Lighter

t h i r t e e n

so take me to the paradise in your eyes,
green like american m o n e y . . .

⚡️⚡️⚡️

o n e   m o n t h   l a t e r

Sometimes, it's impossible to get enough sleep around my house. If it's not a night terror waking me up, then it's my family. Haleigh with some kind of ridiculous, pre-teen request, my dad needing help with an adult situation that Aunt Farrah can't handle, or Cheyenne just wanting to get out of her own house. Most of the time, it's my best friend that wakes me up – next to some vividly bad dreams, of course.

It just so happens that on a Saturday morning when I was trying to sleep in, Cheyenne didn't want that. I was woken up by my bedroom door swinging open and her belting out a salutation.

"What the fuck?" I grumbled dramatically, taking the covers and pulling them up over my head.

"You're still sleeping? Sav, it's almost eleven. I thought you would have been up by now," Cheyenne chirped too loudly for my liking. I just growled as a response and didn't come out from hiding. "Yeah, yeah. Whatever."

"Why don't you go bother Hales? I'm sure she's been awake since the sun came up," I remarked, still under my blankets.

"Because she's not home. If you were up, you'd know she's been at cheer practice since eight," Cheyenne said smugly. How she knew the details of my family members lives wasn't odd to me because technically, she's a part of this mental family. "I got here a little before then and I've been patiently waiting downstairs for you to get up. I couldn't take just sitting in your living room anymore so I figured I'd come see if you were awake. And now you are."

"Unfortunately," I mumbled.

She laughed to herself and I heard her footsteps come closer to my bed. I didn't think anything of it before she started tugging at my covers and pleading for me to get up like a five-year-old with no patience, and she did it successfully. When all the blankets were in a ball by my feet, exposing my bare legs from wearing shorts to bed, I flopped back onto my pillows and sighed.

"Come on. It's a beautiful Saturday and I'm actually off from work. Let's do something!" She pushed down on my mattress persistently, forcing my body to bounce with the movement.

"Okay! Okay," I snapped and sent her a glare. She just grinned back at me, until I watched as her eyes trickled down to my shirt when I sat up.

Her grin quickly turned sour. "Um, where did you get that?" She asked with suspicion obvious in her question.

My eyes widened and I dropped my face so that I was staring at the words Beckerton High School stamped on the sweatshirt. Fuck.

It had been a whole month since Ronnie gave me his high school crewneck. A whole entire month, I had it in my possession. He never asked for it back, even when we saw each other a few times after he lent it to me that night after Jonah's show. He never brought it up whenever we were hanging out or just happening to run into each other at the most random of places. I never said anything either because honestly, I didn't want to give it back.

The selfish girl inside me wanted to keep it for as long as possible. I only wore it to bed, and even then I only did that sparingly, which is probably why Cheyenne hasn't seen it until now. I didn't want to stain it, rip it, or ruin it in any way. If he made it clear that he wanted it back, I'd definitely wash it for him. But since he hasn't mentioned it, neither have I. And I'm not planning on it either.

With only one week of classes left before winter break, I had a feeling I was going to be seeing Ronnie more often. That meant Tommy and Kurt would be coming home for at least a month, Marcus would be off from school, and we'd all be getting together again like old times. I'm just hoping that maybe he'd forgotten about it, but with a sweatshirt like this one, I don't think he'd "forget about it". Part of me thinks that he knows what he's doing and it's all on purpose.