Witness

“I can’t believe you did that!” I laughed, mopping up some of the spilled coffee with a napkin as a waitress glared at us from across the room.

“Sorry dude!” Gerard laughed, not helping me clean up at all. “I just wasn’t expecting you to say that,”

“C’mon, it’s really not that funny,” I laughed back, realizing that to someone who wasn’t there, may actually find it funny.

“You puked on her dog, man!”

“I was so drunk I didn’t even know I was puking!”

“That’s some funny shit right there,”

“She didn’t find it funny,”

“I’m sure she came around?”

“She dumped me,” I stated bluntly, smirking as he set off into another fit of giggles and this time not spitting his coffee all over the table, which is the reason I was mopping up coffee in the first place.

The giggling died down and we once again merged into the quiet mumbled of conversations that were being held in the coffee shop we were in.

I held onto my still warm coffee while Gerard looked almost dejectedly into his cup, frowning at the fact that half of his coffee was now being slowly soaked into a napkin on the table next to us. He glanced up at me and saw me smirking, before he gave me a confused look.

“Mourning your coffee?” I questioned my smirk growing bigger.

“Fuck you!” He laughed. “I happen to like coffee very, very much,”

“I’d never have noticed,” I chuckled handing him mine. “I’m done with this, you can finish it off if you want,”

“What have you done to it?” He asked incredulously, glancing into the cup.

“Nothing. Do you not trust me?”

“Actually, it’s weird, because I do,”

“After knowing me all of...three hours?” I asked, glancing at my watch.

“Less than that. The time that you saved me from James doesn’t count,” He laughed, standing up with me.

“And you still trust me?”
“Anyone who attempts to get James Harvey to leave me alone is pretty trustworthy in my books,”

“Fair enough. I still don’t get why he causes shit for you,”

“Frank seriously, it doesn’t matter,”

“Actually it does. But I’m going to drop it, just for you,”

“Aww,” Gerard cooed holding the door open for me as I stepped out into the chilly air pulling my coat tighter around my body. “You know, you haven’t gotten off to a very good start,”

“Oh yeah, why’s that?”

“Firstly you try and change James’ mind about one of his ‘hobbies’ and secondly, you’ve skipped a lesson on your first day,”

“No big deal. It’s just school. I don’t need it to stand up on a stage with a guitar in my hand,”

“You sound confident,”

“I am.”

The conversation fizzled out as we walked together. I’m not sure where we were going, but when we ended up on my road I sighed. I wanted to stay with him for just a little longer.

“Do you want to come in?” I asked before I walked up my drive.

He looked at the house I was gesturing at and smiled. “Sure, I don’t think I’ve ever been in a house this big before,”

“Me either. My house in California was really small,”

“California?” Gerard stopped, raising an eyebrow at me. “I thought you were from New York?”

SHIT!

“I-uh-am. I said California? Really?” Yeah. Great cover Einstein!. “I went there on vacation once. Maybe I was just subconsciously thinking about that,” Gerard raised his eyebrow and looked thoroughly unconvinced but followed me through the front door regardless.

“Wow, you really did just move in,” he laughed, eying the large pile of cardboard that filled the floor in the hall.

“Yeah, but I think most of my things will have been unpacked by today. My mum tends to get bored. Plus, she hates help with this kind of thing so is more likely to do it when I’m not here,”

Gerard nodded his head in understanding before following me into the kitchen where my mum was washing some plates in the sink.

“Hey Frankie honey,” my mum smiled as I walked in. Frankie? What a way to make my name even worse!

“Mum!” I snapped, disapproving of the childish name.

“Frankie?” Gerard repeated, looking at me and smiling. “I like it. It suits you,” He said, flitting my nose slightly.

“Why are you home so early,” My mum questioned ignoring the blush staining my cheeks from Gerard’s actions.

“No reason,”

“You didn’t skip did you?”

“Not exactly,”

“Frank!”

“It’s not like that though, mum. You know that James guy...well he got to Gerard pretty bad, y’know...so I just left with him,”

My mum glanced up at Gerard who shrugged slightly, a small blush staining his cheeks. “Wow,” My mum said, looking over him once more. “You’re right, he is hot,”

My face almost exploded into a reddish tomato colour as my eyes widened in shock. “MUM!” I shouted in a high-pitched voice only to show my embarrassment even more as I heard Gerard chuckle from somewhere behind me. “You don’t say that when he’s here!”

My mum chuckled slightly and I grabbed Gerard’s arm pulling him up the stairs and to my room. After, as usual, walking into a couple of the wrong rooms, I finally found it, and saw that my bed had been properly set up, and there was a desk and a chair in the corner, with a laptop sitting on the desk, and a large TV hanging from the wall opposite my bed. Everything else was in boxes.

“Wow,” Gerard said, his eyes glazing over as he first looked at the size of my room, then at the laptop, then at the TV. “Someone’s doing well!”

“Dads life insurance money...” I smiled sadly, in some ways wishing that I hadn’t left my small, shitty little house that had barley any room to breathe in.

I glanced over at Gerard who was chewing on his lip slightly awkwardly as he looked down at the floor. “I didn’t mean to make things awkward...”

“It’s not your fault,”

“I shouldn’t have brought it up,”

“You didn’t do it directly,”

“I know, but I should have thought about it,”

“That’s not really something that people tend to think about. I don’t want you walking on eggshells around me, Gerard,” I said, placing my hand on top of his in comfort and show that I wasn’t angry at him or anything.

“I know, I guess...I don’t know, it’s got to be hard,”

“It is, but I guess I’ll deal with it,”

“What else can you do?” he shrugged.

I smiled at him slightly, taking in his features. I loved the fact he wasn’t perfect, and I loved the fact that he knew that. He was someone I could talk to, I just hated that I had to lie to him.
I wanted so badly to talk to someone about everything that had happened. More so, I wished that it had never happened, or that it had happened over a year ago. It hadn’t even been a week yet, and already I was moved into a new home on the other side of America going to a new school and making new friends.

I bet everyone backhome in California were confused out of their minds. Surely they’ll have heard of the murder, I’m sure it was splashed over the paper within hours of it happening, the journalists not caring much about the man they’re writing about, just the fact he was dead and it made a good story on the front page. I bet they didn’t know I was there. That would have made a better story.