Misery Loves Company

Track 33: Try A Little Tenderness

Author's note: I'm back! I know it's been a while, so I suggest re-reading/skimming through Track 28: Pretty in Purple before this chapter. It'll remind you of some things, and make reading this chapter even more enjoyable.

Thanks for always being so patient with me. Happy reading!

Misery Loves Company

By: theinkslingerr

Track 33: Try A Little Tenderness

"Where are you going?"

I dropped my backpack on the floor, hand frozen on the door knob as my mom shuffled up to me. "Um...I'm spending the weekend at a friend's."

She raised an eyebrow, but it was hard to take her seriously in her whacky dinosaur scrubs. "Gee, if you'd just said 'Enid,' I definitely wouldn't have known who you were talking about."

It was hard not to roll my eyes. My dad may have been out of the picture, but it wasn't a mystery which parent my sarcasm had come from. "Actually, it's not Enid."

Surprise colored her face, and I was instantly torn between satisfaction and offense.

If my own mother thought me having another friend was this shocking, then maybe I really had been as clingy as Enid described.

"Who, then?"

"Sienna. This girl from school." I decided to keep my answer vague and leave out the fact that we'd be spending the night at Ji-Hyun's house, then driving to another state to see a band she didn't want me anywhere near.

Ever since my mom caught me and Rocco on the couch together and I started fake-dating Dom, she suddenly had a lot of questions. Questions I wasn't used to answering since she'd been uninterested before. It boggled my mind that all it took was the threat of getting knocked up by musicians to make her pay attention. Was she just now realizing I was sixteen and not ten? That statistically, I was approaching the age where most girls lost their virginity, if they hadn't already? I held back a sigh. Paula had been the one to give me and Enid the sex talk (I still had nightmares about the puppet show), so I guess it made sense my mom was wary about the type of girl I'd become while she was off working. The funny thing was she still took long shifts at the hospital, so I didn't understand what she thought her questions would prevent in her absence.

I could just lie and meet up with Rocco, Dom, or anyone else.

Much like I was doing now.

Lying by omission didn't exactly feel good, but I needed to get out of the house. I'd had a stressful day avoiding Josh, and couldn't sit around thinking about what I'd overheard in the bathroom. I'd already obsessed over it during my classes instead of paying attention.

If Josh was still going around manipulating and intimidating people, then what was last night? An act? Phase one of his cruelest stunt yet?

Him telling Jessica to leave me alone wasn't necessarily the problem. In fact, it was kind of sweet that he'd gone out of his way for me. It was the look Jessica described seeing in his eyes that scared me, because it was a look I remembered all too well. Josh had been a scrawny kid, so he was never physically imposing. It was the cruelty, manipulation, and vicious glint in his eyes that had made kids think twice about getting on his bad side.