A Case of Black and Blue

18 | The Break

I slammed the textbook shut and looked at the three others sitting in queue.

"The more I study, the more studying I have yet to do." I complained, groaning as dramatically as I could before grabbing the NCLEX practice book and opening it to page fifty-seven which was titled, Safe and Effective Care Environment: Management of Care.

"I'm so nervous about my speech," Darcy chimed in. She was sitting on her bed and the sound of her pen scribbling on the page filled the air. She must have crossed out the entire thing by now. "Can we quit?"

"Let's do thirty more minutes and then we'll quit for now."

"I meant forever."

"We can't because debt."

"Stupid debt." Darcy huffed and continued her scribbling.

It had been nearly a month since I last saw Leo. Which was pretty strange considering our small town's widely known rule of thumb that people will accidentally run into each other at least once every other week. Maybe it was for the best. The whole town had been tense and everyone got a lot more quiet about the case. Eerily quiet.

Gregory was still in critical condition, Scott was still on his paid vacation and the judge was already quoting laws about consequences of threatening a police officer. Because apparently, Gregory putting up any kind of scuffle automatically meant that he was a threat to an officer's life and that gave the officer means enough to murder. It all made me sick to my stomach, so I blurred it all out with school work. Which was great because I was starting to feel genuinely confident in my ability to pass all my finals and be on track to finish my degree in the next semester.

Darcy and I had watched the statement Leo made on the web page of our local news. It made me feel pretty uncomfortable to see him all tense and serious, and then not so great to hear all the great things he said about Scott, especially about how he wasn't the kind of man to take a life without good enough cause. I wasn't so sure Leo actually knew Scott well. From the timeline, it seemed like he met him not too long after coming to town, which was relatively recent and then partnered with him when he got the car. It made the whole thing feel a lot more staged and ingenuine.

I also read through some of the comments and didn't even know how to take it. So many people wanted Leo's head on a stick for blasphemy and practiced lies. I took the comments personally and wondered if I was a sellout for deciding to like him. Like not too long ago I would've been saying the same thing as the public and now I was keeping quiet because I wanted to have some kind of romantic fling with him.

What would Devin think?

Darcy hadn't commented on the video or the public's outrage. She just waited on me and because I didn't know what to say either, we ended up saying nothing at all. Truthfully, I just wanted to see Leo again and see if he could put my mind at ease, however that wasn't looking too promising. I'd even driven by his house, but when I didn't see his truck I went back home and promised to never do that again because I wasn't a creepy stalker.

I even followed Leo's command and didn't drink a lick of alcohol or do anything even remotely illegal! Well, I mostly did it because I needed to stop being financially irresponsible and it was helping my savings, but whenever I got the urge to say, 'F it,' I'd remember his words and stop myself.

"Why do you guys invite me over just to abandon me? You know, I also have a life I could be living." Joey popped his head through the door, a bag of my plantain chips in his hand.

"I gave you a ride home from school!" Darcy countered, tossing her notebook to the side and falling back on her bed to scroll through her phone.

"A ride I didn't need because I live five minutes from home and speaking of which, you could've just dropped me off there since it was on the way here anyways." He said. Joey grabbed a handful of chips and poured them into his mouth.