Innocence

VII

I handed Zoe a cup of tea and she sat cross-legged on my bed. Her wavy brown hair was loose and hanging just a bit below her shoulders and the Adidas top she wore looked to be a size too big on her.

She gave me a look before having a sip of her tea.

My mother had been suspicious about Zoe but I explained that she was a friend and that we needed to talk in private.

She gave me the look that told me she wanted to know all about it later but I didn't really want to tell her. I didn't want my mother knowing everything about my life.

"So you want to know about his girlfriend?" She asked me and I snapped out of my thoughts, nodding my head and ignoring the fact that I probably looked like a bobble-head.

I wanted to know about this more than anything.

She smiled weakly before looking out the window to where it was raining lightly, drops of water racing down the window pane.

I always loved the sight of raindrops trying to race each other to the bottom.

My attention flickered back to Zoe when she coughed deliberately.

"I'll tell you what I know, but it's not much. Calum always kept me in the dark with his love life."

I sat against the wall and got comfortable, waiting for her to continue.

•••

"He met her in a library and I'll be honest, their relationship started off terrible. I was there at the time, although I wasn't with Calum because who wants to get seen with their brother?"

"He'd been talking about this book, The Fault In Our Stars, for weeks. So he was hoping he could hire it out for the week."

"The girl obviously had the same idea, because she grabbed the book first and I could hear Calum and her arguing about it. Her voice was really melodic, rich almost... my guess was that she was brought up well because most rich people have that accent."

"I was getting sick of them arguing so I was about to go over their and push her into a bookshelf because my brother sounded really mad. But before I could everything went silent and then all I could hear was laughter."

"I remember it really freaked me out, I had no idea what was going on. Their laughter was really strange too, like they kinda blended together."

"Once they stopped, I moved to the bookshelf so I could eavesdrop on them. They were talking about the book and Calum said he wanted to read it because the movie was great but books were always better than the movies."

"They were silent for a while and I figured they'd noticed I was a there and were mouthing stuff to each other but then I heard Calum say thanks. He gasped which was weird and then Miss. Blonde Curls was out of the shop."

•••

"Blonde curls, huh?" I frowned.

Maybe that's why he got mad at me sometimes. I had blonde curls and that probably made him upset because it reminded him of his old girlfriend.