Night Terrors

Chapter 8 {NATE}

NATE

Not much happened today. Dani saw my black eye and walked away from her window when I made a joke about it. I guess she's still mad at me. I don't blame her though, she's probably going to need space for a while.

But then again, space is all she's had since it happened. Maybe what she needs is someone to be there for her. I wonder if she's even told her mom?

I promised myself that I won't let Johnny get to her like that again, or anyone at that. Johnny has been going on since as long as I can remember about how he thought Dani was hot, which makes me wonder again how I didn't figure this out sooner.

Whenever Dani wore something that showed off her body even a little, he'd make a comment about how nice her body was and just stupid stuff like that.

On top of her being mad about Johnny, I'm sure she's also mad about the comment I made about her dad. I acted like her dad dying was nothing, when it was way more than nothing. When he died, everyone lost something that day. Even me.

Our parents were always best friends and would hang out all the time when we were little, but when I was 3 my dad passed away. After that, Dani's dad was always there for me. He kind of acted as a father figure to me. Even when Dani and I weren't friends, Daniel was always there for me. That was her dads name, she was named after him.

I grabbed a tennis ball sitting on my night stand and began to throw it at my ceiling out of boredom. After about five minutes though my mom came in and yelled at me that I was going to break something so I stopped.

I got up and began walking around my room, looking for something to do. Finally I found my sketch pad and took it to my bed, laying on my stomach as I flipped through it. I haven't looked at this in probably 6 months.

The drawings were mostly random things, some better than others. I've been drawing since I was little. I flipped the page and saw a drawing of a car, making me smile as I remembered drawing it last year when I was bored.

Time flew by and pretty soon it was 2 am. I was laying in bed watching an episode of stranger things on my iPad that I had downloaded from Netflix. My mom has been taking the IPad to work with her every other day to charge it for me.

My show was interrupted by the sounds of muffled screams coming from out my window. They were the same screams that have been coming from Dani these past few days.

I ignore them at first, trying to block out the sound but after a minute I felt bad. They went on longer than they usually did.

I put my iPad down and sighed. What does she dream about? Why does this happen every night? So many questions were running through my head but the biggest one was; how long have these been going on since before I could hear them through her open window when the power went out days ago?

I stood up and walked to my window, ready to attempt to wake her up.

"Dani," I whisper-yelled through the window, hoping she'd hear me. "Dani wake up."

I groaned as she didn't wake up and continued to whimper. I thought for a moment, debating on just closing my window or trying to help her. Not being able to take it any longer though, I threw on a shirt and quietly tip toed out of my room and down the stairs.

"What are you doing Nate?" My mom called in a groggy, tired voice from her bedroom. I froze, trying to think of a lie.

"Just getting a drink. I just woke up." I whispered, trying to put on a tired voice.

I heard her grumble something before snoring again, so I slowly and quietly walked to the front door. I walked out of the house and could hear Dani again.

The back door to her house is never locked unless she's home alone, because I always try to come in through there to annoy her. I figured that'd be my best bet so I walked over to the door, beginning to rethink what I was about to do.

I pushed my second thoughts aside, telling myself I had to be there for her even though she didn't want me to be and walked inside, making my way upstairs.

I opened Dani's door and saw her tossing back and forth. It was dark and hard to see much other than what the dim moonlight illuminated in her room.

It made me sad to see Dani in pain like this. I walked up to her bed and sat down, placing my hand on her shoulder.

"Dani," I whispered to her, making her flinch awake.

She backed away at first and looked scared as tears streamed down her face.

"It's just me, Nate." I reassured her, which made her calm down a little.

She clutched her bed sheets and pulled them up to her chest, along with her knees.

"What are you doing here?" She asked me through her shaky breathing.

She looked so scared, making me wonder what she was dreaming about. At the same time though, a look of relief washed across her face. Could she be happy I came?

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AUTHORS NOTE

Thank you so much for taking the time to read, I love you all!  Feel free to drop a comment and/or vote if you enjoyed this(:

There's a little taste of their backstory and now we can finally get into their story(;  personally, I think Nate is really sweet at the end of this chapter and maybe earns himself some cred for anyone who didn't like him before lol