“I said get the fuck out,” I tell him again, and I hope he can read on my face that I won’t be telling him a third time.
“Yeah, okay.” He scoffs and starts to walk out. Before he leaves completely, he makes the biggest mistake he could and continues to talk. “Lily, really think about if you want to ruin your life sticking around here, slumming it with the trash you left behind.”
That does it.
I rear my fist back and send it flying right into Aaron’s smug little face. I feel the crack of his nose under my knuckles, and hear Lily screech my name. Her arms are around my middle, pulling me back, like she’s not half my size and could actually hold me back. But she doesn’t need strength to do that with me. Feeling her tight hold is enough to ground me into reality.
That, and the satisfaction of seeing Aaron holding his rapidly bleeding nose while he stumbles, doing everything he can not to fall onto the ground.
“Get. The fuck. Out!” I call out.
For a second I think he may punch me back but must realize what a bad idea that would be, and he leaves.
Lily pushes me to turn toward her. Though her eyes are still red, and the tears are still on her cheeks, she lookspissed.
“What the fuck is wrong with you? Have you lost your mind?” she screams.
“Yeah, I have. No one talks to you like that. No one makes you fuckingcry,Lil.”
“I can handle myself.” She wipes her cheeks, clearly trying to hide the evidence of her tears.
“I know you can, but you don’t have to. Fuck that guy.”
She looks down at the ground. I can see the defeat on her face. I hate it. I cup her cheek, even with my knuckles burning from the punch I fight through the pain, guiding her eyes up to mine.
“Don’t do that, Lil. Anyone who says they love you should encourage whatever you want to do, even if they don’t like it.”
I swallow roughly, remembering exactly how that’s what I did, and how that ended for us. But I don’t regret it because Lily’s not someone who can be held back.
She sniffles and wipes her nose on her sleeve. “You didn’t have to punch him,” she mumbles.
“I disagree. He had that punch coming for a while. Even Jerry Lee hates the guy.” She tries to hide her smile, but I move her face back to look at mine again. “Don’t do that.”
“Do what?”
“Hide that beautiful smile from me. You don’t ever have to hide anything from me, you know that.”
Her eyes shine up to mine. They flick down to my mouth, just for a second before they’re back on mine. So blue, so beautiful. So perfect, just like she always has been. I rub my thumb against her cheek softly, and she reaches up to hold my wrist.
The warmth of her skin on mine feels so perfect, so natural. But then she’s pulling my hand away from her cheek and breaking our eye contact.
“You’re cleaning the blood up that you caused,” she grumbles, refusing to look at me as she walks toward the stairs.
“Lil,” I call out, and she pauses. I catch the sniffle she tries to hide from me. “Tell me you’re not going to stay with him.”
“That doesn’t concern you.”
“Yes, it does,” I insist. “Leave him.”
She doesn’t say anything else and walks up the stairs. I watch her go, and hope that she’s done with that fuck face. He better hope the same thing because if I have to see him again, he’ll wish I just punched him again.
CHAPTER 17
Lily
The only otherbreakup I’ve gone through was with Parker. And that wasn’t even bad. We parted ways when I left for college, and it didn’t even feel like a full break up since we were still on good terms. I thought we would end up together, that’s why I came back to town only a couple months later with the intention to get him back.
Instead, I saw him with someone else already and that was it. I didn’t make a scene, didn’t yell or scream at him. I just left and took the mature way out. Ignored him mostly and be annoyed when I’ve had to be around him.