Love Triangle

EIGHT

I sat on the bank in the school grounds with a notebook propped on my knee.
I looked out over the field. It was October now and the sky was glum and the clouds looked like they were filled with rain. There was fog hovering above the grass and the air was getting colder.
I'd felt different for a while now. Sometimes I got like this - numb.
I sat and wrote.

Everything feels shit right now. The sky is glum, the people are glum. I feel alone. No one knows me, I'm sure they don't. I can't tell if I want to die alone or not. Everyone in this school is naive and delusional.

I was never sure how to write. My written words seemed to come out faster than my thoughts. I could never make my sentences make sense, especially when I was struggling to stay present in the world anyway.

I lit the joint that I had in my pocket thinking of nothing but how numb I felt.
I lit it, took a few tokes, and then after a second, put the lit end of the joint onto my pale skin.

"Cova!" I heard Eden yell and I was snapped back to reality. "What are you doing?"
He'd ran over to me and was stood inches away from me, looking panicked and overly concerned.
"What? I don't know." I stuttered, completely took off guard that someone had been watching me. I didn't have a clear answer for what I'd just done, it was an impulse.
"Cova? You - you burned yourself! Why? What's -" Eden was so frantic in the way he spoke, desperate to make sure I was okay. I'd never had someone act like they cared this much and as much as I wanted to thank him for caring about me, a huge part of me didn't believe that someone truly could.
"Eden, it's fine. I -"
Eden cut me off with his frantic voice and concerned expression again. "Cova, no. It's not fine. You just -"
"Eden!" I yelled, cutting him off. "I said it's fine. Leave it. Stop being so sensitive." I said, abruptly. I stormed off, leaving Eden stood alone.
"Where are you going?" Eden shouted in a voice that I thought would be louder than he could manage. The shout didn't suit his timid self, but he could see me walking away from the entrance to school.
"Anywhere!" I yelled back.

I headed straight upstairs when I got to the coffee shop and found Jesse with earphones in sitting on the sofa.
"Hey." I greeted him, out of breath from pacing as rapidly as I could away from the school grounds.
"Hey. What are you doing here?"
"I noticed you'd skipped school, and I didn't want to be there anymore. Do you want some company?" I offered, thankful to be here and not at school.
"What kind of company do you mean?" He asked with a smirk as he stood up and edged towards me.
"You know exactly what kind of company."

I threw on my shirt and buttoned it again.
"Is everything okay? You seem off." Jesse asked with less obvious care in his voice than Eden. He hadn't bothered to put anything but his boxers on and lay with his chest exposed.
"Isn't it always." I remarked.

Jesse stood up from the bed to grab a lengthy book before lying back down.
"You read?" I asked, curiously.
"Yeah. A lot of the time, actually. Why? Do I not seem clever enough?" He grinned.
"I don't know. You don't seem patient enough for something like reading." I shrugged and he chuckled.

We sat in silence for a few minutes, the only sound being the flicking of the pages.
"So... you never do relationships then?" He asked me, removing the book from in front of his face for a split second.
"Not really. Do you?"
"No. Never. It's not fucking worth it." He muttered, burying his eyes back in his book.
For some reason his answer bothered me and felt like a hit to the gut.
"Yeah. True. Anyway, I've got to go." I gathered my stuff as quickly as possible and headed to the door.
"Cova?" He stopped me as I got to the door. "Are you sure you're okay?"
"I'll be fine."