My bloodsucking best friend

Chapter Thirty-One

I promised you the second half of the flashback a while back... and finally, here it is.

Part II

 "I can explain," he said and his voice sounded strange, and he blinked a few times, taking at least a little bit of the weight off my chest when his eyes turned normal again, but the rest of him was still wrong even without the black coloring in his iris.

My eyes flickered back and forth between him and the girl and everything inside my head screamed panic, but I dug my nails into my right palm and forced myself to stay conscious and not pass out the next moment. Without a plan what to do, but feeling responsible for my best friend, I made a spontaneous decision that was certainly morally wrong, but the best thing I could do. 

"We have to go," I told Andy and he opened his mouth, but I couldn't bear to listen to him. "Andy, I don't care what you have to say. We're leaving." I grabbed his clothes he had tossed on a sideboard next to the door and threw them at him and he stared at me for a moment, unsure whether he should listen to me, but then made the right choice and got up to get dressed, and I turned around so I wouldn't see him naked, but didn't step away from the door because I definitely didn't trust him right now and couldn't risk losing him again, especially not now.

I was shaking and felt nauseous, but stayed strong and didn't say anything when he stood next to me after only a few seconds, almost impressing me with the ability to get ready so quickly.

"What about her?" I heard myself ask, my voice breaking, but he refused to meet my eyes and made a gesture with his hand to tell me not to worry. "She is taken care of." I resisted the temptation to glance back into the room and made the choice to nod and accept his response without further questions because I didn't know what I would do with the answers.

"Let's go home," I said and sounded stronger than I felt, bracing myself for some sort of fight, but it was one of the extremely few occasions on which he just followed my command and didn't debate or fight it, and we left the party without another word. The way back to Andy's house was short, but long enough to cause me to have an internal crisis, suppress a nervous breakdown several times and have to vomit instead, and Andy and I didn't speak a word or even look at each other. The silence between us was enhanced by the fact that we were out here in the late night small town neighborhood and it was almost unbearable, but I didn't dare to break it with anything other than my occasional retching.

Every time I had to stop to empty my stomach further, Andy wordlessly held my long hair back, but didn't touch, look at or speak to me, so when we were back at his house, I was a mess and he seemed to be made of ice both physically and emotionally, but unlike me, he was neither shaking, nor losing his mind. Or if he was, he could hide it.

I wanted nothing more than for us to talk to each other, but there were no words I could speak out loud, so I entered his home behind him silently and kicked off the shoes that didn't belong to me. Figuring we'd go to bed because the alcohol had exhausted me, our night was ruined and I felt like screaming and crying at the same time, I wanted to head for the staircase, but someone turned on the light and I knew it wasn't Andy, and that was the first moment I knew this night wasn't even close to having reached its peak of terror yet.

"You're back sooner than I thought," Andy's father stated, his tone too peaceful.

"Yeah, we're going to bed," Andy confirmed my idea, mirroring his father's pretended calmness.

"I don't think so." his dad replied and stepped into the room, his arms folded and his facial expressions too earnest.

"What?" his son shot back, the first sparks of anger behind his eyes, and I slowly backed away into the direction of the staircase because whatever was about to happen, I didn't want to be dragged into it again.