When the Smoke Clears

gone

Azure

He seemed... kind. I hated it. I didn't want the pity. I didn't want any of it. I wanted that stupid teenager who went and burned my grandmother's bakery to ashes to rethink his stupid decision before he did it.

I couldn't say anything but, "What are you doing?"

Because I was genuinely confused at his actions. The bad boy I had somehow made peace with was being comforting.

He seemed taken aback by my perfectly warranted question. Nothing about our spoken "friendship contract" said anything about actually being there for each other. And from what I knew about James, he wasn't naturally a "be there for friends" kind of person.

"Well... you're crying."

I wiped at my eyes and hesitantly spoke, "Yeah?"

He looked away from my eyes as I got to my feet.

"Why?"

"I'm not sure I want to talk about it." It was true, after all. I hadn't even told Quinn. The phone rang, I found out, I ran here. No other place would have provided me with the quiet pondering I sought. And he had given me permission to come.

I looked at James, swaying awkwardly, like he didn't know what to do for the first time in his life. Which I supposed it might've been.

"You might've noticed, but, uh, I don't know how to comfort people at all."

I'd usually jeer at him, but I couldn't. I could barely do anything. My mouth spoke by itself, contradicting every sentence as I shook in place with my arms crossed.

"Well, you usually put your hand on their shoulder or something but... certain limitations keep you from doing that. You could, uh, poke my shoulder with a stick. Do you have a stick?"

He nodded hesitantly at my ridiculous suggestion and picked up a small splinter from the broken wood floor.

"Like this?"

My aching eyes could barely see the stick but I nodded. "Yeah, sure."

James began patting my shoulder and head lightly with the stick as I watched.

"This is the weirdest thing I've ever done to a person," he exhaled.

I chuckled a little, smiling through my swollen, tears-stained cheeks.

"I have to disagree."

He turned to look at me with a disgusted but curious face.

"What horrors have you bestowed upon another?" He questioned as he sat on the floor and padded the spot next to him for me to sit.

"There was this one point when I was running the bakery when I ran out of counter space completely. I had some bread I needed to knead immediately in order to make a deadline so I legitimately had no time to clean off a spot. I called in one of the boys, Darian, I think his name was, and I asked him to lean over so I could knead the bread on his back."

James's eyes widened as he exclaimed, "Oh no, please tell me he didn't say yes!"

I nodded and his jaw dropped.

"Anyways, I did clean his back before I made bread on it, and it turned out fine."

"But why?!" He shivered, "Ew, I can just imagine eating back bread. That is disgusting."