Page 33 of A Vicious Rumor

I sat in silence for a minute as I looked at the bracelet. It was all too much to process.

The way she looked at the cracks.

The way she fixed them.

What that meant about me.

"Can I see you tomorrow?" I asked her.

She was quiet for a minute, moving back and forth a bit on the swing. I didn't push her. I just sat still and waited for her answer.

"Okay," she finally responded.

I grabbed her hand and squeezed it. "Thanks," I said, before standing and heading back to the Jeep. I didn't want to walk through the house and talk to her mother, so I just hopped her fence. "I'll pick you up tomorrow evening," I said to her over my shoulder.

Coco was sitting on the couch when I got home.

Which meant that I had no way to avoid her.

"You're back a little late," she commented, and I just stared at her.

"Isn't this around when your second shift starts?"

"I'm off for the evening," she replied.

"Fantastic," I said, letting sarcasm coat the word. For the few weeks that I'd been here, I'd mostly kept my run-ins with Coco to a minimum. Our schedules were mostly opposite. Besides the fact that she worked two jobs and was rarely, if ever, home.

I heard her stomach growl from across the room, and I sighed. In some ways, I felt like the adult, and she felt like the child. "Have you eaten anything?" I asked her, knowing that the fridge was basically only ever stocked with cheap beer.

She shook her head. "I'm fine."

I fished my phone out of my pocket. A number of missed calls from Paper were sitting at the top of my notifications. I'd deal with that later.

I opened the DoorDash app. "What do you want?"

"What do you mean?" she asked.

"I mean, what type of food are you in the mood for?"

"I told you I was fine," she replied.

"Pizza it is," I said, ordering a large cheese from a nearby shop. As much as I enjoyed my dinner date with Lily, I was still a seventeen year old guy. I could put away food like it was my job. "It'll be here in twenty minutes," I said, sliding my phone back into my pocket.

"You didn't need to do that," she said.

"I'm hungry, too," I said, brushing off her comment. With nowhere to sit but the sofa, and considering it was also my bed, I forced myself to sit on the opposite side of it. I really didn't want to talk to anyone at the moment, but it was either sit here in the dark with my biological mother, or return Paper's calls. I took the lesser of two evils.

"I heard what you've been up to," she said.

I shrugged my shoulders. "You gonna tell? If you do, you know whatever money was promised to you for taking care of me is gonna disappear."

"I know," she said.

"So?"

She sighed and turned to look at me. In a way, I almost felt bad for her. I didn't know her situation, but I'd gone back and read the articles that had come out about how I was conceived when I was old enough to understand. It was pretty clear that she was the victim of everything as much as I was. But, she never pressed charges or admitted that my father had raped her. I always wondered whether money exchanged hands. I was almost certain now that it had.

"So, I'm not going to say anything. You're old enough to make choices for yourself, and I'm certainly not in a position to try and mother you."

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