I'm baaaaack!
Scarlett
For the first time since arriving at Everett, I feel...relief. It's as though I've been simultaneously holding my breath while walking on a tightrope for months now, desperately trying to maintain my balance while not breathing. It was a dangerous balancing act that I was sure to fall from sooner rather than later because I was fully aware that I couldn't go on with this show forever. It was draining trying to ensure that I didn't slip up and destroy this... this.. fragile mask I created. I would have never thought that Lucas knowing the real Scarlett, not "perfect" Scarlett that I wanted to be for so long would be this liberating. I can finally get off of this rope and I can finally exhale. This act is finally over for the most part.
"What's your friend's name?" Lucas asks me while we're wrapped up in each other's arms. We've been in the same position since our talk earlier in the morning. My head on his shoulder, lazily drawing patterns on his clothed chest, his arm around my waist in a comforting hold while some cheesy Netflix movie watches us instead of the other way around.
"What friend?" I answer too quickly, without thinking. The feeling of his taut muscles under his t-shirt is distracting. I can facepalm myself. Sometimes I can really be dim. What other friend could he be talking about besides the friend whose blood I was literally covered in a mere few hours ago?
"You know, the friend you were with last night. The one that..." Lucas trails off and looks down at me with worry clearly gracing his beautiful face.
"Asher. His name is Asher." I state. The clearly evident pity in his eyes creates a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. We're going to have to have the "talk" as soon as possible. The "I'm not a charity case" talk
"Hmm...Asher? Asher?" Lucas furrows his brows the way he does when he's thinking way too hard for his little blonde self to handle. "What's his last name?"
"What's next? His social?" I jokingly ask him.
"I knew an Asher back in High School."
"His last name is Yates but you probably don't know him." Boston is so large that the chances of them knowing each other is slim to none.
"Yates?" Lucas bursts, catching me off guard due to him basically yelling in my ear. "Sorry."
"I take it that you know him?" Of fucking course, Lucas would know Asher. Why wouldn't he? I'm starting to think that all the pretty boys know each other here. Maybe there's some secret society that only attractive, relatively wealthy guys can join. That would explain why Lucas is literally friends with only fine men.
"Yates went to our rival school back in high school. We played him a couple times throughout the years. Biggest shit talker on the team. Although he was annoying as fuck out on the field he was good company to be around. I mean we aren't best friends or anything but we had mutual friends. I haven't seen him since this last summer at Josh's Party...oh fuck. That's the night his girlfriend died isn't it?"
"Yea. Lainey." The reason for all of this mess with Asher. It's irrational and frankly petty of me, but I don't like her. I don't like Asher's. I'm sure that based on what he told me about her, that if I did ever have the opportunity to meet her I would've liked her, but seeing how the memory of her is affecting Asher. He's metaphorically and actually chasing a ghost. I can't help but not like her.
"The love of his life." We say at the same time. I shoot Lucas a side-eye that garners a chuckle from him.
"He was so in love with her, that it made me fucking sick." Lucas turns over and I sink further into the crook of his arm. "She went to every single one of his games. Home, Away it didn't matter. She was always there cheering him on. We always giving him shit about his "wife" always being around and he would just laugh and say that he's the luckiest man in the world then. They were inseparable. I couldn't understand how they could spend that much time together and not get sick of each other, but I guess when you find the one, you could spend a lifetime together and still feel the same way you felt when you first got together."
