Frenemy With The Bad Boy

Chapter 17 - Elliot

To lose someone you love is to alter your life forever. Sure, the pain stops but the emptiness in your heart never closes. This hole in your heart is the shape of the one you lost – no one else can fit it. I think the hardest part of losing someone, isn't having to say goodbye, but rather learning to live without them. Always trying to fill the void, the emptiness that's left inside your heart when they go.

Hell, I didn't even get to say goodbye.

"I'm sorry," Brody said and bit his lip, looking anywhere but me. "We'll just talk about it when you want to."

I sighed. "It's just...hard to talk about it. It's a very sensitive matter, not just to me but Claire, and maybe Dean too. We were all pretty affected by it."

"Yeah, I mean, after that happened we all stopped talking to each other, even me and Serena," Claire added. "But thanks to Dean's departure, me and Serena remained close."

"Hey!" Dean scowled.

I chuckled. "It's true though. We started talking again after you left."

"Why did you leave though?" Brody asked all of the sudden, which made Dean a little bit taken aback.

"I..uh...I—" I gazed at Dean as I was also wondering why he abruptly left. "I was pretty distressed by what was happening, I couldn't handle the grief. So I, being the immature kid I was, I told my parents I needed to get out of here and to my surprise they agreed."

"Wait, you moved because you couldn't handle the grief?" I scoffed in disbelief. "How about me and Claire though? Didn't you think that we would suffer even more because you left? Not to mention, we were still dating when you left!" I stated angrily. How could he?

"You two dated?" Brody asked.

"I'm sorry, okay! I'm sorry!" Dean shouted. Great, now the whole student body's looking at us. "I didn't know what to do, we weren't even talking for god's sake! You guys pratically abandoned me when I needed you the most!"

"You could've just talked to me, to Claire! All you have to do is just talk! But I guess you were too much of a coward. That's why you left in the first place. You were too scared to face reality so your only option is to runaway from it. How brave of you, Dean. How brave." I spit and abruptly stood up, turning to walk towards the exit. I need some air, I need to breath.

I could hear Claire and Brody calling after me but I couldn't care less about anyone right now. All I needed to do was—

I shrieked as I felt someone's hand on my forearm and gently pulled me as I was outside the cafeteria. "Hey, mamacita," That familiar voice said. I looked up and saw Clayton looking down at me with that trademark smirk of his. "What are—" He stopped his sentence as he saw a tear trailing down my cheek. "What's wrong? Why are you crying? Who made you cry?" He clenched his fists before putting them on my shoulders. Crap. This made my tears falling out uncontrollably. "Serena, who made you cry?" He said, emphisizing every words and brushed off the tears with his fingers.

"It's nothing," I said and gave him a reassuring smile. "I'm fine."

"Seriously?" He laughed bitterly. "You're crying and now you're telling me it's nothing? Cut the crap, now tell me who made you cry."

"No one Clayton," I sighed. "I just remembered about the movie I watched last night. It's very sad apparently."

"Bullshit," He said, studying my face for a second longer. "You know what? Let's skip school. I bet it's suffocating here and I also want to show you something." He took my hand and pulled me towards the enterance. I didn't say anything as I followed his lead.