Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
* p r e s e n t *
"Corey! Wake the fuck up!"
Harlow Taylor knocked on her brother's front door, her voice raised. It was the middle of the night and she knew it. Her older brother was clearly asleep; every light in the house was off and the door was locked.
"Corey! I'm breaking a fucking window if you don't come let me in!"
She absently worried about whether or not he might have his kids. She knew her pounding and yelling would probably startle them and paused for a moment, trying to remember whether or not it was his weekend. Eventually, she settled on being pretty sure that it wasn't.
"Corey!"
She shouted again, pounding harder and ringing the doorbell probably about ten times in a row. A second later, her cell phone started ringing in her pocket. Corey's name flashed across the screen and she answered it at once.
"Just use your fucking key you goddamn bitch," he yelled roughly before she even said anything, and she shook her head.
"I don't have a key anymore. You needed it to give to Griff, remember?" she asked, referring to his eldest son.
"I never made you another one?"
"No, you goddamn bitch," she responded, and he growled loudly and she could hear him shuffling around.
"Fine. I'm fucking coming."
He hung up and a few seconds later lights started coming on inside the house. She could hear him grumbling to himself as the door in front of her unlocked and swung open.
"What the fuck do you want?" he questioned as she stepped inside. "It's fucking four o'clock in the morning and I have shit to do in like six hours."
"I know. I'm sorry. I... uh, I think Jim and I broke up," she told him, not able to hold back the tears that rose to her eyes. Corey's own eyes went wide and he shook his head shortly.
"You mean you 'broke up' like you've done before, right? Where you fight and go to your separate corners to lick your wounds and then are sickeningly in love again by the next day?" he asked, and she shook her head.
"I don't think that's what this is, no," she whispered, batting at a couple of tears that slipped down her cheeks. Corey shook his head again, seemingly speechless, something that wasn't common for her brother, the guy who was literally nicknamed 'The Great Big Mouth'.
Harlow had been dating one of Slipknot's guitarists, Jim Root, on and off for over ten years. Officially, they'd only been together for about eight, but they'd been casually seeing each other and hooking up long before that.
Their relationship had always been sort of a challenge; they were definitely very different in a lot of ways and because of it, it took work. That was part of the reason they'd fought making it something official for so long before finally giving in. They bickered and disagreed a lot, but usually somehow they made it work. Somehow, they were still hopelessly in love. Plenty of his bandmates and their friends joked that they were the most obnoxious couple they knew because of how good they were when they were good.
