Another Broken Girl

Chapter 42

Ali's POV

"You cooked with her?" Jay laughs. I told Jay about how horrible Isabelle is once and told him every single stupid thing she says.

"Hey, she isn't that bad." I say nudging him with my elbow as we walk. I look up at him to see that he's looking down at me with a confused look.

"What?" I ask.

"Why are you defending her?" he asks returning his focus in front of him.

"Well," I begin to say while thinking about that conversation me and Isabelle had, "I changed my mind."

"So, does Leo live around here?" he asks.

"Yeah. Not in an apartment though. He lives in a real house." I say. I haven't made much contact with him in a while. I wonder how he is doing.

"Oh, we should pay him a visit." Jay suggests.

"We should. C'mon, let's go." I say grabbing his hand and start to run out of the park.

While we start to walk I take out my phone to send Leo a quick message to let him know I'm coming.

Is it ok if we stop by?

About a minute later Leo replies.

Yeah. I'm not there yet, but Nikki should be there.

I nod to myself then put my phone back into my back pocket.

I try to talk to Jay, but he gives me short answers like "yeah," or, "hmm." It seems like his mood changed almost instantly.

"Hey, are you ok?" I ask trying to look at his face, but he just shies away.

"Yeah, yeah. I'm good." he says a little irritated.

"Oh, ok." I say quietly deciding not to push it any further.

As we reach their porch I take out one of my hands from my pocket of my hoodie to knock on the door. I glance over at Jay again to see him straighten himself a little.

"Hey baby," Nikki begins to say as she opens the door, "Oh, hi Ali! Come in!" she says gladly opening the door wider so we can come in. I really like Nikki, she's really kind hearted. Not only she has amazing humor, she's gorgeous. My brother was really lucky to find her.

"How are you?" I smile heading into their living room.

"I'm good, you?" she asks as me and Jay sit on one couch while she sits on the couch pushed against the other wall.

"Oh, I'm," I pause, "I'm fine."

"I'm Jay by the way." Jay says reaching out to shake her hand.

"Nikki." she says shaking his hand.

"So, did you make any more paintings?" I ask. Nikki is an artist. She sells her artwork for extra money. Most of the time she sells her paintings pretty fast.

"I did actually. You want to see?" she asks.

"Yeah!" I say standing up.

Nikki stands up and leads us to her basement. Leo made the basement into a little studio for Nikki to paint in for her birthday. She always complained how the basement was so plain and she was always cramped in the living room where she use to paint. So, Leo just put two and two together.

"Here it is!" she says walking over to the canvas that was set up on a stand. You can tell that she just finished it because it is still wet. She was probably working on it before we arrived.

"It's beautiful." I say. Her painting is of different colors and shapes, but if you looked close enough it was a lady with a single tear escaping her eye.