"Why do you care if I'm mad or not?" It was the only thing I cared about knowing at this point.
"You're smart King. You figure it out."
Ace Carter was bad news and so were his friends. Luckily, I stayed away from him, his friends and all their dram...
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I was making small talk with some of Ace's older cousins when I saw Anna make her way over to me. She was smiling, but it seemed a bit forced. I then remembered that Ace had probably told her and Austin everything.
She didn't make a move to pull me aside; instead, she merely joined the conversation. We were talking about Ace's and my "first date." I had thought it would have been difficult to come up with something on the spot but instead, I just ended up changing around the first time he took me to Ida's to get ice cream.
"How long have you two been going out?" Ace's older cousin, Grace, asked me.
For a second, I hadn't known what to say. We hadn't really discussed the supposed time frame of our relationship before. I went with the safest answer. "A few weeks I think," I muttered the last part to myself.
"You think?" Anna laughed.
I flushed a little, "I'm not quite sure when it became official," I saved. Luckily, it seemed to work because she smiled at me.
"It's amazing; seeing him care so much about someone besides the family or himself," her eyes seemed to glaze over with happiness.
I squinted in confusion. Was she talking about me? If so, Ace must have been a damn good actor. But it didn't stop me from telling her, "I care about him a lot too."
She gives me another smile and looks over to Grace. "Do you mind if I steal Mel for a second?"
Grace shakes her head and gives me a small wave. Uh-oh. I already knew what this conversation would be about and I definitely was not ready for it.
"We can go up to Ace's room. No one can hear us up there." I said nothing as she led me up to her son's room. I sat on his bed the moment I made it into the room. "Alright honey, first of all, are you okay? Hurting at all?"
I nodded. "Just a little bit. I have some bruises on my face but Katie covered them with concealer."
"Has your father always been like this?" Anna got right into it.
I took a deep breath. "Not really. He's never hit me until last night. That's why I was so shocked. He started drinking heavily when I was 14 because my mom left."
She nodded. "Are in contact with her?" I shook my head, no, unless once a year counted. "I see. Was that your choice or hers?"
"She disconnected her phone number and she isn't in the phone book. I don't know where she ran off to," I told her sadly. She called from different numbers every year.
Anna had sat down on the bed next to me and began rubbing circles on my back reassuringly. "So your father, he used to be normal?"
"He was up until I was 11. He lost his job and started acting different. He was mean to everyone around him, not just my mom and me," I shivered. "But I never thought-" I couldn't finish my sentence. A weird emotion gripped my throat.
