Asymptote (bxb)

Chapter 10: Love Drug Minus the Love

            I woke up completely disoriented. I hadn't made it to my bed last night, so tired I stopped on the couch for a second, and now woke up with pain that tingled from my neck, across my shoulders, and down my back. I had my arm under my head as a pillow, and my feet dangling off the end. I turned and saw Gemma's feet inches from my face. She was lounging with a coffee and a face mask on, watching New Girl.

"Gemma, what the hell? What time is it?"

She nudged me in the nose with one of her toes and I screwed my face up. She laughed and sipped from her mug. She replied, "Five."

"You're not human," I muttered. I rolled off the sofa, taking the fluffy blue blanket that we use to cover the holes we dug into it when we were children, and wrapped it tightly around myself. Gemma grabbed her bowl of cereal off the coffee table and shovelled it into her mouth, dropping some straight onto her lap as she did so.

"Nice," I commented. She nodded in response with a full mouth. I padded across the carpet and into the kitchen, staring at the clock on the microwave for a full minute before I decide sleep was futile and I might as well just take a longer shower.

As I stood naked in the bathroom, the water already running, I found my eyes tracing the black writing that marked my arm. It was a messy scrawl that looked like I let my two-year-old cousin learn how to count on my skin. Did I want to text him? If I shower it off, that left me no option. At least if I saved it I could still decide later. I picked my phone up off the counter and typed it in quickly with the name "Cian CoffeeGuy", because I liked adding last names.

I sang obnoxiously loudly and out of tune in the shower to "Round and Round" by Arkells. Gemma stood outside the door and screamed back "Girl Talk Boys" to annoy the hell out of me because she knows how I felt about 5SOS.

This isn't the part where I say I hated boybands, it's the part where I admit my undying love for Luke for an entire year before I snapped back to my senses and moved to alt rock. We're not going to talk about it.

It became a scream-singing match from either side of the door until the hot water eventually ran out and I left the shower.

School was arguably less tolerable today than other days. Mi had been texting me non-stop since first and I was not prepared to answer yet. I probably should have before I was forced to face him at lunch, but I was never one for common conventions. On top of that, I had been late for the third time because despite Gemma being up at 5 AM, she still couldn't be in the car for 8.

I didn't like playing parent, but my parents travelled. A lot. Dad had work conferences all over the world for the insurance company he worked for, and Mom followed because she had quit her job a few months back and had been bored ever since. A few days here, a week or so there, then back home. Next month they were leaving for Aruba for the entire month for their 25th anniversary. Before the constant trips, they never spent much time together, so I think this was their way of making it up.

"Au revoir, à demain." I wasn't a French expert by any means; enough to understand a general concept, but after 8 years of French, even I knew that meant class was over. I groggily slid my books into a pile I could carry (not that I ever opened a single one of them).

I still refused to check my phone as I dumped my books into my locker and headed for the cafeteria. If I did, I was sure I wouldn't have gone to lunch.