Chapter Forty-Six

Wet dog.

My hair smells like wet dog, and yet somehow, I find myself smiling. It's a surprising feeling that leaves me almost reeling at the thought of it. The tangled mess that now lies atop my head is a statement against anyone who looks at me with near bewildered eyes. It feels like a bunch of seaweed, just plopped onto my crown by some cruel god—the cruel god in this case is a fourteen-year-old girl with a water cannon.

It's not exactly how I anticipated spending my day, but now that it's almost over, I can't say that I have any regrets towards it.

There are those moments where you wish you could just live in them forever, and my day with the Sutton family is one of them. By the start of this day, I'd been dreading a long drawn out conversation between various family members. But just seeing them in action gave me an insight into Xavier that I might have otherwise missed. Sadness loomed behind the eyes of everyone in that house, but I don't think they let it keep them down for long.

"You smell like wet dog," Xavier said as we pulled out of the driveway.

My glossy eyes turned to face him with a short smile. "You act like that's a bad thing," I respond slyly, not trying to think about it too much. I cannot help thinking it, and now apparently, he can't either. I'm completely drenched, somehow being tricked by the faking-left little demon. All my dark clothes cling to me tightly, and I'm trying my best to swipe as much hair away from my face as humanly possible. Every few minutes I was pulling my shirt away from my chest because god damn it felt too weird.

"Your sister is a demon child." The words sound so childish from my mouth, but I can tell he appreciates him.

His lips tug into a taut grin as he keeps his eyes on the road. "Tell me something I don't know," he says in that smug way of his. There's a deep well of something in his eyes and I almost want to reach over and fish it out. It's both sorrow and happiness intertwined into this awful shapeless mess.

Slowly he reaches out and turns on the cars stereo, letting a little bit of music fill the air between us. It's a soft female piano ballad, almost reminiscent of most things that Xavier listens too.

Once upon a time I'd called it mindless garbage, but there's a certain appeal. It's more focused on how the music makes you feel as opposed to being technically proficient. Different people just have different ideas of expressing themselves. The song is slow and tempered, almost like my love for the other boy.

I was a fool not to say it, and now it just felt like the thought was flimsy and out of reach somewhere in the vast distance.

"Did you know the guy who invented the Pringles can had his ashes buried in one?" I said dismissively to his question. There weren't a lot of little-known-facts that I knew, but ones related to death and snack foods were well within my wheelhouse.

Xavier caught me from the corner of his eye, watching my face with baited breath. "I'm calling bullshit."

"Totally true," I said waiving my arms. "He specifically requested for his ashes to be buried in a Pringles can."

"Okay, let's just say for a second that this might be true-"

"Which it totally is," I interrupted.

Xavier rolled his eyes. "Right, so if that's true, then how the hell do you know that?"

An absent smile stretched itself across my face as I shrugged. People like Xavier could always see through deceit and lies, and so I could only pray that the road had taken him away from me. But the minute his eyes caught mine, I knew for sure he suspected that something might have been up.

And, like the coward I've always been, I ignored him.

As the moments passed and the song continued, the space that should have been filled with his expectant voice rang silent. Most of his focus had been on where he was going, but now he grasped the wheel with less conviction and more uncertainty. A few times the car slowed down before speeding back up again.

Finally, he slowed the car down to a full stop on the corner of some street somewhere between my home and his. Putting the car's brake on, he turned to me slowly.

"Garth?" he asks slowly. "We can't go ahead if you can't trust me with the thoughts inside your silly, stupid head." His words, whilst not purposely coming off as demeaning, hit me like a sour punch to the gut.

There were so many things I wanted to say, but half of them were drowned under the expecting flood. Xavier had done everything he could to keep me safe from the first moment our lives collided. But the one thing he couldn't protect me from was the violent swirling of thoughts that encircled my mind like a buzzard waiting for its prey to drop.

For what feels like the tenth time this week, I tell myself it's nothing when I know it's not. Suddenly, the car feels too hot and the air itself feels like it's on fire. Swallowing down my own bitter pride only makes it harder for words to form in my dry mouth.

"I'm scared," I finally say in a shock revelation that almost has me reeling back a few inches. But the words are terse and they feel good against my tongue. It's a wave of relief that forces everything out. "I used to stay up all night. I would just read because I knew that it was more dangerous to drop my guard then."

He nods an understanding nod. "He's less likely to be drunk in the morning."

I flick the edge of my nose with my pointer finger, giving a soft, weakened smile. "Sometimes my thoughts drifted to death and the afterlife," I replied. "I wanted to know if others felt the same way I did."

"And did they?" he replies in a short sharpness that makes me bring my head up.

"Not really," I manage. "But then you came and life didn't feel like such a race to the end."

Somewhere in the setting sun, I catch Xavier's hand and wrap it tight with my own. "I might not be able to say the words you want to hear, but I trust you... that's all I can give right now."

At first, he frowns, but then after a moment it softens and he looks sad for a second, before his lips split into a smile. And now I think he gets it. Boy's like me can't say sweet nothings because our guard is always up.

But in giving our trust, we say all we need to

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a/n: weak sauce chapter i know, but i have something planned for next chapter so just needed a bit of a breather