everything I didn't say

thirty seven

"Are you okay?" He peers over at me, reacting to my inhuman noises I'm making.

"What the fuck?" I'm able to choke out, and I take a breath to control myself.

"You're a fucking stalker!" I yell to the boy who I've grown a huge hatred for in the past three months. 

"Your friends are the one who called me to make sure you got home safely."

"I don't care, I can manage myself just fine."

"We're going to talk." He points at me like an adult to a child and I shake my head.

"Where the hell are we?" I ask, putting a hand to my head for my killing headache.

"Far away from that club and the creep that kept touching you."

"It doesn't matter who touches me." I counter.

"It does to me." The fucking nerve of this guy..

"Look, I was just helping you out. You could thank me." He digs through a bag, I assume looking for a shirt since he is not wearing one.

"I don't need to thank you for anything. You should be thanking me that I'm even speaking to you right now." I stand from the bed to move to my purse.

"Yeah, because this conversation is going so great?"

I dig in my purse for my ibuprofen again, not to be found.

"Looking for this?" He asks, holding up my bottle of medicine. I nod and he tosses it to me.

"I didn't think you should have them while you were-"

"While I was drunk? Because you know all about being drunk, right?" I narrow my eyes.

"Stop, Leah." He warns me but I look away. "You don't need to babysit me, okay?" I open the cap of the bottle and lay two out in my hands, taking a drink from a water bottle on the table. I could care less about whose it was.

"We can leave whenever you're ready." He says quietly.

"I'm ready." I answer him in my most civil manner. We will only make it home in two separate pieces if I try to keep this as civil and calm as I can.

He checks us out of the hotel as I sit in the passenger seat of his car. It feels so long ago that I sat here with him, we were happy and look where we are now.

He sets his bag in the back seat and opens his door, starting up the car and looking over to me.

"Are you alright?" He smiles.

"I need your phone, to make a call." He nods, pulling out his phone. This must be new, it is not the same phone he had before, free of cracks and shatters. He does not have Julie in his contacts anymore. Probably doesn't have me in there, either.

I dial her number on my own, lucky I have it memorized.

"Hello?" She answers.

"Hey, it's me." I close my eyes, waiting for her to chew me out.

She sighs. "Hey."

"We're on our way home, I guess."

"I'm sorry, are you mad at me?" I hear the unevenness in her tone.

"No." I decide I'm not and won't be mad at her, this ride will be over with soon enough and I am safe, rather than with a stranger who could potentially kill me. 

I am with a stranger, though, my brain reminds me. A stranger I know all too well.

I sit back in my seat, watching the scenes pass by through the window through the silent drive. This silence is deafening.