Never Been Loved(20)

My head’s pounding, and I’m wondering if I could pound back two Aspirin and sleep. Then I’d leave Matty unsupervised and I promised myself I wouldn’t be a dick anymore. Christ, why is that so hard?

“Kid, it’s not my fault you forgot it at Grandma’s.” He just keeps looking at me like I’m going to take out another copy of Peter Pan from my back pocket as if I go carrying it around like some pedophile.

“I want to watch it! Please please please please,” he mumbles, crawling up my lap and digging his little knees into my abs and placing two hands on either side of my face. I can’t look away, I can’t ignore him. I have to listen, I have to pay attention. What a smart little shit.

“I want to watch Peter Pan before I go to bed. I have to watch it or, or...” Matty’s eyes skitter to the side, thinking. “I’ll eat the cake you bought and make myself sick!”

My heart convulses in my chest that he’s already made the correlation between sugar and making himself sick. It’s the first cardinal rule of being a diabetic – sweets are a controlled substance. It’s also the first rule I broke when I found out at eighteen that I was a diabetic. I can’t let the kid do that to himself. Ever.

“Then you’ll make yourself sick, won’t you, kid?” I say, trying to keep my voice steady and calm. Jules’ eyes stare up at me with such betrayal, I wonder how I can stand to go walking around in the skin I’m in.

I blow out air from my nose, and it fans the hair on Matty’s head, so close to my face. “I’m not promising anything, all right? I’m going to go check next door. Stay here.”

I’m going to see her, Sera. I look down and see the jeans and wrinkled t-shirt I’ve been lounging in all day, and hope she doesn’t mind. I grab a hoodie, pull it on, just in case. Running my hands over my chest and abs, I try to smooth the fabric down. Fuck it, I’m freaking out for no damn reason. I walk out into the hall, making sure I close the door behind me, and knock on hers.

I can hear a conversation going on in there. Christ, she has company. This is great. I knock, wincing when I realize that I basically punched her door three times. Classy. Real classy.

Muffled voices from her side of the door, and I wonder if Sera’s going to at least look through the peephole and check who it is first. I bite down on my back molars, and ignore the flare of pain up my jaw. Jesus, she better look through the peephole.

After a few seconds, I hear the lock being turned and the door opens.

Fucking shit – she’s wearing her glasses. They’re brown with flecks of gold or something pearlescent shining off of them whenever they catch the light. And Christ, her eyes. Her eyes are like nothing I’ve ever seen. While Aly’s green eyes are chilly, the kind that reminds you of the colour of frosted grass, Sera’s are dark, like the needles on a Christmas tree, ringed with brown in the center. And they’re staring at me.

I should say something.

“Yo,” she says, then mashes her lips together, and a gorgeous pink colours her cheeks. I don’t think I’ve ever made anyone blush, not like this, not like I am now.

I feel my mouth twitch, and cross my arms over my chest. One corner of my mouth kicks up as I watch her take in the movement I just made.

“Yo yourself,” I say, watching her eyebrows slowly climb up her forehead. I’ve never seen anyone so expressive, and if I had, I’ve forgotten what that looks like. What it looks like when someone doesn’t bother hiding the truth from you.

The shirt. The fucking shirt. It just says ‘But shit it was 99 cents’. I never thought a babe like her would like Macklemore, especially when he’s singing about the shit he found at a thrift shop. But she does, and I can’t help but like her more.

“What’s up?” She’s looking at me like I might be wasting her time, and then I realize I just might be. Fuck, what if she has a guy in there? What if it’s that creep with that weird-as-fuck name? Horse-boy or something?

Sera isn’t that kind of woman that deserves this kind of behaviour. Fuck, I need to stop thinking, or I’m going to lose the use of my dick soon enough.

I pop up an eyebrow and start paying attention. Shit, now I looked at her pants. She’s just wearing sweats. Like she’s really comfortable with whoever’s in there with her. Some prick who probably doesn’t even know the exact colour of her eyes, or exactly what shade of green and brown they really are.

“Didn’t we just do the whole hello thing?”

She shakes her head, looks down at her feet, bites her X-rated mouth, and looks up at me again.