Sequel: Go Around

Casualties

;10

Kennedy woke up the morning to her cell phone ringing. She lifted her head groggily from her pillow and she had morning face on. She reached for her phone on her night stand, but it stopped ringing before she actually made it to pick up the phone. She grunted and grabbed it as it alerted her that she had 1 MISSED CALL. She opened her phone and it was from a blocked number again. She decided to take the opportunity to look at the time. It was four thirty in the afternoon.
At first she had been pissed that somebody was calling her so early in the morning, but she realized that she couldn’t really complain since it was close to being a lot of people’s dinner time. She set her phone down on the pillow beside her and was about to go back to sleep when her phone decided to let her know that she had a voicemail. She flipped her phone open and listened to the voicemail of the call she’d just missed.
“I don’t know if you’re just not answering your phone because this is a blocked number and you don’t want to talk to a stranger, but I’d really like for us to talk. I know it’s probably too much for me to ask that you trust me, but I need you to trust me. I can’t give you my number, but I’m going to call you tomorrow night at eight o’clock on the dot, alright? This is Don, by the way.” Then click.
She didn’t know what to think of the voicemail. It had been about a month and a half since her first encounter with the phone call from good old Don, but she still didn’t know what to make of it all. He was right about one thing though, it was too much to ask that she trust him because if there was one thing her mother taught her, it was to never trust anybody.
She shrugged off the phone call even though she hadn’t decided whether she wanted to talk to him tomorrow, and started trying to remember what had happened the night before. It all came flooding back to her.
Alex had sex with The Skank, she had sex with The Skank’s boyfriend, she saw The Skank flirting with Alex, she talked to Jack and Alex around two in the morning and asked them if they were ready to leave but they both said that they would find a different sober ride if she wanted to leave and then she preceded to do just that. She left and drove herself home, not so completely shit faced anymore since it had been about 3 hours since her last drink.
When she got home she took a cold shower, for her anyway, and tried to wash off the disgusting feeling she had after having sex with someone other than Alex, but even when she crawled into bed at around four in the morning, tucked safely away under the covers and wearing layers and layers of soft clothing, she still felt dirty – like she’d done something dirty.
She wasn’t entirely sure if Jack and Alex made it home alright, but she was sure that she would have heard if they hadn’t by now if something had gone wrong.
She decided to not go back to bed and she sat up and waited for the room to stop spinning. Generally speaking, she didn’t get bad hangovers because she never drank enough to warrant having a hangover, but she felt she deserved this one if not more so.
She stood up and walked out of her room and downstairs and was surprised to find her mother sitting on the couch, watching something other than depressing movies. “Morning,” her mom greeted her without taking her eyes off the screen of the TV.
“Hey,” Kennedy responded groggily and wiped the crusties out of her eyes and walked into the kitchen to get a tall, iced glass of water before sitting on the couch next to her mother.
“How was your night last night?” her mom asked with a look in her eyes that told Kennedy she definitely knew what she did last night.
Kennedy smiled and laughed, “It was fine, how was yours?” she asked.
“About the same. By the way, I have to work late shifts tonight so my friend’s going to let me spend the night again,” she said and Kennedy knew that it was a lie.
“Are you sure you aren’t going to Robs?” Kennedy asked with slight disgust oozing through her words.
Lorelei shot a shocked look at Kennedy, “Of course not,” she said with enough hurt that it made Kennedy believe her mother… for the most part.
Kennedy shrugged, “That’s fine, I have some homework to do anyway,” she lied. She’d already finished pretty much all her homework for the rest of the year so there wouldn’t be a whole lot for her to do along those lines to distract her properly anymore.
“Then I guess that works out perfectly then,” her mother said with a smile plastered onto her face.
Kennedy rolled her eyes and got up and went back into the kitchen because she was now in the mood for some good old fashioned coffee. She’d forgotten how much coffee she needed to deal with her mother. She poured some Coffee Mate into it and that was all. “I’m going to go back upstairs, alright?” Kennedy told her mom and walked back up the stairs without saying anything else to her mother or even waiting for her response.
Kennedy shut her door, and slid to the floor in front of her bed and silently sipped her coffee. She didn’t know what to think about – what think about to distract her mind from venturing off into the unknown, onto Alex Gaskarth. She couldn’t think of anything in time and her mind started reeling from the previous night. Her conversation with Jack, and how Alex had acted like he was going out of his way to keep it from her that he’d had sex with The Skank. Everything. Then, she couldn’t help but let her mind venture further into thinking about what it was like when Alex and The Skank had sex with each other; what positions they did, what she sounded like, how good she was, if she was better than her, and most importantly if Alex enjoyed himself.
Kennedy tightened her eyes and shook her head bath and forth as if doing that would make the bad thoughts go away, but they didn’t, it just helped them come faster and process slower.
Finally she got up and got onto her computer. The one thing that always made her feel better in a crisis was shopping. It didn’t matter if it was online, in a mall, or on the street, it always made her feel better to purchase things, to spend money, and to have the feeling of new items in her possession.
She went onto Forever 21, Hot Topic, Hollister, American Eagle, Abercrombie and Fitch, and Victoria’s Secret websites and bought, easily, 400 dollars worth of clothing that all went straight to her mother’s credit card. Her mom didn’t care if she did spurges like that because she didn’t do them very often, but when she did them she usually had a purpose.
After purchasing a few pairs of jeans, more than a few tops, a few pairs of shoes, underwear, slips, and lingerie she felt satisfied. The thing that would take the longest was the a few pairs of the jeans and they would take two weeks to get to her house.
It was now just past six o’clock and she heard a soft knock on her door, “Come in,” she said and her mother came in, holding her leather trench coat over her left arm.
“I’m off to work, I’ll see you some time tomorrow,” she said and then left without Kennedy saying a word.
Sometimes she really hated it when her mother was home because she felt like she was invading her personal privacy and space but other times she just wanted her mommy to be there, comfort her, hold her, and tell her that things would work out and that love wasn’t such a bad thing. But the roles were usually reversed; Kennedy did that for her mother, but never the other way around.
Jack had made the observation once that Kennedy acted more like the mother out of the two and it was sadly true.
Kennedy’s phone started ringing softly since she had turned the volume down on it after being awoken by its obnoxiousness. “Hello?” she answered, deciding to look through her nail polish colors because she was in the mood for cute toes.
“Hey,” said a sexy voice over the phone.
“Hey,” she reciprocated.
“You never called me to let me know you made it home okay,” Alex said from the other line and Kennedy could picture how he would be saying it.
“I just woke up a few hours ago,” she admitted. It was actually one of the only times she’d slept that late. The only other time she’d slept that late had been pretty much under the same circumstances, give or take. Give more vodka; take Alex and her having a relationship.
“Wow. That’s impressive,” Alex said, slightly mocking her. No one else would hear it, but she knew him so well that she could just tell.
“Um, yeah. So what do you want?” she asked curtly. She wanted to get off the phone as soon as possible because she knew that she would get the better of herself and ask how fucking The Skank was.
He paused, “I just wanted to make sure that you were okay,” he said in a defeated tone. He had no idea what was wrong. She couldn’t possibly know so why was she acting this way towards him?
“Well, I’m fine,” she told him.
“Do you want me to come over tonight?” he asked, praying that the answer would be yes. He knew that even though he had sex with The Skank, it was just to get Jack and Rian off his back about it, but he really wanted to have sex with just Kennedy. Not even have sex, make love to her.
Kennedy hated the saying ‘making love’ because she always thought it sounded to intimate and that people just gave it that name to make themselves feel better about what they were doing. She paused for a long minute. Did she want him over? Did she want him to come over so that they could have sex and during the entire time she would wonder if that’s what he had done with The Skank? Did she want him to come over, hold her, comfort her, and cuddle her after they had sex, making it seem more intimate than it meant to him? No. She didn’t want any of it anymore. She thought that she could keep herself detached from the situation, but she’d just proven herself wrong. She didn’t want to tell him that she was done… for good. So she didn’t. “I don’t think so. I’m not feeling so well and I was just planning on going to bed again anyway,” she told him instead. It was true, kind of. She didn’t feel well; she had a pounding fucking headache and cramps from hell.
“…Alright, well I guess I’ll just see you tomorrow when you pick me up then, right?” he asked. He sounded almost paranoid that she was no longer going to pick him up after sleeping with The Skank.
“Yeah, I’ll be there about the same time,” she told him and she nodded. She stopped when she remembered that she wasn’t in front of him and he couldn’t see her nodding.
“Alright, well, I can’t wait to see you,” he said and, for once, it didn’t sound like he was being overtly sexual in anyway.
“Yes, you will,” she said then closed her phone.
She let out a breath she didn’t realize she’d been holding. She felt bad for telling him that he couldn’t come over, but she just needed a break from everything and everyone. She didn’t want to be intruded on her alone time and she certainly didn’t want to have to pretend to be okay with the fact that Alex had slept with The Skank, let alone pretend she didn’t know about it. Putting on masks was one of her strong suits, it was how she got the majority of the things she got, but she’d never tried fronting a mask in front of Jack or Alex so she wasn’t entirely sure if she’d be any good at it.
She decided not to paint her toe nails after all and set down the dark blue nail polish she had set aside back down on her vanity table and turned off her bedroom lights. She’d only been up for two and half hours, but she felt so emotionally exhausted that she figured going to sleep would be the only way to make all the voices in her head stop talking about Alex.
She slipped under the covers and pulled the covers up to her chin. She couldn’t fall asleep at first, but she thought of having Alex’s arms around her waist and spooning her from behind and it made her fall asleep almost instantly.
♠ ♠ ♠
definitely what I would call a lame chapter!
haha.
that's what you get for only giving me three comments instead of four.
haha.
no, I really don't care that much, but I just used this pretty much as a filler. =]
two comments at least, guys.
come on, don't be greedy. I don't care what you have to say, you could tell me my story sucks for all I care, I just want critique and funn.