Bruises Heal, My Heart Doesn't

I barely even look in the mirror the next morning as I put on makeup and put my hair up in a ponytail. I wipe some imaginary dust off the shoulder of my long-sleeved black and white plaid button-up shirt before throwing my backpack over my shoulders and walking out of the house to meet Danny in the car.

He looks at me a few seconds before reaching across and taking the scrunchie out of my hair, making it fall around my shoulders.

"I like your hair better when it's down." He mutters before putting the car into gear and driving off.

I keep thinking about the little journal, which I have now come to call the Book of Names, and how I didn't get a straight answer from Danny yesterday when I'd asked if he's cheating on me. And what if he is? What can I do about it? I ask myself. But he's not. He wouldn't do that… he loves me.

We pull into a parking space at school and he cuts off the engine. I delay getting out of the car by bringing down the vanity mirror and looking at myself, fussing with my hair and tweaking my makeup a bit.

"Who are you trying to look good for?" Danny asks, staring at me as I rub my lips together to spread my lipgloss.

"You already know who." I reply.

The teachers, the students, the overall population of this school. I don't want to make up a lame excuse about my bruises, which are barely visible through my makeup now.

"Hm." I say when I'm finally satisfied with my appearance. Danny gets out of the car. I flip up the mirror and get out, too, starting to walk away, but he grabs my arm and brings me in close.

"Are you mad at me?"

I look away. "Can I be?" I know he hears the double meaning in my words.

"Dailyn… I'm going to get help like I promised. I don't want to hurt you anymore."

"And I don't want to get hurt anymore." I sigh and look at him. "Are you cheating on me? Please answer me."

"I was." I knew it. "But I'm done now, I swear. Who would want to cheat on a great girl like you?"

I want to say you! but I keep my mouth shut. He'd probably get mad at me. Instead, I just shrug and turn my head. And I think you already know what--or should I say who--I see. Why is he almost everywhere I look?

He's with a group of friends, talking and laughing like life is just the best thing in the world. I watch as a girl comes up to him and puts a hand on his shoulder, looking up at him and batting her eyelashes. I feel a pang of jealousy as I watch the girl who embarassed me yesterday flirting with Jordan. Jordan just glances down at her, then looks back up at his friends and continues on. The girl immediately pulls her hand off and walks away.

**Jordan POV**

"Jordan! Come help me with your dad!" My mom yells from downstairs.

It's the night before the first day of school and my father just stumbled in through the front door, drunk beyond coherence, and my mom let him in… again. I don't know why she can't just say "no more". Obviously, they both have that same problem in different areas of their lives.

"Why doesn't he just go back to his own damn house?" I mutter under my breath as I throw a shirt on and head downstairs.

I see the bastard stumbling around trying to keep his balance near the front door. Why can't he just get out of our lives? I ask myself. He had no problem to do so years ago. Now he sees how good we're doing without him and wants to ruin that?

Mom puts one of his arms around her shoulders and I do the same with the other arm and we lead him to the couch--due to my steering. Mom was trying to bring him upstairs to the guest room. Me, I don't care if he gets a stiff neck, or a stiff back, or a stiff anything for that matter. He's staying on the damn couch. As far away from me and my little brother and my mom as possible.

After I carelessly drop him on the couch, I start to walk back upstairs.

"Jordan…" I turn around and look at my mom at the bottom of the stairs, in her robe and yellow duck slippers I always tease her about. "I'm sorry about this."

I shrug. "I don't care. It just sucks that after you say that 'this is the last time I'm letting him come back'… you let him come back and ruin everything."

"Where was he supposed to go?"

"To the bitch he was cheating on you with. To his house. To his grave."

Her stunned silence allows me to climb up a few more steps before she says, "I'm sorry."

I just shrug again and go the rest of the way upstairs while my mom goes in the direction of the linen closet. I would just let him freeze to death. I open the door to Aidan's room and see him sleeping peacefully on his bed. I sigh and close the door tightly before going to my room and doing the same.

I take off my shirt and and lay down, my hands behind my head, staring up at the ceiling. My mind automatically jumps to Dailyn as if my pillow triggers her memory.

I wonder if she'll be surprised to see me back at school tomorrow. Probably not, she'll be too busy with Richie Rich to even notice me. I mean, if she could end our friendship just because he said so, I doubt she cared about me at all from the start. And I guess I cared about her entirely too much.

She broke my heart completely when she ended our friendship. I liked her so much… and not just as a friend. But I knew she was so caught up in her boyfriend that I couldn't have her.

When I saw her at the mall with him, the way he treated her made me want to vomit. He blamed her wearing shorts for Jeff's hitting on her, telling her that if she'd covered up, he wouldn't have hit on her. Jeff hits on anything that's a human female! She could've worn nun clothes and he STILL would have hit on her.

He doesn't respect her, I can tell. What kind of a boyfriend would make his girl give up all of her guy friends? Jealous, huh?

That night, I sleep with dreams of Dailyn running through my mind.

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I pull on a pair of jeans, a white v-neck tshirt, and a pair of Jordans and go downstairs to get some breakfast, glancing at the couch on my way. He's not there.

I walk into the kitchen and stop dead in my tracks. The bastard is sitting at the island with a plate in front of him with toast, eggs, and bacon and my mom is standing at the stove, frying. She glances behind her and smiles when she sees me.

"Honey, sit down and I'll make you some breakfast." She says, cheery.

"Thanks for helping me out yesterday, son."

I flinch at the last word. "Yeah, well if it was up to me you'd still be outside like the dog you are."

"Jordan!"

"Why don't you stay away from us? You have a roof of your own to sleep under when you're drunk as hell--with your bitch! Don't fucking come back!"

"Jordan?" It's another voice that makes me stop. I turn around and see Aidan standing there, ready for school, but looking tired. "What's going on?"

I shake my head. "Nothing to worry about, Kiddo. Let me take you to school."

He agrees and we start to leave the kitchen. I never let my seven-year-old little brother see my flip out. To him, I'm Jordan: always calm, always cool, always collected. And I am… where my dad isn't involved.

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I stand at the desk in the main office, waiting for the lady to come back with my schedule. I hear the door open and close behind me but I don't turn to look who it is.

Finally, the lady returns and hands me my schedule. I thank her and turn around to leave. I meet Dailyn's hazel eyes, then. Damn, I wish we were still friends. But oh well, she got what she wanted… Danny. And that's when I notice his arm holding her tight around the waist. I start to clench my jaw. He's so freaking posessive. How does she deal with that?

When the bell rings, I start heading to class. The hallway is full of kids. Girls squealing over how much they missed eachother and how much they'd changed and guys having much more relaxed conversations about their summer. I glance around quickly before continuing my walk to class. Wow, I forgot how big these buildings were.

I moved the day I fought Danny. That's partly why I didn't give a fuck about getting in trouble. My mom had decided to move because she just wanted a "change in scenery". Truth is, it was a year after my dad left and the memories in the house were killing her. She'd tried to find a house in the same area so that Aidan and I wouldn't have to leave our schools but there were none at the time. So she bought a house a state over in Montana and waited for the weekend so that we could tell whoever we wanted to know. I planned to tell Dailyn but I couldn't and after what happened, it was more than "I couldn't"… I didn't want to.

She didn't give a shit about me. With that knowledge, why should I give a shit about her? So I kept my mouth shut and the next morning, we drove to Montana. I wonder if she even wondered why I wasn't in school the following Monday or if she cared when I didn't show up for years.

Eventually, my mom realized that running from her problems wasn't the answer. This year, she found a house near our old neighborhood and we moved back to South Dakota.

Hearing someone calling my name, I snap out of my reverie. "Jordan!" I turn my head and see none other than her. Of course. I look forward again and continue on down the hallway. This is what you wanted I say in my head.

I get to the class and choose a seat in the middle. The class starts filling up and some blonde girl sits next to me.

"Hi! I'm Candice." She says excitedly.

"Hey," I reply, keeping my face straigtt.

Mark walks in and I nod in his direction. He quickly waves and goes all the way to the back. Yep, that's Mark; quite the adept learner.

"Do you mind if I sit here? It's just… I like sitting next to sexy guys. I guess you could say it helps me focus."

She's probably one of those girls that can't take no for an answer. I sigh and look at her.

"Actually, I do mind. You may be able to focus, but not me."

She makes a face, then stands up and moves. Now the seat to the left of me is the only empty seat in class. I look at the door and watch as Dailyn enters the class, a slight blush on her cheeks. Probably because of the teacher.

I hear her groan very, very quietly when she looks at the seat next to me. That was probably meant to be in her head.

She walks right past the seat and goes to the back and I hear her hustling Josh out of his seat. Soon enough, he's sitting next to me.

"Soft." I whisper over to him.

"Dude, she was hot. I don't care."

Hearing Josh refer to Dailyn as hot makes me roll my eyes. "Yeah, well," I reply, "she's taken."

"Someone sounds jealous." The teacher just walked in so Josh starts whispering. I shoot him a death glare, then turn my attention to the front of the class.

After the desperate girls practically beg Mr. Kay to tell us about himself, he asks us to do the same.

I get through mines quickly, just to get it over with. My one thing everyone should know about me was "I love football".

When it's Dailyn's turn, I turn and look at her, making my face cold and expressionless. She stands up slowly, and then tries to make eye contact with me. I look down.

"My name is Dailyn and I'm seventeen." she starts slowly. Her voice is shaky. "One thing everyone should know about me is--"

She's interrupted by a guy coughing "Sexy!" and the girl that was trying to flirt with me--Candice--coughing "Um, bitch!"

I clench my jaw and my hands ball into fists automatically. Dailyn freezes and she looks so embarassed as Mr. Kay gives the two kids consequences. Those idiots. Candice just tries to flirt with him. So she's one of those sluts who doesn't care that she's in public I think.

"Can I just… sit?" Dailyn asks the teacher as he finishes with the discipline.

"You can sit." He replies.

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After suffering through the last class of the day--Danny and Dailyn are there--I can finally go home.

The bastard's car isn't there when I get home. He must have left and went back to his girlfriend; only to come back when he's drunk again.

I open the door and walk in.

"Jordan?" My mom says from the kitchen.

"Yeah?" I walk in to see her vigorously cleaning like always. The kitchen smells like Lysol.

"How was school?"

Did you really call me here to ask me about school? "Good. Why?"

"Just wanted to know. Did you see Dailyn?" She looks at me and smiles. I keep a straight face. My mom knows that I liked Dailyn, but she has no idea what happened. She thinks we're still friends. Finally, I nod. More than I intended to. "Why don't you invite her to dinner tonight?"

I inwardly sigh. I have no idea how many times she's asked me this question when we moved back. Every time she asked, it was a different excuse.

"She has tons of homework."

"She can't. She's busy."

"No, because I'm going over to her house tonight."

"She just can't mom."

This time, I just shrug. "I don't know. She's… busy or something."

My mom glances at me. "Or something? Is something wrong?"

"Nope. She's just busy."

Before she can get anything more out of me, I turn and go up to my room and close the door tightly. I finally sigh out loud and lean against the wall, closing my eyes. After a few minutes, I take off my backpack and my shirt and jump on my bed. Time to sleep.

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The next morning as I talk and joke around with Josh, Mark, Mario and Tyler, Candice comes up to me.

"Hi boys!" She greets us in what she must think is a seductive voice. Then she places her hand on my arm and squeezes my muscles.

I look down to see her batting her eyelashes at me. "Off." I demand, and then I'm back to my sunny disposition with my friends. She jerks her hand away and scoffs. "Asshole." I hear her mutter before walking off to sink her claws into some other guy's arm.