I'm Warning You ~○~ Robert Downey Jr (Teacher/Student Romance)

Chapter Twelve: "Please Don't Leave Me!"

"Uh...Angel I...I can explain..." I swallow hard, but she looks into my eyes, a little crease forming between her brows. Her shocked expression replaced with hurt. I will for my brain to let the words exit my mouth, but they don't. She turns around and scurries up the stairs quickly, and the heavy footsteps becoming more distant as she moves throughout the house. I want to run after her, but my legs won't move. Not at first. I hear a few doors slam shut, but eventually I push the mind-block outta my head, and force myself to run. "Angel! Wait!"

"I knew this would happen!" she yells from the bedroom at the other end of the house. I run down the hall and open the door slowly.

"Baby, please. I swear I was going to tell you-"

"Yeah, sure. 'Hi I'm Angel, I'm seventeen and my boyfriend's not only my principal but also an ex drug addict'." She's sat on the single bed in the smallest room of the house, her foot tapping on the floor with arms folded. "Are you an ex-con too?"

"No, I never got caught."

"Oh, that's okay then," she says sarcastically.

"It wasn't like that," I reply in a cold tone. I've just been told my sons on coke, and she's angry with me for not telling her something that happened over a decade ago?!

"But...was it just cocaine? Do you still use it?"

"What?! No! Of course I don't! I'm not the person I was before!"

"You can't just change! It must still be there... the craving must still be there!"

"No it's not." I sigh and rub my eyes with my thumb and index finger.

"But h-"

"Because I control it. Why the heck would I carry on putting my job in jeopardy?!"

"So you were using and teaching at the same time?!"

"Yeah, okay! I get it! I'm fucked up. I'm an absolute dick. I'm an oxygen-wasting, good-for-nothing, useless piece of shit. Okay? I fucking know!" I turn from her, about to leave the room when she calls my name.

"Robert!"

"What?" I say, still facing the door.

"I'm sorry," she replies, her tone softening up, "I...I didn't mean to be a bitch...I...it's just a lot to take in..."

"Yeah, well so's being told your twenty year old son is an addict," I say coldly. She falls silent, and all I can hear is her shifting uneasily on the bed. "You know...you know what the worst part about it is?" I say, pivoting around to face her. The worst part is that I was on drugs when he was a kid. What kind of parent does that make me? What kind of person does that make me? I knew I should have left this place. I just knew it!" A few more silent moments pass before she opens her mouth.

"Well...he can make his own choices though, right? He's not a little kid anymore..."

"He'll always be the little kid I knew. It's wrong. Deborah was right, he's inherited my shitty drug-genes." I take a seat a few spaces away from her.

"Maybe that's not true..." she says with a frown on her face.

"Please, enlighten me. Do elaborate."

"Well, maybe he's just using the drugs in an attempt to replace his Dad."

"Don't go all psychology on me, it can't justify being a junkie."

"Well I sure as hell miss my dad. I...well...sometimes it's like he's only a phone-call away...but, the reality is...he's, well, he's just not." She starts becoming uneasy, her voice wobbling very slightly, almost unnoticeable. She looks into her lap and fiddles with her hands. "He's gone...and that...it's...it hurts Robert. I considered suicide, do you know how it feels to even hold those thoughts in your mind?" I nod slowly, although I don't want to go into too much depth about the fact that I held a gun to my head and pulled the trigger. Too bad that the cheapskate who sold it to me, handed over a broken gun. I saw that as the light at the end of a very dark and long tunnel, that it was fate for me to have survived. It was either do something worthy with the time I have left, or blow my brains out and have lived a worthless life. I shake the thoughts out of my mind, lifting my head off the ground to look at her beautiful face.