@babyphat04
I want hom.
@babyphat04
I want go hom
@babyphat04
I want to go
My fingers slip as I slide down the side of the stall with all the letters from my phone’s keyboard dancing across the screen.
“I...want...to...” I gurgle up the liquor that still doesn’t taste like Ace.
It has Bryson’s and everybody else’s bitter taste and I can’t believe I forgot how to spell “home” when Ace reminds me how all the time.
“C’mon,” I sing, refreshing his timeline. “C’mon... Ason. I need yo—”
The phone vibrates between my fingers. An unsaved number covers his timeline with all of our insiders because he’s not scary like me. He never tweets and deletes.
I swipe up. “Not fuckin' right now. I can’t remember how to spell. Ace is gon' flip the fuck out that I can’t spell hom—”
The vibrating stops and starts again as soon as I try to sound out the letters.
“Fuck,” I hiss, pounding my thumb against the green button. “Stop calling m—”
“Where the fuck you at?” Ace rumbles through the speaker.
His anxiety about this moment lives in his voice. He sounds confused and more stressed than me.
This is one of those times I’m supposed to toss my arms around his shoulders and explain myself. I should squeeze a tear out too because there’s something in his voice that tells me he might be a sucker for my “fat baby” tears, like Marcus calls them.
“I—I’m in the bathroom.” I whine. “I had to pee and I—I wanna come home.”
“Where’s Bryson?”
I hope he’s so far away that the crowd swallows him. I hope I can scrape his smell from my nose. I hope Ace doesn’t feel where he touched the bruise on my ass. I hope—
“Where’s your backpack? I thought I tol—I thought Mom told you to keep your backpack with you?”
“He—he told me to leave it.”
“Who?”
The fog in my brain makes his voice so loud that my ears ring.
“Bryson. He said I’m not twel—”
“Don’t leave that bathroom.”
“But I—”
“Ace?” Brandy asks in the background. “Is everything good?”
I didn’t imagine it this time. That’s where her blonde springy curls had been all night.
“Do you understand me? I said don’t leave that bathroom. I’m coming.”
