Pepper never meant to lose her best friend. Lucas never meant to fall in love.
Yet the aftermath of broken hearts leads them to blur the lines of their friendship forever. When Pepper is dumped by her boyfriend and Lucas is led on by his crush, they...
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MY PALMS WRINKLE from the water engulfing my entirety for the past thirty minutes.White ceilings and grey beams stare down at me. The natural flow of water tugs me across the pool. A thick fog submerges my mind into darkness. My heartbeat is dangerously slow. One nearly empty Juul sits in my pile of clothes and notebooks at the other end of the pool. It's the only way to ease my angst. The only thing that stops me from feeling like the world is staring at me and using that word against me, judging me for what I did to Pepper.
It wasn't like that. It wasn't. It wasn't.
I keep telling myself this. I try to reassure the dubious thoughts chanting throughout my apprehensive mind. Every day in her absence is a stain in my memory. A reminder of the night that everything fell apart.
She wanted it. She wanted me. She just needed a push.
Then her vivid tears will show. The way she cried and screamed at me. How she recoiled every time I touched her. Who was I to make that choice for her? To push her so hard that she'd end up hating me?
I welcome darkness with shut eyes and inhale the surrounding chlorine. Soothing ripples attempt to drown the echoes of her cries and the way she stuttered when she tried to tell me that she didn't want to be with me. I try to forget the gloom in her gaze and all the signs of her rejection. The signs that I wanted to be a mistake. Fixable.
Demons cackle in my ears, imps that ring around my conscious no matter how high I get.
You fucked up. You're disgusting. How could you do that to your own best friend?
Sick. Sick. Sick. Rapi-
"Is this what seniors do during their final year?" a voice echoes off the high ceilings and send me into a jolt. "If so, I can't wait to get through these final years."
My eyes spring open to witness a kid entering the room. I position myself upright and curse as I realize I've been caught in the school's pool. I shift through believable excuses as to why I'm in here but nothing comes. "I-" Shit. "Um-"
"You sneak in here a lot," the kid continues. The flaming hair and infinite freckles across his narrow face become more evident as he closes our proximity. He grips the straps of his backpack and skips across the side of the pool until he stands before me.
"I-I got the passcode from a janitor," I admit, too dull to come up with a proper excuse. "Don't tell your coach or whatever... I just needed to-"
"Breathe?" He crouches down and purses his lips knowingly. "Escape?"
"Yeah," I drag and swim over to him to rest my arms over the edge. "Are you about to practice or something?" I hoist myself out of the water and focus on not exposing how high I am.
I'm not sure if my eyes are heavy or if they just feel heavy and whether or not I seem too nonchalant. Pepper always told me that I'm like a sloth when I smoke. Sluggish. Like my motor skills are rapidly deteriorating. Or maybe my life is just slowing down, exposing how much of a good for nothing fuck up that I am.
