𝚁𝚞𝚗𝚗𝚒𝚗𝚐 𝚗𝚎𝚊𝚛 𝚘𝚗 𝚎𝚖𝚙𝚝𝚢.

𝙸 𝚠𝚒𝚜𝚑 𝚜𝚘𝚖𝚎𝚋𝚘𝚍𝚢 𝚠𝚘𝚞𝚕𝚍'𝚟𝚎 𝚝𝚘𝚕𝚍 𝚖𝚎

𝚃𝚑𝚊𝚝 𝙸'𝚍 𝚎𝚗𝚍 𝚞𝚙 𝚜𝚘 𝚌𝚊𝚞𝚐𝚑𝚝 𝚞𝚙 𝚒𝚗 𝚗𝚎𝚎𝚍 𝚘𝚏 𝚢𝚘𝚞𝚛 𝚍𝚎𝚖𝚘𝚗𝚜.

𝚃𝚑𝚊𝚝 𝙸'𝚍 𝚋𝚎 𝚕𝚘𝚜𝚝 𝚠𝚒𝚝𝚑𝚘𝚞𝚝 𝚢𝚘𝚞 𝚕𝚎𝚊𝚍𝚒𝚗𝚐 𝚖𝚎 𝚊𝚜𝚝𝚛𝚊𝚢.

𝙶𝚞𝚎𝚜𝚜 𝚝𝚑𝚊𝚝 𝙸'𝚖 𝚊 𝚏𝚘𝚘𝚕 𝚏𝚘𝚛 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚠𝚊𝚢 𝚝𝚑𝚊𝚝 𝚢𝚘𝚞 𝚌𝚊𝚞𝚐𝚑𝚝 𝚖𝚎

𝙶𝚒𝚛𝚕, 𝚢𝚘𝚞 𝚖𝚊𝚔𝚎 𝚖𝚢 𝚑𝚎𝚊𝚛𝚝 𝚋𝚛𝚎𝚊𝚔 𝚖𝚘𝚛𝚎 𝚎𝚟𝚎𝚛𝚢 𝚍𝚊𝚢

𝙱𝚞𝚝 𝙸 𝚍𝚘𝚗'𝚝 𝚏𝚊𝚍𝚎 𝚊𝚠𝚊𝚢.

Lennon's eyes fell shut in fear of both rejection and ridicule now as she kissed Billy Hargrove.

Either came hand-in-hand. If he pushed her off in disgust, not only would her ego be terribly bruised but her plan would be compromised as well.

She swayed slightly, forcing her body to go loose as she held Billy in her arms.

To her surprise, she could feel the slightest smile against her lips and his hands had gone to her waist out of instinct. Billy kissed her back, exhaling a breath of warm air through his nose nuzzled beside her cheek and if Lennon didn't know any better, she would say he was more enthralled than he was surprised by her sudden attack on his lips.

Oh my fucking god. What am I doing? Don't stop. Make it convincing. Oh... but this is Max's brother, Lennon! She's gonna be so mad. You can't do this to her. You have to explain yourself. She doesn't deserve this. But by the angels does he knows what to do with his tongue...

Billy's fingers crawled up her sides as she subtly moved against him and peeked out the side of her eye to see Steve and Brontë both staring wide-eyed with their jaws unhinged as they watched in shock and disgust.

Oh, for fucksake...

Lennon closed her eyes again.

She hummed against Billy's testing tongue out of annoyance but she was sure Billy would take it as a sign of encouragement. She had to fight for the reigns on this one. She tilted her head slightly and mentally cursed herself for slipping her tongue past his lips and just far enough to feel the surface of his teeth before retreating self-consciously.

She peeked over Billy's shoulder again and found Brontë and Steve scowling with disgust before looking away.

Perverts. It's about time...

She let her hands fall down his neck to his chest before pulling away. "I'm so sorry," she immediately apologized, hiding her face behind his body, keeping her eyes closed in fear of seeing the disgust or mockery Billy was bound to express. "Oh my god. I'm so sorry. I... I just needed to-"

"You're fine, darling," Billy smirked mischievously as he loosened his grip around her back. "I quite liked it, to be fair."

He gained Lennon's eye. She was looking up through her thick brush of lashes with a different kind of emotion. Having known what he tasted like and how his lips felt against hers, she was looking up at him in wonder.

She startled herself with just how differently she saw him now. It was strange because she didn't have feelings for the daunting man holding onto her like that was where his hands were most comfortable. She didn't find him attractive in an emotional, deeper manner but he was certainly a relic to behold.

She didn't know what to say to him. Did she like it? Who wouldn't like an attractive pair of lips pressed to their own? But if she admitted that, he would take it the wrong way; for a good reason too because usually when two people kiss each other and find the moment pleasant they would want to continue that pleasure and sometimes try for something more. But that wasn't the case.

"That's uh... I..." she giggled, swallowing harshly against the lump growing in her throat as she fluttered her eyes nervously.

She took a deep breath and exhaled before biting her lip and smiling up at Billy. "I will be able to tell the ladies on the team you are worth the hype," she tilted her head charmingly before pulling back and forcing Billy's hands to fall to his sides. "I definitely owe you now," she said as she backed away and started towards her brother's car.

She let out a long sigh as she ignored the giggling and muffled conversation in the distance. She knew people were watching but she wasn't going to let Steve ruin her plans. She wanted a reason to see Eddie. She wasn't going to let that perfect dickhead get in the way of that. She had to do something. And she was sure kissing Billy would put them off her trail.

She tried to shake the feeling of being watched as she looped around the side of the car and hopped inside.

She turned to buckle her seatbelt and faced utter silence. The oddness of it caused her to look up and see both Brontë and Steve looking at her with their jaws dropped and their brows furrowed, staring like they had witnessed something traumatizing.

"What?" she pretended to be oblivious. She couldn't freak out. She had to act as casually and calmly as possible if they were to buy it.

"Since when are you and Billy together?" Steve shot out incredulously.

Lennon scoffed, ignoring Steve and turning to her brother.

"Can we go? I have to study for finals."

"Whuh-" Steve's spat out in disbelief. "Hey, I was asking you a question-"

"And I was ignoring your redundant question," Lennon replied sarcastically. "You two can talk at home," she sighed, moving for the mixtapes at her feet and popping one in so they didn't have an option to continue their conversation.

Brontë bumped fists with Steve, bid him farewell, and moved the car into drive. He lowered the volume of the radio slightly and turned to Lennon in all seriousness.

"So you're settling?" he asked curiously, seeing a change in her over the past week and wondering if Billy had anything to do with that now.

Lennon considered her response. The truth was that pretending to be preppy and happy all the time had become second nature and it was easier than it was on her first day. She was doing well with her academics, cheer was going well, people didn't hate her, she had 'friends', and her extracurriculars were actually enjoyable as well as distracting.

Maybe she was settling... or maybe she was just telling herself that.

"Yeah," she replied flatly. "I survived this long..." she fiddled with the hem of her jacket to avoid meeting her brother's caring eyes.

Since they were never sentimental, especially Brontë, whenever they verbally expressed their care for one another, Lennon always got uncomfortable and disinterested in emotional bonding with him. There was no noticeable reason for it, she just knew that she loved him and he her, and there shouldn't need to be anymore said or done about it.

"That's not what I mean," Brontë corrected her. "You just seem like you're easing into life here."

Brontë wanted Lennon to confirm his suspicions but she remained silent as she stared out the windshield.

Brontë pushed past the awkward silence. "So... you and Billy..."

Lennon hummed negatively. "No," she quickly shook her head. "We're not talking about that. That is personal," she turned her head and saw him looking over at her with a slightly worried expression on his scruffy face.

He had some hair growing from his chin and lip and Lennon wondered if it was by accident or a conscious decision to start growing it out. It was cold and people tended to keep their hair longer in the winter so maybe that was why he changed up his appearance... or maybe not...

"Some things are mine and mine only. Just like how there are some things I don't ask about you, there are some things I don't want to share with you," she explained passively and her brother seemed to be satisfied with that response.

She was just acting all too calm and nonchalant after shoving her tongue down some guy's throat in front of half the basketball and cheer team for Brontë's comfort. He knew his sister and she wasn't the PDA type, not like that. And to sit down and act as if nothing happened... it seemed off.

"You're being safe, right?"

"Obviously," she assured. "After what I've been through this year... I'm being real selective with who I trust after... well... you know..."

"No," Brontë shook his head before turning down the backroad he recently learned about. "Not that. I mean... are you being safe," he put emphasis on the word. "With Billy..."

"Oh... my god," she cringed. "No, please stop. Why... Jesus... Do you always have to make everything about sex?" she scowled.

"Yes!" he widened his eyes and nodded his head. "Do you know how healthy sex is for the human body? Do you know how many diseases-"

"By the angels..." she buried her head in her palm and moved to turn up the stereo to drown out her brother's spiritual history lesson on the matter of natural health.

***

Steve made it his mission to bother her as long as he was over after school. She was right about one thing though; Steve was telling Brontë about Eddie. He had very little to go off of and yet he managed to make it into a big thing.

Brontë was covering for someone on Sunday so if something did happen, he wouldn't be free to go get her. After very little convincing, Steve insisted on going with her. She old him she would bore him to death and that it was unprofessional to have a friend bugging her while she was tutoring but neither Steve nor Brontë wanted to listen to her.

She would have argued longer but fighting him would have been seen as suspicious and that was the last thing she needed. So, she went to bed. She didn't fall asleep but she did stay in her room for the rest of the day.

Come Saturday, Steve came over that night to go with her on Sunday. She continued to roll her eyes and express her disagreement but again, she couldn't fight him without acting like she had something to hide.

But instead of arguing or letting Steve and Brontë win, she kept to herself and conducted a plan.

Early on Sunday, Lennon took off before Steve could wake up.

She pulled on a pair of loose-fit black jeans with a white turtle neck, layered a Black Sabbath t-shirt on top, hugged her black denim jacket, and left the house a little after eight with only a note on the fridge to tell Steve that she didn't need him and to expect her back before four.

She had two copies of Wuthering Heights in a bag with some protein bars and a can of Dr. Pepper in case she ended up skipping lunch. On her way down the road, she couldn't help but laugh at the thought of leaving Steve in the house all by himself.

Brontë would be asleep and Lennon would be far gone before he could even begin to look for her. After all, when he moved in with his uncle, nobody knew where he lived, not even his friends in Corroded Coffin. Steve definitely wouldn't know where to look.

As she walked around the communities surrounding the lake, the sky was brightly lit with white clouds overhead. The snow fell in soft flurries throughout the day but it wasn't overly cold that day. Lennon hated the cold but she preferred it to the heat of summer and if she was walking all that time, she was glad the sun wasn't going to drain her of sweat on the way there.

She took her walkman with her and went on a mild jog to distract herself from the stress of facing all her classmates when she went back on Monday after kissing her friend's brother in front of half the jocks of the school.

She traveled for a mile without stopping, trying to wrap her head around the situation with Billy. She walked the rest of the way when thoughts about Eddie began to invade her head.

It was a little past ten when she walked up to the familiar trailer with the white and green van parked in front with an old red mustang parked beside it.

She sighed a breath of relief for making it in one piece and knocked on the door with four gentle knocks. She stood by the door waiting for a response for a solid sixty seconds but there was no response. The lights were all off but she wouldn't expect them to be on in the middle of the day either. She put her ear up to the door to listen for footsteps or clattering or even the soft buzz of the television but she only heard silence.

She sighed and pulled her knuckles to the surface of the door again.

She stood in waiting for another minute but there was no response. She opened her bag and pulled out the folded piece of notebook paper she had with Eddie's address on it to double-check that she was in the right place; as if his van wasn't enough proof.

She turned towards the van in question and watched as a family was moving in a little way down the road. She saw a silver car pull into park in front of the house three doors down, a little girl and boy playing outside in the snow with someone watching from their porch, and an older man getting the mail from the line of mailboxes at the end of the drive just past the parked car.

Nobody seemed like they would have known about Eddie's whereabouts and so she knocked one more time before she would have no choice but to ask the woman watching the children for some help.

But to her luck, as her knuckles scraped against the door, it popped open and she had to stop herself from punching the older gentleman in the face when he appeared.

"What do you want?" he complained, squinting and grumbling as if he had just woken up.

Lennon jumped back in surprise and instantly felt her blood run cold. "Shit... I'm... I'm so sorry... I was told to come here around noon to help Eddie Munson with an English paper?" she wondered apologetically, clutching onto her bag with her shaking hands.

The man's disgruntled face turned soft and smooth, washing his wrinkles with relief. He focused his tired eyes on her jacket and recognized where he had seen it before; only, he remembered seeing it in a ball of denim and hair on Eddie's bed last time. "Shit... You're that girl..." he responded apprehensively and rubbed at his eyes. The man sighed, widened the door, and quickly opened his home to Lennon.

She wondered what girl he was referring to. She didn't recognize the man but he acted as if he knew her. She stared at him curiously before she connected the dots to the night she spent there.

She remembered hearing a voice in the distance which woke her from her slumber but never saw anybody to connect the voice to. It had to be him.

"You must be Eddie's uncle, right?" she pondered, stepping in and getting a whiff of gasoline and gunpowder as she walked past the older man dressed in blue and white striped pajama pants and a dirty wife-beater.

"That little shit doesn't understand the value of a good night's sleep. Little bastard..." he muttered in a raspy, crackly voice as if he didn't acknowledge Lennon's question. He shut the door behind her and sighed. "Yeah... I'm Wayne," he started softly. "I'm the little shit's uncle!" he shouted sleepily as he shuffled his feet past the kitchen.

Lennon held her breath and forced her body not to respond to the sudden rise in the man's carrying voice as he made his way into the hall where his and Eddie's room resided. She exhaled slowly in an attempt to calm her nerves and tried not to eavesdrop on him yelling at Eddie from inside his room.

But Wayne had a voice that traveled far and wide and Lennon couldn't avoid it.

"Get your ass up!" Wayne yelled, knocking on his door but when he didn't respond, Eddie's uncle opened the door and disappeared behind the wall. "Eddie! I ain't dealing with your lady friend for you. Move your... for fucksake... You piece of shit..."

Then there was clattering and grumbling and grunting and Lennon found that her feet were moving faster than her mind could think. She slowly made her way towards the sound and peered in from the doorway to find Wayne pulling Eddie by the leg. He had him in his grasp until Eddie's head hit the railing of his bed frame, sliding to the ground with a look of disagreement on his face but he didn't look lucid enough to complain.

His eyes remained shut and he didn't argue with anything more than groan. All he was capable of doing was rubbing at his sore eyes but Wayne seemed to have different plans. Eddie didn't move from his position on the ground while Wayne moved to rifle through his messy sheets like he was searching for something in particular.

Lennon should have probably looked away or made her way back into the living room but she couldn't. Her eyes went to Eddie and how pale his face looked. His hair was frizzy and sightly tangled and his loose plaid pajama pants were hanging lowly on his waist, revealing the band of his black briefs and yet another tattoo on his hipbone.

But even with his revelation of skin on display, her eyes were back on Wayne.

Eddie's uncle managed to find whatever he was looking for then moved to his entertainment center and started shuffling through Eddie's things there.

Lennon wasn't too focused on Wayne or Eddie by then. She was actually too stunned to focus on either of them when Wayne rattled every time he moved.

She saw two small orange bottles in his hand as he grabbed fistfuls of paper liners, a small tin, lighters, pills in metal boxes that looked like Altoids from afar, a small blue vile, tabs, and shoved his pockets full of more small bottles that rattled like the ones he had in his hand.

"You're a real piece of shit, you know that," Wayne winced when he raided Eddie's room.

"Mhm," Eddie agreed, sighing and laying limp with the backs of his hands to his eye sockets.

When he was done in there, he was rifling through his things in the closet.

"The fuck have we been over? My shit is my shit and you don't touch this dirty fucking-" Wayne stumbled over the pillow that fell from the foot of Eddie's bed when he turned. As he found his footing, he saw Lennon standing there with a pale face and worried eyes scanning the room nervously.

"Shit... This ain't... Look," Wayne quickly shoved what he had in his hands into his pockets until he looked like a comical cartoon thief with their pockets bursting at the seams with stolen goods.

"I know," she was quick to assure. "About the drugs. I wouldn't ever... You don't have to worry, Mr. Munson..."

Eddie's eyes shot open and he was suddenly scooting away from the door when he turned towards the sound of Lennon's voice.

She didn't think she was so quick-witted until the words came tumbling from her lips. She didn't know about all the drugs Eddie used or sold or... whatever he was doing with them. She only knew about the rumors and she knew about the weed. Other than that, she didn't know he had so many bottles of pills or cocaine or brightly colored pills that Lennon believed to be ecstasy. But she knew she saw something she wasn't supposed to and she didn't want to cause more trouble so she went along with it.

"Nah," he grimaced. "That ain't what I'm talking about, miss," he winced. "Now this miserable piece of shit might be a legal adult but I ain't no bad uncle, you hear me?" he leered. He didn't seem threatening but Lennon felt threatened nonetheless.

"I never thought you were, sir," she immediately replied with an innocent look in her eyes that eased Wayne's tension in an instant. "I think what you're doing is respectable and charitable, actually. But uh... I can... I can go if you want..." she frantically looked around the room and started to back away before two voices were speaking over each other and forced her to stop in her tracks.

"No!" Eddie insisted enigmatically.

"That won't be necessary," Wayne said over Eddie, turning towards one another curiously before Lennon reappeared through the doorway.

"You lying to me?" Wayne questioned, again, not sounding mean and scary but making Lennon feel threatened anyway.