The Good, The Bad and The Broken

peer pressure sucks

'Forget the butterflies, I feel the whole zoo when I am with you.'

Alyx POV

I got off the call with Melanie. She was at a party all by herself and was begging me to go, but I stood my ground and declined. The last party I went to had made me relive all the bad memories. So I wasn't planning on going to another. For a very long time.

Something hit my window. I presumed that it was a bird so I didn't look at first. But after several knocks, I went over to have a look. At first, I couldn't see anything, but then I heard someone whispering, "Pssst," softly. Looking down, I saw Ryder standing there with a hand full of small pebbles.

"Romeo and Juliet vibes much?" I asked and he looked like he was about to burst out laughing, but was just able to contain himself before he made a big noise. "I thought you were going to some party?"

"It got boring." Was all he answered. "Can I come up?"

I looked down the shaft between his house and my house. There was a tree in the space, but the branches were thin, and I didn't think that they could support his weight. However, I had climbed up that tree once holding a ten-kilo load, so maybe it could. "I don't know, can you?" I teased and he started climbing.

The whole time he was making his way up, I held my breath in anticipation of the fall. Thankfully, it never came and he safely made his way up to my room. Holy shit. He was in my room. I started having a minor panic attack at the thought of my mum finding him in my room. Or worse, my father. We would both lose our lives if it was my dad.

"Hey." He breathed, standing close to me. God he had nice eyes.

"Hi." I said and moved away from him.

He sat down at my vanity and picked up one of the things that I had been pressured to buy by Melanie and sort of by Matea. He held it up to me in confusion. "You don't look like the type of girl to buy makeup from," he studied the bottle of foundation closer, "Charlotte Tilbury? Isn't that like an expensive brand?"

"Let's just say that peer pressure sucks." I stated, prying the bottle away from his hands and sat down on my bed. "So..."

"So..." He copied me. We looked at each other and burst out laughing. I clutched my stomach to calm the stitch that was forming. Every time we looked at each other again in the next five minutes, we would just start laughing again.

By the time we had finally calmed ourselves, we were wiping tears from our eyes. The funny thing was that I had no idea why we were laughing in the first place. There was a soft rapping at my door and fear clouded our eyes. I pulled him into my closet. Then I went to open the door.

At least it was only my mum. "Hi sweetie, I just came to drop off some laundry."

"Thanks mum."

"Here, I can sort them for you, I know you were finishing off some homework."

All I could do was pray that Ryder had heard and was quietly making his way to the bathroom that my closet was attached to. Dear God. What was I doing? The most Christian thing I'd ever done was go to church at Easter. Either way, it was worth a shot.

I mean you made Ryder my neighbour which is just one of the signs that you hate me. But if you hide Ryder so that my mum doesn't see him, I will be so good, that Santa would be proud. Please, I'm too young to die. Just then, Fred did something that made him my favourite person in the world. He ran in and complained that he couldn't go to sleep.

My mum looked at the clock. It was nine o'clock and Fred's bed time was eight. "Sorry, you're going to have to put your laundry away by yourself." I let out the breath I had been holding and let Ryder out after my mum left with Freddie.