Barely Holding On

Chapter 5

By the end of the day I had pretty much mastered the art of not crashing. Nash had to catch me a couple of times, but other than that I was good!

“Mom! I’m home!” I yelled as I walked in the front door.

She grunted some sort of reply. Great. We were back to the drinking.

I rounded to corner to see my mom sprawled on the couch with a bottle of empty vodka in her hands.

I sighed. She had been like this ever since my dad left. She had really good days, and not so good days… I suspected she was slightly bipolar, but every time I mentioned that she get professional help she told me I was stupid and would storm off.

I went upstairs to my room and lay down on my bed staring at the ceiling. I had just spent the day with Nash, and it wasn’t awful. More importantly, I had gotten to talk to Cameron.

Maybe if Nash and I stopped being mortal enemies, I could see more of Cameron…

“V! Get over here!” Nash called me from his room. I got up off my bed and walked over to my window.

“Excuse me? You expect me to climb over to your room?” I stuck my head out and looked down; it was a pretty far drop.

He stuck his head out, “Uh, yeah. I have something to show you. Plus I figured we could start working on our project.”

“Alright…” I agreed skeptically. I grabbed my backpack and tossed it to Nash. I half climbed out of the window, so I was straddling the window sill. Nash stuck out his hand and I took it, but I lost my balance and nearly fell. Nash grabbed me and basically pulled me into his room.

Nash kept his hands on me a little too long. When he let go of me I looked around his room. His bed was unmade and he had clothes all over the place. It was a guy’s room. A complete wreck, whereas in mine everything had a place and it was always in that place.

“Here, come see this. I think it’s the best thing I’ve ever laid eyes on.” He walked over to his desk and pulled up a video on his laptop. He hit play. I nearly died. It was a video of me doing a face plant on the concrete. Nash started laughing again like he did when it first happened. Oh god.

I sat down on his bed, speechless.

“V, what’s wrong?” He asked, still laughing hysterically.

“What’s wrong? There’s a video of me making a complete fool of myself on the internet. Everyone can see it.” I stated.

“Yeah, 5,000 people have already.”

I groaned and fell back on his bed. “Oh god.”

“Hey don’t feel too bad, there are tons of videos of me doing embarrassing videos on the internet.”

“Yeah, but you do that on purpose.”

“Not all the time…” he added.

I sat back up, I just wanted to forget about the video. “Alright, are we going to work on this project or what?”

--

Later that night I laid in bed thinking about all that had happened today. The only other time Nash and I had talked other than today was when we were forced to or we were fighting.

Were we becoming friends?

No. We couldn’t be. This was only for the project. But, then why did he invite me to go skating with him?

I couldn’t get to sleep that night, thoughts or worries or whatever they were, were plaguing my mind.