"Pretty please."

"I can't."

"Please with cherries on top."

I close my eyes for a moment. "Yasmin-"

"Please with hot chocolate sauce on top."

"I caaan't. I don't wanna see him."

"You don't have to. We're still friends, and it's a party at my house. So what if I happen to live with your ex? Just hang with me."

"Why do you want me to come so bad?"

"Because I love your company." She picks up a hamburger and a carton of chocolate milk. "Are you really gonna ditch our friendship because of Alex?"

"You are really hard to say no to." She raises an eyebrow, waiting for my answer and I run my hand through my hair, sighing. "Fine. I'll come."

Yasmin smiles big and claps her hands. "Yay. Do you wanna sit with us?"

"Don't push it." I give her a look and walk over to Red's table before she can make me feel bad about saying no.

+++

"No. Definitely no."

Yasmin pouts, lowering the drink in her hand. "I guess it's understandable that you're staying sober. You have a bad track record of drinking at parties."

"Tell me about it."

"Fuck off," Ray pushes Val's hand that holds a blunt away from him.

"Just try. Maybe it'll stop you from bein' so uptight."

"Go fuck yourself."

"Just try! Why you so scared?"

"This is peer pressure!"

"Ray's too young for that," Yasmin puts her arm around Ray, and he stands up.

"How am I related to you people?" He walks away into the crowd of drunk teens in the living room.

"Geez."

"I feel bad for him," I say.

"Why? He's moody as hell."

"Well, no offence but living with you guys must be hard work," I laugh.

"You did," Val leans in to us to hear better. "We weren't that bad, were we? I mean, I know Carlos can be so annoying but everyone else is chill."

"Yeah, Val. It was totally Carlos and not any other particular person."

He smiles and nods, then takes a draw from his blunt. Yasmin goes back to pointing out hot guys she wants to talk to, trying to decide which one to go for. Can you imagine being that confident and perfect that you can easily walk up to a guy and talk to them? It'd take me at least half an hour to talk myself up to doing it and plan out everything i'd say.

"Is Marco here?" I ask.

"Sí. Playing video games with Carlos y su novia."

I ignore the last part of what she said. "Think I might join the anti-social club." Yasmin smiles and I stand up.

"Okay, I'm gonna go talk to hotty number six."

"Good luck." I make my way up the stairs to Marco's room, wondering how he deals with all of these parties. It must suck being so young and having to be around all these drunk teenagers. I wonder if he'll start drinking alcohol really young. I know some people who drank when they were twelve. It's crazy. I'm pretty sure I didn't even know what alcohol was at that age. I was one of those kids that took a while to come out of my childhood and grow up.

"Hot stuff!"

I spin around to face the green haired drunk delinquent. "Hi, Ethan," I fake smile.

"You look like you're having so much fun." He falls into me, and I stumble.

"You're really drunk. You should go home."

"Not until i've shown the pretty lady a good time," he twirls a lock of my hair around his finger, and I step back deeper into the hallway where no one is, regretting it straight away as he just moves closer.

"I'm good, and I was just about to leave."

"So soon?" He falls onto me again, making my back barge up against the wall beside Yasmin's bedroom. He stands in front with his hands held against the wall on either side of me. I can smell the strong stench of alcohol all over him, and it makes my stomach churn.

"Get back," I shove him and try to walk away.

He laughs coldly, then yanks my arm, making my body slam against him and pain spread through my arm. "I'm trying to be nice." He grits his teeth and his eyes fall down my body. Unexpectedly, he slips his hand into my jeans and I squeal.

"Stop!" I attempt to pull his hand away, but he's too strong. I think of kicking him but I can't move my legs because he's pressed against me. All of my problems are solved when he's pulled away from me and his body goes crashing into the wall on the other side.

Alex looks at me with alert eyes and they calm me. I can already feel my heart slowing down. He reaches his hand out to touch me, then pulls it back as if he changed his mind.

"Who do you think you fucking are?" Ethan moves to Alex and tries to hit him, but Alex easily dodges his punch and hits Ethan in the face four times until he has his hands up to shield himself, moving away down the hall.

"Leave right now before I do something really fucking bad," Alex says through gritted teeth. "You better hope I never see your face again."

Ethan coughs, holding his hands over his blood smeared face, and he walks away quickly down the stairs. Alex looks at me when he's gone, his features softening. I blink away the tears in my eyes, hoping that none fall.

"Are you okay?" He speaks again when I open my mouth. "You'll say yes, but you're not. You shouldn't have come here."

A lump forms in my throat when he says that, and I look away from him. "Wow. I guess I shouldn't."

"No, I mean," he sighs. "I'm glad you are here and I always want you to be here, but a lot of bad shit happens when you're near me. It's like i'm cursed. That even just happened right outside my room." He turns around to look at his open bedroom door. "I thought you'd never come back."

"Well, Yasmin used emotional blackmail on me and I couldn't say no to coming."

"Yeah, she does that."

There is a comfortable silence and I watch his dark eyes run over my features. "Thanks for stopping him."

"You don't need to thank me." He looks down at my hands. "Do you want to stay here tonight? You probably shouldn't drive when you're all shaken up like this."

"I'll be fine. I really want to go home to my own bed."

"If you do that I'll just worry about you all night."

He will? I don't understand him. How has he just changed completely? He didn't want anything to do with me a month ago.

"Let me drive you home."

"My cars here."

"I'll bring it to your house tomorrow."

"But-" I sigh when I can't come up with another excuse. "Okay."

He smiles. "Just gotta grab my keys. Don't make a run for it." After going into his room, he comes out with his keys and we walk downstairs.

A lot of people move out of the way for Alex to get through, but I still manage to get pushed around in the crowd. Alex looks over his shoulder, noticing and he stops and goes behind me, putting his hands on either side of me so i'm secure with him. It makes me feel safe and I stop myself from looking around incase Ethan's still here, because I know nothing will happen to me with Alex here. Even if he does still dislike me for whatever reason, he wouldn't let anything bad happen to me because that's just the kind of person he is.

I get into Alex's expensive red car and he gets into the drivers side and starts the engine. From the acknowledgement of the colour of his car, I remember something.

"When we were kids, you said red was your favourite colour."

He raises an eyebrow. "You remember our conversation from when we were five years old?"

"Maybe you don't because you couldn't understand anything I was saying."

"Give me a break. I was a little kid and had only practised talking english with my Dad who made it simple – not with toothless girls who spoke like they had a mouth full of spaghetti."

I laugh and hit his arm. "Leave my past self alone. No teeth was the look back then."

"I do remember parts of it. I remember you crying because I beat your ass."

"I beat your ass back."

"I let you win 'cause I felt bad."

"Little Alex had feelings? Damn, I wish he still did."

"Little Alex was naive enough to show his feelings."

I nod. "Got it." After a moment, I see him look at me from the corner of my eye.

"I'm sorry about everything I said to you."

"Do we need to get into this?"

"I just want you to know i'm sorry. Hurting you was the last thing I wanted but-"

"But you did hurt me," I admit.

"But I had to."

"Why?"

He sighs. "It's complicated."

"Whatever." There is a long silence and i'm disappointed that he didn't say anything else, so I do. "Who tried to kill you?"

"Caligari."

"I guessed that. Why though? Did something happen."

"Enrico and I set him up and got all of his people arrested."

"What about him? Where's he?"

"He threw the knife right before he died."

"He's dead? Oh," I pause. "Thank god."

Alex bursts out laughing. "And I thought I was insensitive. Don't let 'Tiago hear you say that."

"I mean, I feel bad that he's like dead and all and if he had any family that would suck for them, but he was a dick."

"Sure was."

"Dicks need to die."

"Yep."

I smile as I stare ahead at the road. I've not smiled like this in ages. He's sorry for hurting me. Does that make it okay? Should I just let it go like that? Should I let myself be crazy about him again?

He pulls his car up outside my house, and that's when it hits me. "How the heck did you know where I live?"

"I followed you after school every day and camped outside your window with binoculars."

"Not funny. Tell me the real reason."

"I took you home that night Val gave you drugs."

"You did? Why the hell did I not know about this? Shouldn't I have known if I was there? Why didn't anyone tell me?"

"Um," he furrows his eyebrows. "Yes, and you were out of your head drugged, you did know in the moment, and probably because you didn't ask."

"I can't remember what my questions were. But why did you take me home if you like, hated me at that point?"

"You're insane if you think I'd ever hate you."

"Strong dislike?"

"No."

"Dislike?"

"Not even that."

"Then what? Were you pretending to hate me because i'm embarrassing? Is it because of that picture of me and Bradley? You seemed to always get pissed at me for that so I thought you thought it was embarrassing and you didn't want to have anything to do with that."

"First of all: I wasn't pissed at you for that picture. I was pissed at your jackass ex and I took it out on you because I'm a jackass. And you shouldn't be embarrassed about that picture. All it did was get every guy in school talking about how much they want you to suck their dicks, which also pissed me the fuck off, slightly."

"Damn. Why did you not explain all this before? You had to leave me dying in my thoughts that you were embarrassed by me?"

"Okay, sorry for that too."

"I don't need your apologies. I need you to go back in time and fix everything."

"I can't, so what do you want me to do?"

"Nothing." I get out of the car just to be the dramatic little bitch I am.

But Alex being the annoying little bastard he is, drives away without fighting to keep the conversation going. Why couldn't he get out and follow me to my front door, telling me he loves me like they do in the movies?

Oh, because my life isn't a movie. It's a series of embarrassing disasters.

+++

awww it feels like it's been forever since alexia had a long conversation. i've missed them :,)

teaser: alex tries to show amelia how sorry he is......... but gets to her in a different method from romance

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