LIE

Chapter 23

Well, shit. That happened. I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's go back a bit.

"What were you thinking?" Brian fussed at Jason.

We all were in the living room, I stood back by the wall beside the doorway ready to run. It was kind of tense in here.

"You could have killed Luc! Or worse! What if something happened to both of you?!" He snapped.

"If you're going to wrestle do it downstairs and away from the windows!"

"What?!" Jeanette jumped in. "How about 'no wrestling' at all?!"

Fine by me. Brian agreed with her.

Jason didn't say much, just hung his head and apologized. I knew he felt guilty, it came across in the few hours before Jeanette and Brian came home.

There was a little bit more "raising of the voices," so I slipped away to my room.

A while after everything died down Jeanette and Brian came into my room right before I went to bed.

"Hi Luc," Jeanette sighed. She looked exhausted and quite frankly stressed out. They both sat on each side of my bed.

I waved slightly.

Brian spoke first. "I'm sorry about all the yelling."

"I hope I didn't scare you too bad," He said. I shook my head. I was scared, but more uncomfortable than anything.

"Just promise us you won't do that again?" Jeanette said.

"I promise." I nodded.

Brian pat my shoulder and smiled, then got up and left.

Jeanette stood up, "Goodnight Luc."

"Goodnight."

She followed Brian out and closed the door behind her.

I reached over to my nightstand. I was curious. I decided to hurt myself.

I grabbed my phone. I opened Instagram and stared at the search bar. What am I about to do?

Mercilessly typed 'E-v-i-e J-e-n-s-i-n.'

A few options popped up. Only one was her's.

I clicked on her profile. The profile picture only confirmed it was her.

She had several posts. I scrolled all the way down to the bottom. This page was created a little bit after I left.

The first picture was of her hand. A henna tattoo. It looked pretty nice.

I looked at the second picture. It was a black and white field. She captioned it 'feeling sad.' Why would she be sad?

One post caught my eye. It was the three of us. I hadn't seen this picture before. Smiles and joy everywhere.

This hurts. Why am I so far away from them? Why did I let this happen? Tears were welling up. I did this to us.

"I need to get back to Charlotte." I whispered to myself. But how? Maybe I can hitchhike. I feel a plan formulating...

The next day we went to Olive Garden.

Brian pulled me to the side, Jeanette came too. "Listen Luc, we're so sorry," Brian started. Oh god, what?

"We forgot your birthday." He stated.

I spoke before thinking. "What? I didn't tell you."

"Why not?" Jeanette questioned.