Charming by Haig Moses (1st Draft)

Chapter Twenty-Three

THE COOPERS

When in harmful situations the body reacts in one of three ways: fight, flight, or freeze. These also happened to be the three ways my body reacted to my foster families. Though, when it came to the Coopers, flight had always been my go-to.

This was the reason I had found myself not only ignoring the phone incessant phone calls that burdened my phone every second of the day and night, but outside running once again with the hope of clearing my head. Just two days ago I was walking through a museum with Alex and laughing over grilled cheese and now I was hiding from my foster parents who decided to surprise me with a visit because Walter had a meeting in Boston.

"Sorry to intrude on you like this," Danielle had said with a smile before nudging Walter —who seemed as if he'd rather be anywhere than standing at my front door—who apologized half-heartedly as well. "But we were in town, Walt has a meeting and I thought why not make it a family affair."

"I have class all day today."

"Let's leave the girl alone Dany," Walter mumbled under his breath, but his wife caught his arm as he tried to walk away and held him still.

"That's fine, we'll be here all week," she said pressing on a kind smile before I nodded and watched them walk away.

The only reason I could think of this happening was because of how much of a bitch I'd been to Alexander. Karma was now biting me in the ass and boy was it taking a chomp. I pushed my legs faster, the large houses becoming blurs as I cut across streets and sidewalks until I was standing, slightly breathless in front of a the Alpha Phi House.

Wiping the sweat from my forehead and adjusting my clothes, I steadied my breathing before knocking on the door. There were many times in my life where I actually apologized, albeit because there wasn't many times in my life where I was actually wrong. In actuality, I could count on one hand the amount of times I was wrong about something, but this made me that much closer to two.

Five minutes passed before I knocked again. It was eight o'clock in the morning, what the hell were they doing? I thought stepping back to see all the lights and curtains in the windows were shut off and closed.

Patience wearing thin, I curled my first and began pounding on the door until I heard a string of curses and heavy footsteps on the other side. "Jesus H. Roosevelt Christ what the hell are you doing banging on people's door like that Harry!" Elliot swore eyes filled with sleep and his blond hair of mess on top of his head.

"Why are you still sleeping?" I pressed. "Don't you have class today?"

Elliot looked at his watched and groaned. "Yeah, but not for like... another thirty minutes."

I scoffed almost caught off guard before remember why I was here. "Is Alex in there? I need to talk to him."

Elliot's jaw tightened, then a forced grin cut across his face as he leaned against the door. "So... tell me, how come you're dating everybody but me?" he teased.

"It wasn't a date, I'm not dating anybody and you know why I won't go out with you Elliot," I snipped. "Now, where is Alex?"

"Come to talk about last night with him?" he smirked, knuckled turning white against the door frame. "Honestly, we were all kind of surprised when he came back to told us what happened."

I groaned, wanting to claw my eyes out as I thought off all the crazy things he might've said about me. Surely, by the end of the week the entire campus would think I'm some mental case who needed to be hospitalized. Violent mood swings and a touch of assault, that was exactly what Ivy league law school liked to hear about potential students. "How many people has he told?"