TOUCH

Chapter 44

A combination of nausea, racing heart and weather that turns limbs into useless frozen things is not good.

Its eleven in the morning and yet the skies are thick with fog. Muted grays are mingling with chilly blues and its still dark.

The bright beam of headlight slashes through all of it and Lee ducks out of it.

She runs dangerously towards me and my mind wanders towards the million things that can go wrong or have gone wrong.

I am not a perpetually negative person but the way this day is turning out to be  ... Well let's just say I have my doubts.

"Don't run like that, Lee. It's slippery," I chide.

"Sorry." The tiniest hint of disapproval etches into the corners of her mouth when she notices Zayn standing next to me.

"I'm not moving from here," he says dryly, evidently taking the note of her expressions and I want to strangle him.

Lee's expressions remains serious and she yanks me towards her. "We'll find some place else."

"What are you hiding?" he questions her and the way his voice changed, I have a whiplash. "Are you going to whisper sweet nothings in her ear or something." He slings an arm over my shoulder, his eyes twinkling with mischief.

"Zayn!" I warn him.

Lee glares at him but he just yawns and tromps across the hospital front to go inside. "If it's anything important, you will tell me Aura," he calls without looking back.

I exhale loudly, trying to still my rampaging heart. "Please don't say you broke up too," I say facing Lee.

"No, why? Wait... who broke up?" Her eyes widen.

"Cindy and Dylan," Raven announces from behind us making me jump out of my skin. "Sorry." She doesn't sound sorry at all.

Raven gives her hyperbolized account of how Cindy and Dylan broke up which she ends with a dramatic pause before finally announcing, "And That's How They Went Down!"

Call it morbid curiosity, but even though I had a first hand narration of it all through Cindy, I was veey much interested in what was about to come out of Ray-Ray's mouth.

She points her gold polished nail at Lee. "Now you go."

"No, wait. We should wait for Brie." I say. I'm sure if Raven is here, Lee must have called her too.

"Actually...," Lee falters and then stops altogether.

A pinprick of dread blossom at the base of my neck and slither down my spine. "What?"

Lee trembles visibly before composing herself. "Brie is pregnant."Her voice slices through the air like a whip.

It takes me a minute to gather my wits.

"Who the fuck is that?"

I shift my gaze to meet Raven's who hold it for two seconds before sliding it towards Lee. "I'm sure she isn't talking about our Brie."

Worry coalesces into a block in my stomach. A sense of doom slithers around my body smothering my face harder and harder until oxygen runs scarce and I see blackness.

Unable to keep pace with reality, my knees buckle.

"Aura!"

Lee and Raven each hold my hand and try to pull me back up.

"Wait, I'm okay. I just need a minute," I say, crouching on the road, head in hands.

Beside me, Raven try to stifle a laugh but when she catch me looking at her perplexed, her restraint goes out the door.