Me With Him

Chapter 34

It had been two days. Word of everything spread quickly. Dustin lives with me and Brenn, her and I in my room and him in the other. He literally has no family left. Brody is trying to get custody of him too so he can stay here but his wife is against it. I swear I've always hated her but this takes it to a new level. Her daughters are turning out just like her, the poor babies. Harold is having to adjust to his babies going to daycare because Rachel got a job. He's asked me to babysit on weekends so he can save some money and pick up more hours. I said yes considering all he'd done for me. So on top of all of that I'm looking for everyone involved in the hospital massacre. I'm going to slit the throats of every single one of those bastards I swear. Cason's even been called back to help me. It's a mission now. And we kick ass at those. I take my sophomore exams in two days so I have been studying like crazy on top of all of this as well. It's hard to believe what's happened to my life in a short two years. It all started at 15 and now I'm hoping to have this mess dealt with by my 17th birthday. Aron's been cooking for us every night. He comes over at around lunch every day to study and leaves around bed time.
"C.J.!" I hear Brenna shriek, interrupting my train of thought. I went back to our room to find her standing on the bed looking at a big black hairy spider. I curse under my breath before stepping on it in my favorite house slippers.
"Really Brenn. You can't kill a spider?" I huff. She shakes her head wide eyed and I just laugh.
"This is why we need Dustin." I say lightly in a joking tone. She rolls her eyes. I was just about to go back to cleaning the bathroom. Or rather pretending to do so, when the doorbell rung. I opened it to Justin in a black suit.
"Ahhhh it's the men in black!" I joked.
"Ha ha. Where's my girlfriend?" He said grumpily. Obviously a bad day as his dad's apprentice. I raised my hands and eyebrows in surrender.
"In our room." I said in a 'don't shoot me!' Tone. He rolled his eyes loosened his tie and pushed past me. He's not fun anymore.
"C.J.!" I heard from the living room. Geez I'm Cinderella. I got to the living room and Dustin was trying to clean up a spill. Looked like Pepsi on my pale grey carpet. I needed to get an aspirin badly. I rubbed my temples and went and mixed the carpet cleaner and bringing it to him with some washcloths. I was in the middle of scrubbing when I heard Aron swear loudly. The smoke alarm went off and I cursed under my breath. I ran into the kitchen to see that he'd started a grease fire on the stove. I grabbed a lid to a pot and closed off the air, suffocating the fire and putting it out. I slumped into a chair at the counter rubbing my temples and reaching for my handy ibprophen. Aron got me some water and I took three.
"I'm sorry you're having a bad day." He said softly taking my hands.
"I'm fine. I'll probably just go take a nap." I tried to lessen his concern.
"Dinner burnt. I'll order a pizza. Then do you want me to cuddle you for a while?" He smiled. I nodded and kissed his cheek on my way to go lay down. I dosed off pretty quickly. Another nightmare visited me again. I sat up in a dreadful sweat. I was clutching the sheets and crying. A few minutes later Aron came in.
"Are you okay? I'm sorry it took me so long. Dustin needed help getting a drink out of the carpet." He sat next to me and wrapped me in his warmth. I laid down and he laid next to me and I fell asleep within minutes. I knew in his arms that everything would be okay. I woke up about a half hour later when Dustin came in and told us the pizza was here. We went out and half of it was gone already.
"Geez maybe I should've ordered two." Aron said. The guys nodded and I laughed. I grabbed a slice and kissed his cheek before shoving it into my face. He grabbed the rest of it from me and ate it. I scoffed and playfully punched his arm. I grabbed another slice and he followed in suit. That was the end of the pizza. I noticed Brenn had tear stains on her face and I didn't see Justin. I touched her shoulder gently and asked her what happened with my eyes. She stood up and led me back to our room. I shut and locked the door to avoid interruptions.
"So what's up girlie?" I asked sitting next to her. She sighed
"I know he didn't mean it, I'm being rediculous. It's just his work. It has him stressed." She seemed to skip the most important part of the story, considering I wasn't able to follow.
"What did he do?" I asked. What could he have done to have made her so upset? I had no clue but if he laid a hand on her I'll make sure he knows exactly what hit him. She sighed again, breaking me from my train of thought.
"You have to promise you won't get mad." She prompted.
"I don't make promises I can't keep. Not anymore." I shook my head, knowing she would tell me anyway. She did.
"We had a fight. He didn't hurt me or anything. We both know he would never." She rushed eyes wide knowing full well I didn't know that. I raised my eyebrow, alerting her that she should continue her story. She took my hint and took a deep breath before continuing.
"I suggested that we have a dinner with both of our parents. He freaked out and told me I was too clingy and controlling and that maybe we should see other people. Then he just stormed out. He broke up with me C.J. He just dumped me for suggesting a dinner! Do you hear how ridiculous that is? He could've just said it was a bad idea." Tears brimmed her eyes threatening to fall.
"He was an idiot. Give him a couple of days and he'll come around." I tried to reassure her. I mean Aron always came around. And we fought a lot. Like a lot a lot.  So I really did have faith that Justin would come around and apologize. Speak of the devil and he shall appear. Or in this case call. Brenna was looking at her phone wide eyed. I signaled for her to answer it on speaker. She did.
"What's up?" She popped the p on up.
"Listen about earlier, that's not how I wanted things to go." He sounded like he was cringing and rubbing his neck.
"So what are you getting at Justin?" Brenna asked softly but slightly worried and annoyed.
"Its just I don't think you're the type of girl my dad would approve of, and my mother would tear you to shreds. I just don't think we're ready for a meet the parents thing yet. I hope you understand" he tried to explain but he was just digging himself a deeper hole.
"So, what I'm hearing is you broke up with me because you're too ashamed of me to introduce me to your parents." She stated angrily.
"No. What I'm saying is I'm sorry for overreacting instead of just telling you my parents aren't very open minded, they just have this idea in their heads that I'm going to have this 1950's breadwinner picket fence relationship and you don't want or deserve that. So I don't think it would be a good idea to subject you to their criticism yet." He tried again. This time I think he succeeded. She was smiling and rolling her eyes. God, is this what Aron and I are like? I hope not its too cheesy.
"I forgive you. We can still be together, if that's what you want." She gave in and the audibly sighed.
"That's all I want. Love you good night." He finished
"Love you good night." She responded and they hung up.
"See I told you everything would be fine." I smiled at her. She collapsed onto her bed and nodded.
"Now I'm going to go get back to Aron." I smiled. I walked into the living room and saw that Aron was talking to somebody. More specifically, he was talking to Courtney. Courtney was in my house. I stepped in front of Aron to see what she wanted and she seethed at me.
"Why are you even here Courtney?" I asked. She'd been making nasty posts about me lately so I knew we were back to the drama she attracted like the plague attracted locusts.
"You bitch!" She screamed and slapped me across the face. She continued screaming.
"Carter wanted you and the feeling wasn't mutual so you KILLED him!" She screeched. I grabbed her by her hair and dragged her outside.
"You listen to me and listen close. I didn't kill him. I was there when he died. I laid at his bedside for weeks after he was shot the first time. You didn't even visit once, so don't pretend to know what you're talking about and you sure as hell need to quit pretending to care." I threw her down in my yard and stepped on her arm, hard and twisted my leg until I heard a crack and she yelled in pain.
"Consider that a warning." I whispered menacingly. Then I left her in my yard, crying, and went back into the house. When I entered the living room Aron was sitting on the couch watching baseball. I walked over and sat on his lap. His arms twisted around my waist and I turned diagonally so our lips could meet. We sat there for a long time like that. Just holding each other and kissing. Eventually however, he had to go home and I had to go to bed. When I laid down in bed brenna was already asleep. My phone went off.
From devil love: I've been thinking that maybe we should take a year off from school after we graduate.
To devil love: sounds good to me. That way we have time to get our lives back in order, pick a school, make living arrangements, and wait on our friends.
From devil love: exactly. I Love you good night.
To devil love: I love you so much. Can't wait to see you on tomorrow. Sleep tight.
With the thought of how blessed I am in mind I fell asleep and in an odd half asleep state I thought about my life and everyone in it. And I thought about the meaning of love. You don't just love your boyfriend or girlfriend, you love your friends and family too, and they love you no matter how many times you screw up. That's another reason you love them really is because they don't judge you like others do. Thinking about this another thought entered my mind. I thought about how there's just something different about I love you than just love you. It feels more personal somehow. I love when we say it to each other for exactly that reason. I know we mean it. And we're going to graduate together and wherever life takes us after that I know we'll always have each other. Hell we've made it this far haven't we? I couldn't tell you what the future has in store for us, but I like it that way. I like the mystery and surprise that my life seems so full of. Even through all of the tragedy and heartache and loss I've always had Aron. Even if sometimes its only because I love him so much I'm too pathetic to leave his sorry butt. I will always have him and he knows he's got me wrapped around his finger. The point is that no matter what life throws at you you have to hold on to your friends, family and loved ones, because its them who will pull you through life's struggles. Aron is helping me through a really tough stage in my life right now. I can only hope he let's me help him some too. So what I'm trying to say is, when your faith is low, your hope is a distant memory, and your trust is empty, have faith life will get better, hope for good friends and family, and trust that the world knows what its throwing at you and loss it will help you in the end. Don't trust in the people who don't trust in you, don't have faith in the idea of going it alone and riding it out, and don't hope that nobody notices your pain, because it hurts much worse going it alone than it does to have an army of loved ones by your side. I've done a lot of growing up in these past two years, some of it good some of it bad. One things for sure though, I can't wait to continue this journey called life.