Chapter 2

Em

“So that’s it?” Mickey said. “He’s just giving up? Throwing in the towel? Calling it quits?? Caving in??”

“Yes.” Em said. “Quitting, surrendering, abandoning, relinquishing, folding.. all of the above.”

“Huh.” Mickey responded.

“What? What’s that mean?” Em asked her.

“Well. It’s just… Quinn is so.. the opposite of that.”

Em thought about this a minute. And Mickey was right. Quinn was the exact opposite of all those things. Actually not giving up or giving in was his entire personality. So why did he give up so easily?

Later that night Em laid in bed and couldn’t stop thinking about what Mickey had said. She had been spot on and Em wondered why she had never thought of it. Why did he roll over so quickly.. unless..

Unless he was looking for an excuse. Maybe he had decided he didn’t want to be with her, and needed a way out. Maybe he didn’t love her after all. Maybe he was still in love with his ex girlfriend that he had been with since he was a kid.

The thoughts were taking over her brain. Pounding on her skull and bouncing every which way in her mind. Ugh. Now she was getting a headache. She got them more frequently now, after the concussion she had sustained during the wreck.

Em popped out of bed and went downstairs to the kitchen for some pain medicine and water. It was late now, almost midnight, and she swore she heard tapping on the glass. After listening for a moment she went back to her task. Though she kept slighting her eyes around without moving her head.

Now she’s just being paranoid. Although, she had a great reason to be. After everything she had been through, it would be weird if she wasn’t paranoid. She swallowed the medicine and sat the glass in the sink, then turned around to go back upstairs.

When she walked by the living room with the huge glass windows on the back wall she stopped. Then, she screamed.

Em jumped seven miles into the air then quickly slammed her hand over her mouth to quiet her screaming. There was someone standing there, looking into her house!

But.. the intruder was waving at her.

That’s odd.

Em squinted against the darkness and then she huffed. She looked up to the sky silently asking the question… ‘why’. Then she marched over to the glass doors and opened one.

“Asher! What in the days of all fuck bunch are you doing??!”

“Was that English?” He asked her as he walked inside her living room.

“Dude. You scared the bejeezus out of me! Why are you peeking into my house in the middle of the night?”

“Oh well that’s easy. You didn’t answer your phone.” Asher told her.

If she didn’t love Asher to absolute death, and if he wasn’t one of her best friends in the world along with his twin sister Aspen, she would punch him straight into tomorrow.

“Okayyyyy….” She drawled, waiting for the rest of the explanation. But big shocker, he didn’t give her one.

Asher went to the kitchen and helped himself to a drink and the box of leftover pizza then headed downstairs to Em’s basement.

Em rolled her eyes again… she was actually worried they might get stuck, she rolled them so frequently whenever Asher was around…. Em got herself a drink, and followed him downstairs.

He plopped himself on the small sofa they had put in the biggest room down there and turned on the tv they had recently hung on the wall. Em used this space to practice a lot, just to get away from the noise upstairs and also not to bug Sawyer and her mom with her music. So besides the small couch, small coffee table, and tv, the room was pretty empty.

They sat and ate pizza and watched a friends rerun for the next half hour without even speaking. Eventually, Em turned to him and watched him, wondering what — if anything — was going through his head.

“Asher?” She said.

“Mmm” he grunted.

“What exactly are you doing?”

He looked at her then with a mouthful of pizza and frowned.

“Eating pizza”.

“Oh ma geez Asher.” She got up to leave and go back upstairs to bed but he grabbed her arm and pulled her back down beside him.

“Okay.” He said. “I just wanted to hang out with you.”

Asher knew everything that had been going on, he knew how upset she had been, and he also knew the train wreck that was her life. He knew everything that had happened to her before she even moved here, and he knew she could use a friend. Even someone to just sit and eat pizza with in the middle of the night. Someone who would watch her favorite show reruns even though he didn’t like them… and to just BE.

She smiled and leaned over to give him a peck on the cheek. She then grabbed a blanket and covered them both up. She scooted closer to him and laid her head on his shoulder. Seconds later, she was asleep.