Page 44 of Ominous: Part 1
My stomach grumbles, and I realize I don’t know the last time I had anything. Sometimes I just… forget.
I grab the sticky plastic of the awning over the slide, laughing a little and lifting my chin, craning my neck back as I stare up at the moon, a tiny crescent in the sky. As I watch, a mass of dark clouds drifts over it, eclipsing the light.
“Is this what you always do?” I keep my head tilted up. “Deflect?”
He’s quiet a moment, and I hear the very distant rumble of thunder. When we pulled into the parking lot, down a paved path not far from the playground, it was nine-thirty. We spent time sitting at the pool after he changed, when I told him I had to be home tonight. He didn’t like it, his eyes narrowed before he rolled them, but he didn’t bitch about my parents because of it.
I can tell though, he’s not used to not getting his way. His mask slips then, like a spoiled brat.
Now, he still doesn’t answer me.
I concede, looking down and blinking at him in the night. Trees surround us, the temperatures warmer than this morning, and my pants are stuck to my skin, clinging tightly as I sweat from simply being around him. He hasn’t brought up our question game again, and I’m hoping he never does. I still can’t believe I just blurted all that out to him.
But he fucking liked it. I take solace in that fact.
“Kind of like how you always hide?” His voice is low, despite the fact we’re several feet apart.
“Hide?” I bristle with the truth of his question. “I don’t hide.”
“Yeah? You eat lunch in the library, you make minimal effort to engage with people who try to engage with you, and you wear all this bad bitch shit to scare people away.”
My temper spikes and I flex my fingers against the plastic, wanting to zip down this slide and wring his neck. “Bad bitch shit? I wear a school uniform—”
“With boots you could snap my neck under.”
“Are we criticizing my wardrobe choices now? You’ve got a skull ring on your finger. What’re you trying to do there, Edgelord?”
For a second, he’s silent. My heart thumps fast with annoyance and my retort. Obviously, he likes my bad bitch shit, or he wouldn’t be stalking me. But I feel like he’s calling me out on it and using my clothing choices to point out daddy issues or something.
He breaks the silence with a laugh. It’s soft and low, but despite my irritation, I’m smiling at the sound. “Come here,” he says, like he’s conceding.
I’m still smiling, but I’m still annoyed, too. “Not until you say you’re sorry.”
He’s quiet, and I can’t make out his facial expression in the darkness, but it’s like I can feel his eyes on me. Then he sighs, loudly, and says, “I fantasize about you stepping on my neck with those boots. If you think anything I’ve seen you in doesn’t make me hard, you’re wrong, baby girl.”
My stomach flips. My boot does, too, and I almost fall and crash down the slide, but I grip the awning tighter, righting myself as my heart races.
Well, okay then.
“Come eat with me.” He reaches into the bag again. “And stop hiding. I don’t want this veggie burger to go to waste.”
I roll my eyes. “Have you ever tried one?”
He looks up as I lower myself onto the slide and zip down it, landing with my boots thudding in the mulch.
My eyes meet his in the dark as he pulls something from the bag and holds it up. “Yeah,” he says. “I just did.”
I lift my brows, surprised. None of my guy friends would ever try “fake meat shit.”
But then I realize that means he’s eating my food. I stand up fast, feeling a little dizzy as I do, and I close the space between us, snatching the burger from his hand before he can finish it off.
It isn’t until he drops me off at home after another quiet ride with music the only break in our companionable silence, I realize he completely threw me off track about the vigil. When I text him about it, he simply says he didn’t feel comfortable going, because he doesn’t know her anymore.
I roll onto my back, accepting that answer, and we text through the night until I fall asleep with a stupid smile on my face.
10
Eden
