When It all Falls Down

Chapter 4.4

Gabriella

CJ sighed and looked at the ground. "Come on!" Claire yelled again.

"Well, when Claire wants something, she gets it," he said with a small smile. He opened my car door and shut it behind me. "Have fun with your tour." He grinned.

Claire grabbed my wrist as I got to the front door, and I watched as CJ ran up a set of stairs that was in the opposite direction of where Claire was dragging me.

"This is our living room. Our mom is a neat freak so you're lucky you're here now and not a week ago. Man, this place looked awful." The house so far was spotless. It looked a lot better than our living room, and only three people lived in my house. "This is my parent's bedroom," she pointed to a door on the other side of the living room. "There's also a bathroom in there, but we only get to use it on special occasions," she whispered. "But sometimes when my parents aren't home I sneak in there because they have a better shower."

She was acting like she was trying to sell me the house. She would point at pictures on the walls and tell me exactly where they came from. I'm sure most of the stories were false, but I enjoyed listening to her ramble on. "The basement is pretty nice too, but Cody's the only one who hangs out down there. He's kind of a loner."

We made our way to the kitchen that was openly connected to the dining room. "We all know what happens in the kitchen so no need to explain," she said with a laugh. "Now upstairs!" She grabbed my arm again.

She ran up the stairs so fast I found it hard to keep up with her. "This is CJ's room." She pointed to the door at the top of the steps.

"That's mine." Her room was directly across the hall from CJ's. Blue and purple paper letters littered her door, spelling Claire from the top down.

"There's Cody's," she said and pointed to the door right next to the steps. A poster that read 'keep out' was hung very unevenly on the door. "He got the poster yesterday. I think he's on his man period or something," she said with a laugh.

If only she knew.

"And Cassie's room is at the end of the hall with our other two bathrooms." From the outside the house didn't look like it could even have 5 bedrooms. Everything was so cramped together I felt claustrophobic. "I wonder what CJ's doing." She barged into CJ's room without knocking and pulled me in with her.

"Claire! What the hell!" CJ yelled.

My eyes widened at the sight in front of me. He was obviously in the middle of changing his clothes. "Ew!" Claire giggled and ran out of the room, shutting the door behind her. All I did was turn around, because I really didn't know where else to go.

He was in the process of pulling on new jeans when she stormed in, and he didn't have a shirt on. I heard him put his belt on, and he let out a small chuckle. "It's okay. I have pants on now," he said, and I slowly turned around.

He wasn't facing me. He was looking through his closet for a new shirt to put on.

He's shirtless.

As I went to turn away again I saw something that caught my attention. Bruises.

There were so many of them all over his back, and small cuts too.

He started to turn around, and I turned my attention elsewhere. I looked over at his bookshelf, which was empty. Next to the bookshelf was a pile of paper and what looked to be book covers next to it. So that's what Cody did.

When I looked back over at him he had already put on a shirt. It was just a plain black one, so it really wasn't any different from the one he had on before. "How was your tour?" he asked and sat down on his bed.