u/CrabQueen03:
They’re not speaking. But they’re definitely watching each other.
u/FairwayWatcher94:
Not to stir the pot but... Gavin posted a black screen on his story the night before Sienna’s post with the caption: "Everything is fine."
u/PetalPusher:
[eyes emoji]
Chapter eleven
Gavin: Where the fuck are you?
Ebony stared at the text for four full seconds before swiping away the notification. She didn’t bother opening it. Let him wonder.
Leaning back in the lawn chair, Ebony closed her eyes. Today she decided to ditch class and come see her friend Beryl who worked at Andy's Garage. Ebony was currently sitting in one of two lawn chairs in the empty car bay waiting for Beryl to get off the phone with a customer.
For a few weeks now her life had been turned upside down because of Gavin. The house no longer felt like a home, just an empty shell. Gavin had perfected the art of avoiding her at home, driving the stake of loneliness further and further into her chest. School was no better. Actually, it was worse. Since the news broke all over social media about Gavin and Sienna everyone's eyes had turned to Ebony. Looks of pity and curiosity honed in on her, burning holes into her flesh. She could practically feel their whispers behind corners, feel the frantic texts of gossip zipping back and forth through the air making the hairs on her skin stand up.
For god's sake, she was not her brother's keeper. She wanted to walk into the admin office and announce it over the intercom that she didn’t care who he dated. But she couldn't. She couldn't glare back at the students who stared or at the girls who snickeredbehind her back. She couldn't do anything but hold her head up and smile serenely as if nothing was wrong.
When in reality everything was wrong. All because of Gavin. Was this new and very out of the blue girlfriend why he changed? Because he wanted to hard launch Sienna-fucking-Chase as his girlfriend?
There had been plenty of girls he fooled with in the past few years but never any he made official. Was that why? Was that why for weeks he treated her as if he she didn't exist? It was as if he had flipped a switch and all his smiles, his constant presence at her side, every feeling he had for her—gone.
The hole that had opened in her chest, the one he created, still throbbed with every breath.
It hurt to breathe. It hurt to pass him in the school hallways or smell the warm amber trail of his cologne in a room he just vacated. It hurt to think over and over again, combing over every moment down to the second to pinpoint where his feelings for her just suddenly vanished. But now the pain wasn't alone. Coiling around it like a snake was a deep dark hollowness. A void spreading out from the wound leaving her with a numbness she preferred much more.
It certainly helped in moments like these when he did deign to talk to her. Ebony opened her eyes at the vibration of her phone and looked down again. More texts from Gavin, a few from Taylor also wondering why she wasn’t in class, and one from Cameron.
Cameron: Are you okay? You're not in Mr. Rollin's class. I can't survive this shit without you.
"Okay, finally." Carrying two sodas in one hand and two bags of chips in the other, Beryl came out from the office and plopped down in the empty chair beside Ebony. "I thought the guy was never going to shut up."
Ebony smiled and took the offered snacks. Beryl had texted her this morning when Ebony was on her way to second period, drowning in a sea of stares, and asked her to hang out. Ebony didn’t think twice about skipping.
Silently they munched on chips and watched cars go by. The thing was, Ebony knew she knew what was going on. Beryl was just like everyone else and stayed up to date on the town gossip, probably even more so since she had to small talk customers who liked to linger nearby as she worked on their cars. But there was a key difference about her friend versus anyone else in town—Beryl despised Gavin. Neither one could stand the other. Like fire and ice, the two did not mesh at all. If for some reason they had to see each other even if across a street they would find a way to argue. If they weren't around each other and heard about the other, they complained about each other.
To put it bluntly, Beryl was on her side.
Ebony's phone vibrated again. She sighed.
Beryl, with her half shaved head and purple and brown hair threw her a smirk. "Is that Gavin?"
"Yes. And I have no idea why.” She squinted at the glare on her phone trying to silent it. “First, he doesn’t want to speak to me. Then he gets with the most obnoxious girl in the school, one I was sure he hated as much as me, by the way," Beryl gave her a look that said be serious. Ebony rolled her eyes. "Okay, maybe not as much as me. But whatever. And now all of a sudden, he wants to start actually talking to me again. And I just refuse, dammit. So now we're in this weird back and forth anger that's nothing but pure tension,” she said, waving a hand in frustration. “It's so bad poor Duke can't stand to be around us and just goes out to chase rabbits all day."
A worried look passed over Beryl’s face. "God, that sounds awkward."
"It so is. I just…don't understand what brought this all on."
A slow, unreadable smile lifted the corners of Beryl's mouth. "Who knows, maybe it's late-stage puberty. Maybe it's that bitch Sienna filling his head with things. You know she lives and breathes just to be your number one hater."
"But I've never done anything to the dumb broad," Ebony argued. Actually, she had tried to be friendly with her in her junior year but that got her absolutely nowhere with the self-absorbed idiot.
Beryl continued, ignoring her. "Or maybe he’s staring down the barrel of his final years of playing house with you all school year and realizes the real world is approaching and he's made not an ounce of progress."
