don't forget about me | ethan cutkosky

|14|

"Hi," I smiled, walking closer to the small group of people. 

They all turned around and smiled, saying hi themselves. The girl was dressed similar to me, and the guys had some small tattoos on their arms that I for sure wanted to see later, I've always been obsessed with tattoos and want to get one myself but I'm pretty sure my parents would murder me if I did. 

 Ethan pushed through and wrapped his arm around me and smiled. 

"This is my girlfriend Taryn, if any of the guys here try anything on her, I'll rip your fucking balls off." 

I froze in place as people went around and introduced themselves. I caught the names of Delia, Jack, Chad, and Tristan. I smiled at them as Ethan's grip around my waist tightened. 

Girlfriend? He can't be serious. He's always been somewhat protective, even when we were little but I don't see why he had to call me his girlfriend. I'll have to ask him when we get home. 

"So it seems I'm gonna be sticking with you," Delia smiled, "Since we're the only girls here and all." 

I smiled once again and was just about to open my mouth to reply but one of the guys, Chad, I think it is, opened his mouth and began talking. 

"She doesn't talk much does she? She's a quiet one." 

"Oh she can be loud when she has to be." Ethan smirked. 

The people around us started hooting and hollering and I stood there confused, with my eyebrows furrowed. 

"Alright lets get going! I'm getting bored just standing here." Jack said, grabbing Delia's hand, and pulling out his phone. "The building is about two blocks away, if we leave now, we could be there before the place gets crowded." 

I furrowed my eyebrows once again, not knowing what was going to happen. 

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Ethan still held onto me and walked slow, which made me walk slow too. We were about a metre behind everyone else so I feel like now is the time to ask about the "girlfriend" incident earlier. 

"Ethan, why did you call me your girlfriend earlier?" I said quietly. 

"That's want you want to be right? My girlfriend?" 

"Well yeah, but not while you're dating my cousin!" I harshly whispered. 

"Just for tonight pretend to be my girlfriend okay? It's work stuff, we can talk about this later."

"Are we filming a scene of Shameless?!" My jaw was pretty much on the floor by this point and I had stopped dead on the sidewalk with my hand on Ethan's arm. 

Everyone else had stopped as well and were looking at us, chuckling. 

"What?" I asked. 

"This is his other job. His side job." Chad smirked, "But the building is just up ahead."

He turned and jogged up to the building and knocked on the big steel door. There was no handle from the outside to get in and it just looked like a small apartment complex, but more on the fancy side. 

"Just keep your mouth shut and don't speak unless you have to, okay? Just stick with me." Ethan said,   pulling me along to catch up with everyone else. 

The door opened and a tall man with tanned skin and slicked back black hair looked over all of us before stopping at me. 

"Who's she?" 

"She's my girlfriend." Ethan stated, walking past the man and into the elevator down the hall. 

We met with everyone else in the elevator and the twelfth floor button was already lit up. The small space was quiet and filled with tension. I looked between Tristan and Ethan and they were giving each other a death glare. I decided not to get involved in fear of causing more trouble so I ignored it and stood quietly and joined hands with Ethan. He looked down at me with sparkling eyes and smiled, squeezing my hand. 

I felt roughness over Ethan's knuckle and I pulled it up to the height of my waist and my eyes widened at the site of cuts, bruises and dried blood all over. 

My eyes shot over to Tristan and I saw a bruise on his jaw, and a busted bottom lip and a huge cut on his cheek that I never noticed when we were outside. It was dark so I understand that but I don't see one imperfection on Ethan's face.

He ripped his hand out of my grasp and shoved it in his pocket just as the elevator landed on the twelfth floor and the doors opened. He pushed his way out and walked down the hallway and waited for nobody. He knocked on a door and a girl who looked maybe my age or a year older opened it.

"I'm here to make the delivery for Shawn, where is he?" Ethan asked, pulling out a sheet of paper, unfolding it and handing it to her. 

"Cool, but you have too many people. You almost got caught last time so you can only take one person he said." The girl said, writing something down on the paper and grabbing a package, about the size of a small bag of chips.

"Okay I'll take her." Ethan said, pointing to me. "Now give it to me so I can deliver it, I got other shit to do." 

He grabbed the package from her hands, pushed through the group and grabbed my hand and pulled me down the hallway to the elevator. 

I could hear the guys and Delia yelling at Ethan but he ignored them and stood waiting for the doors to close. 

"What the fuck man?!" Chad yelled, just as the doors closed. 

"What's going on?" I asked, fear taking over me. "Ethan tell me where you're taking me and what the hell is going on or I'm going home. I fell off of my fucking roof for this shit." 

He kept quiet and kept his eyes focused forward at the doors. 

"Ethan?-"

"Holy shit you don't ever stop do you?!" Ethan yelled, grabbing me and holding me against the wall. 

His hands held a tight grasp on my wrists, almost too tight for my comfort. I tried wiggling out of Ethan's grasp but he didn't budge. 

"Ethan you're hurting me.." I whispered just as the elevator doors opened. 

He snapped back to reality and let go of me, backing away and running his hand through his hair. No eye contact was made between the two of us as I pulled up the sleeves of my flannel and saw bright red handprints on my wrists that were sure to leave a bruise. I poked one and winced, looking up at Ethan. 

"Can you take your flannel off and wrap it around this when we get outside?" 

I raised my eyebrows, "Why? What is it?"

"Drugs, don't worry about it." Ethan replied while opening the door to the outside world. 

"Jesus Ethan!" I gasped. "You don't think the flannel will look even a little suspicious?"

He shook his head, "It's pretty warm out, people are just gonna think you took it off because you were hot or something." 

I pulled the thin material off of my body and wrapped the package in my shirt. We walked in silence until we got to the expensive part of town. 

Ethan guided me to a huge mansion at the end of a small street, full with other big houses. I heard the loud thumping of the music and the many voices of people and a sudden fear took over my body. 

What if the cops show up while we're there? What if someone rats us out? It's gonna look a little suspicious when two teenagers show up to a house full of people who look over twenty years old. 

"I know what you're thinking. We're gonna sneak between the two houses and go through the basement door and meet the guy in the basement. It's gonna be fine, I've been doing this for like, a year."

Awesome. 

Just awesome. 

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hay frands 

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