Seafoam //Completed//

Chapter 16

Just what I needed, she thought bitterly, trying to keep her composure.

Lulu dropped her hand quickly and pushed past the other girl. 

"Lulu, wait!" Gemma called out as Lulu practically ran to the door. She felt a hand on her shoulder and whirled around angrily to face Gemma.

"What do you want?" She was well aware that her voice was trembling and the tears had not yet dried on her cheeks.

"Have you spoken to Matty?" Gemma asked hesitantly, looking around for Liam.

"I've been trying to call him but he won't answer my calls or my texts and he hasn't been to class."

Matty had been skipping both World History and English Lit, the classes he shared with Gemma, and Lulu had done her best to avoid Gemma and her tortured puppy dog eyes. 

"What could you possibly have to say to him to make any of this better?" Lulu hissed. It was all she could do to keep from yelling.

"I—I want to apologize to him—."

"Apologize! Gemma you broke his heart. He doesn't need your empty words. He needs you to go away. To leave him alone for a while."

"Listen Lulu, I realize that it's your duty as his best friend to be upset and defend him," she was becoming agitated. Her fair skin was becoming blotchy and for the first time, Lulu thought she looked rather ugly.

"But, that's all you are, okay? His friend."

Lulu felt like she had been slapped in the face.

"Yeah, well, you'll always just be the bitch that played him." 

A loud thump made her turn to the stairs where she thought she'd seen a shadow move but in her anger, she was sure it had been a trick of her eyes. She faced Gemma again and almost laughed at the mask of pure horror she wore. Almost.

In that moment, Liam walked into the living room with a bowl in his hands and looked at the girls.

"Popcorn, Lulu?" he asked almost meekly.

"No, thanks," Lulu's eyes remained on Gemma. "I was just leaving."

She rushed past them, out the door and into the pouring rain.

"No!" she exclaimed. Her bike, the one that had taken her everywhere since she was 13, was lying on the side of the road, bent and broken as if a car had run over it. Her face was soaked now, tears mixing with the rain and she wasn't sure if the thunder she heard came from above or within her, as her mind whirled.

"Lulu!" Her name came on the rain, from above, and she turned her head up towards the house. A light upstairs flicked off, but before she could make out who was in the room, she heard her name again, this time from behind her.

When she turned, she saw Ava getting out of her car, a worried look on her pretty face.

"Lulu, are you crazy?You're gonna get sick. I—," she stopped short at the sight of Lulu. "Whathappened? Are you okay?" Ava sounded almost frantic, and inexplicably, despite theshame that was constricting her lungs, and despite the mounting dread that lefther cold with Gemma's words, a bubble of laughter swelled up inside Lulu. The laugh escaped, maniacal, and Ava looked at her as if she had never seen her properly before.

As Lulu laughed, her mirth turned bitter in her mouth, the grief she had locked away finally spilling over like paint on a canvas, spreading throughout her and finally exploding through her lips in wracking sobs.

Ava reached out for her, and Lulu threw herself into her arms, all the pain pouring out of her and onto her friend's shoulders.