Backstreet Boy

|Chapter 13: The Exchange|

Jason

At home, I pulled out the pack of fags in my bedside drawer.

Hastily I drew one out and lit it. Then I sucked in a breath, holding the fag to my lips and let the stimulating and intoxicating stick tarnish my insides as well as satisfying my temptation. Candidly, I've been coaxed to the idea of renouncing smoking but when the cravings kick in, it gets a bit too much.

It was just conjecture, but despite the negative aspects of smoking like the future diseases you'll end up acquiring, it helped diminish stress and anxiety. It relaxed me and the smoke that I blew out from inhaling ended up clouding my own mind. It was foggy in there, but sometimes that made it easier to speculate definite subjects.

Isabella would be here any moment. Alex was out. I had already notified him that I might not be present by the time he got home because I'd be out giving money to Jackson with Isabella. Admittedly, he'd forgotten her name and only remembered her as the rich girl from the garage nearly a week ago.

There was a knock at the door. I picked up the money in the brown envelope. With my fag still in my hand, I crossed downstairs and opened the door to reveal Isabella in somewhat of a demotion of wardrobe. It wasn't the best, but I suppose it was satisfactory enough for the hideout of Jackson's he uses principally for money exchange and the occasional abuse.

"At least you look a bit better," I perceived.

"You smoke?" she remarked, contorting her face.

"Don't get all posh and snobby on me," I retorted. "I don't need that kind of crap. I'm eighteen and I'm my own man. Let's just go."

"So I have to sit in the car with you ponging of smoke and harming me, too?"

Groaning, I marched upstairs and grabbed my cologne. Heavily drowning myself in it, I ambled back downstairs to Isabella who was still stood on the outside with the door wide open. She wrinkled her nose up at the stench of me now and sniffed... not once... not twice... not three times... but four damn times.

"Can't get enough of my smell, huh?"

She scoffed, "More like surveying it for smoke. There's still a faint whiff of it."

"Too late," I gruffly replied. "Get in the damn car."

This girl could go from posh and snobby to annoying and witty in the next moment. She got on my last nerve too recurrently for my preference, too. But it did pose the question, did I actually like being in her company? I felt like I did. She was different to Sabrina and perhaps it felt good for an alteration.

Although, if Sabrina caught wind of how many times I had met up with Isabella, she'd punch my lights out. She always did like it rough, I mused. A smirk toyed at the corners of my lips as I emitted a heavy breath. Isabella turned to me.

"Why are you smirking?"

"Just thinking about Sabrina," I replied, "she can't get enough of me. She's from The District, of course. She knows just what I like. And, oh, I like it rough."

Isabella winced and scoffed, repulsed by my choice of words and the candour of what I had just divulged to her. Things like this might have remained concealed in The Valley but here we were open and shared anything exciting – that didn't eliminate our sex lives, either.

"I saw her only the other day," I continued. "In fact, I saw a lot of her."

Again, a scoff and a wince from Isabella, and silence.

The rest of the voyage was done in silence until we pulled up at Jackson's hideout which was a little off-piste. It helped shrink the amount of people who would happen to drunkenly stumble upon his whereabouts where deals were done. It also meant the police had a bit more work to be done to locate his hideout, too. They had never found it. Sure, there had been a few close calls but nothing worth fretting about.