New Neighbor

I laid on the paper covered bed in a emergency room of the local hospital. I'd been there for three hours, one of which I spent on the phone with my mother, convincing her I wasn't dying and she didn't need to rush out of work into the increasingly worse weather to join me. Apparently there was some huge mix up or something at the store and she promised to come as soon as she could.

Enrique sat quietly in a chair a few feet from me. He hadn't uttered a word to me the whole time and had tried to make sure things hurried along so I could feel better faster or some rot like that. Why was he doing this? I couldn't fathom.

"Why are you doing this?" My voice shattered the silence. He glanced up, an unreadable look on his face. He clasped his hands together and sat up straighter.

"It's the right thing to do" He said, but there was more to it. He wasn't telling me something, I could see that plainly.

"Why are you doing this?" I repeated, staring him down.

"I just told you- "Your not telling me something" I cut him off sharply. He looked surprise.

"What do you mean?"

"What reason aren't you telling me? I could have crawled home, my mom could have taken me, why are you suddenly trying to save the day?"

"I'm a better person then you give me credit for, actually you don't even know me as much as you think, I'm the kind of man who helps little girls when they almost break their necks" He said defensive. A part of my heart, an extremely small part, fractured when he called me a little girl.

I saw everything in perspective then. He did think of me as just a little girl, that's he ever saw and would see me as. I looked away from him and laid back on the bed staring at the white ceiling.

"Look, B-" Whatever he was saying, he was cut off by the doctor walking into the room, files in hand. I sat up, trying to pretend Enrique wasn't there.

"Well Bo, we looked at the X-rays and found you bruised your hip bone badly"

"So nothing broken?" I asked.

"No dear, you should stay off it for about three weeks and take Ibprofan to help ease any aching" The middle aged woman said smiling.

"Would you like a wheelchair to get to your car? or is your boyfriend going to help you?" I opened my mouth to inform her he wasn't my boyfriend when the idiot butted in.

"I'll carry her" He stood up and made his way over to me, picking me up.

"Like hell you will" I mumbled trying to squirm out of his grip, but he just held me tighter to his chest. After signing some papers we were out of there.

The drive home seemed to take forever. He parked in my driveway, but took hold of my arm as I went to open the door. "Wait I have ask you something" I stared at him a moment before letting my grip on the door handle go.

"Fine, you have 30 seconds to ask it" He rolled his eyes at this.

"Look Bo, I know seeing your sister and I...doing things must have freaked you out and that's why your so angry with me, but I get the feeling there's something else, is there? I mean you said today you couldn't believe you ever liked me, in what sense did you like me?"

I felt like I had just flat lined. He knew. Or at least he thought he knew. I told myself it didn't matter, because whatever I felt wasn't there any more. I could always lie about what my feelings were before anyway.

"You were someone I thought that wouldn't ruin relationships, that's all, I was wrong obviously" With that I jerked the car door open and got out, hopping on my good leg over to the porch. By the time I reached it he had pulled away and zoomed down the rode.

I wonder if he believed me.....