took a sip of his drink and stayed silent for a couple of minutes. "It all depends. Do you really want to hear the real stuff or the deep stuff?"

"What's the difference? Is it something you guys did?"

"Yes." He didn't bat an eye. "But we do it because we have nothing else to do. It sounds bad, I know, but Asher tells us that we can do anything we want, and we won't get caught because we're rich as heck."

I scrunched my eyebrows together, not understanding. Asher didn't seem the type to say something like that. More like Pierce or Nixon, but I didn't know Asher like Junior knew Asher. After all, he was their leader. "What do you do?"