“Come on,” he said as he walked toward me. “I’ll get you back in bed.”
I started to protest, but there didn’t seem to be a point.
“What’s your damage with me sleeping out here and you sleeping in the bed?” I asked when he lifted me off the couch.
Without, might I add, a grunt of effort.
See, this was what I wanted.
A man who didn’t have any trouble lifting me.
I was small and curvy. I looked like I would weigh less than I did, and every boyfriend that I’d had always teased me for being “dense.”
Every. Last. One.
It was a hit to my ego every time someone that looked strong picked me up and acted like I weighed a million pounds.
“I’m not super big on taking a girl’s bed and leaving her to the couch,” he said as he carried me into my bedroom and straight to my bed. “Where’s all your furniture?”
“Don’t have any,” I said. “Furniture requires money. And seeing as all of my money is currently going to paying off student loans that I took out, I’m currently in short supply of it right now.”
Which he very well knew.
Though, admittedly, he might not have known about the student loans.
“Didn’t Apollo fix your credit?” he asked.
I frowned. “Why would he do that for me?”
“Because he did it for your sister?”
I ignored that.
Just because my sister had friends in high places, didn’t mean that I did.
I would never ask anyone to “fix my debt.” I was too proud for that. “But these are loans I legitimately took out for my schooling. They’re not ones that my mother had a hand in.”
I was also slightly defensive about it, which was why the words slipped off my lips before I could pull them back.
“I’m sure he would fix those, too, if you’d ask.”
“Yeah, because I’m sure he just goes around fixing credit like this all the time.” I rolled my eyes.
“Actually, funny you should say that. Because there are a pair of sisters that had the same issue with their mother. Though their mother actually ruined their credit. They’re really good friends of Apollo. He was just telling me about it last week when we were in a group phone chat with Romeo.”
“Why were you in a group phone chat with Romeo?” I asked as I pulled the comforter up over myself.
He watched me painfully pull it up while trying to not jostle my body and took pity on me by tucking me in while explaining.
“We all try to meet up at least once a week. We checked in with him via phone, seeing as he’s in Oregon with Mable,” Creed commented. “Long story short, we have some issues, and Apollo likes to make sure that we’re all alive and well.”
I wondered what those issues were, but since I didn’t want him butting into my issues, I sure as heck wasn’t going to ask him about his.
Though, he probably wouldn’t tell me about those issues anyway.
“Anyway, something was brought up on Romeo’s end about how Mable felt awful for forcing Apollo to fix y’all’s issues with your mother and whatever the fuck she did to ruin y’all’s lives. And he started telling us about his good friends, Silver and Aella. I think y’all’s situation is a bit worse than theirs was. And their mother didn’t pit the two of them against each other like yours did. And their dad wasn’t in the picture like yours is. But they still had credit issues that he happily fixed because he finds it entertaining.”
If you could call having a dad that wanted nothing to do with you and everything to do with your stepsister…I mentally cut myself off from that line of thinking.
