𝚈𝚘𝚞 𝚔𝚗𝚎𝚠 𝙸 𝚠𝚊𝚜 𝚌𝚘𝚖𝚒𝚗𝚐 '𝚌𝚊𝚞𝚜𝚎 𝚢𝚘𝚞 𝚑𝚎𝚊𝚛𝚍 𝚖𝚢 𝚗𝚊𝚖𝚎

𝙱𝚞𝚝 𝚢𝚘𝚞 𝚍𝚘𝚗'𝚝 𝚔𝚗𝚘𝚠 𝚖𝚢 𝚐𝚊𝚖𝚎 𝚊𝚗𝚍 𝚗𝚎𝚟𝚎𝚛 𝚏𝚎𝚕𝚝 𝚖𝚢 𝚙𝚊𝚒𝚗.

𝙲𝚊𝚗'𝚝 𝚛𝚎𝚊𝚍 𝚖𝚢 𝚋𝚛𝚊𝚒𝚗 𝚋𝚞𝚝 𝚢𝚘𝚞 𝚛𝚎𝚊𝚍 𝚖𝚢 𝚕𝚒𝚙𝚜

𝙰𝚗𝚍 𝚐𝚘𝚝 𝚜𝚌𝚊𝚛𝚎𝚍 𝚠𝚑𝚎𝚗 𝚢𝚘𝚞 𝚑𝚎𝚊𝚛𝚍 𝚝𝚑𝚊𝚝 𝙸 𝚠𝚊𝚜 𝚌𝚘𝚖𝚒𝚗𝚐 𝚠𝚒𝚝𝚑 𝚑𝚒𝚝𝚜.

𝙽𝚘𝚠 𝚍𝚘𝚗'𝚝 𝚎𝚟𝚎𝚗 𝚝𝚛𝚒𝚙, 𝚋𝚎 𝚊 𝚖𝚊𝚗 𝚒𝚗𝚜𝚝𝚎𝚊𝚍.

𝙶𝚒𝚟𝚎 𝚝𝚑𝚊𝚗𝚔𝚜 𝙸'𝚖 𝚊𝚕𝚒𝚟𝚎 𝚠𝚑𝚎𝚗 𝙸 𝚜𝚑𝚘𝚞𝚕𝚍 𝚋𝚎 𝚍𝚎𝚊𝚍

Lennon paused, standing in the wintery hall for longer than she felt reasonable. She contemplated actually leaving.

She didn't know what Eddie had in mind but it worried her.

He had moved on from the fact he was high on drugs awfully fast and he seemed to have forgotten how he was actively ignoring her before last night.

Was this punishment?

Was this a way of sealing some deal he made with the devil?

Was he planning on trying something with her?

Were there men waiting to gang up on her?

She could be walking into anything. She just chose to imagine the best-case scenario.

The bell rang and even though she had managed to grow a tolerance to the alarm, she flinched. The sound practically sent her off toward the field in a hurry. She turned over her shoulder and checked to see if anybody was around. She didn't know if she was relieved or disappointed to see that it was just her.

She was alone and walking through the snow to get to the football field.

Her head was running a mile a minute by then. She had reached the field that carried a few inches of snow on the ground and trudged through it to reach the other side.

She glanced over her shoulder again to see if she was being followed or if there would be any bystanders to witness what Eddie had in store for her.

She knew what she was doing was wrong and yet she couldn't stop herself.

It might have been the hope of talking to Eddie or it could have been the fact she was too distressed about her sudden realization to let it steal her excitement but she walked through the woods anyway.

Her feet made a satisfying crunch under her shoes as she crept further into the icy, dead wonderland behind the school. There was a slim trail that led all the way to an opening littered with cigarette butts, cans of soda and beer, and a tattered wooden bench occupied the center of it all.

Lennon looked up at the sky and saw the snowfall had stopped. The spiny branches of brown and grey cleared above her to reveal the stark white sky looming above. There was no cover above but she still felt trapped, like a rabbit in a magic box. The only way out was up and yet she couldn't reach freedom.

She let out a breath of air and cleared a spot on the bench for her to sit. She kept her eyes peeled for something that would send her back to school but she never found anything unnerving.

The place Eddie must have meant to gather at seemed completely normal.

There were no peeping eyes from around trees or dirty needles littering the ground. No drugs, no people, and she started to think it was far too cold for him to try something on her.

She sat there for about twenty minutes, wondering if she had gotten the wrong idea and gone too far into the woods. She started to wonder if Eddie was making a fool out of her and if he wasn't coming at all. She started to feel self-conscious the longer she sat alone.

She had just started to convince herself she was fine when a voice called out to her and caused her to gasp and tense every muscle in her body.

Her wide eyes ran toward the sound and found Eddie to be making his way toward her with an apologetic smile plastered to his face.

"Sorry," he put his hands up in defense to show her he meant no harm. "I tried not to startle you."

Her hand went white against the bench, clutching it for dear life until she had to courage to let go and feel the ache in her knuckles.

She got to her feet and sighed.

"What... What is this place?" she asked,

Eddie's smile turned to a smirk as he came up beside her and set his lunchbox down on top of the bench.

"It's pretty cool right?" he beamed. "Sometimes the guys and I come down here late at night so we don't get the cops called on us for having the music too loud," he chuckled.

Lennon smiled nervously and wondered if that was the only reason the cops have been called on him.

"How long have you been doing that?" she questioned, rubbing her hand over her knuckles that were wrapped to the edge of the bench a little too harshly.

"Uh... Maybe a year," he admitted, looking to the sky in thought before flipping the lid of his lunchbox and revealing a heaping load of drugs that made it impossible for him to pack a lunch in.

"What are you doing?" she asked sketchily, moving her eyes from the bags, vials, and bottles in his box to find his eyes looking over them like it was a masterpiece he had worked on for years.

Eddie took out a bag of blue crystals and set them down on the bench. He then moved for another bag filled with black powder that Lennon had no idea contained. Another bag was filled to the brim with a white substance and a final one was full of brown powder that was far too fine to have been sand.

"I wanted to apologize for... Being dumb as shit the other night," he admitted, pulling a few vitals of liquid from his lunchbox that Lennon believed to be some kind of medical-grade pain killer.

"What? By doing all the drugs you have in one go?" she scoffed incredulously, feeling her pulse quicken at the sight of the growing inventory.

Crystal meth, several variants of heroin and coke, pain killers, orange pill bottles, prescriptions, brightly colored tabs that had been dulled over time, and a tin can containing flakey white stuff that Lennon found out to be ketamine.

"No," Eddie informed her. "Special K, acid," he picked up the papers and opened the mint tin for her to see the drugs inside. "Speed, meth, coke," he handed her the bags of powder and watched how her eyes immediately grew wide with fear as she held onto his drugs.

"Eddie," she quickly put them back down on the table. "I don't anything to do with this shit," she ridiculed him, realizing there was no way he was going to set this bench as a stage for some kind of amusement to any onlookers. He wouldn't show her all his drugs with so many eyes on him unless he wanted a life sentence in jail.

"You don't have to," he told her. "Help me with something real quick?" he deserted his drugs on the bench and left Lennon to further his way into the wooded area that drew parallel to the school.

"Ed-" she began to call out before hurrying to follow him. If he was abandoning her, she didn't want to be left alone so she followed him.

He stopped near a large tree not too far from the open space around the bench and rounded a very rusty barrel hiding behind it.

"Eddie," she huffed out, stopping and watching him lower his body to reach for the bottom of the barrel as if to move it.

"Help me move this a little closer?"

She knew he came here often because he had come to this barrel like he knew it was always there. He set his illegal paraphernalia down on the bench with confidence, meaning nobody ever caught him here.

She started to disbelieve her peers even more now and hate herself for believing them over Eddie.

"Why? What the hell are you doing?" she asked haphazardly.

"Just," he chuckled charmingly. "Trust me."

That damn smile. Those damn eyes.

She stopped everything and felt her inside get warm underneath them.

Trust.

She didn't trust anybody after the trials. She didn't even trust herself sometimes, it was why she didn't drive and why she sought approval over the things she did even though they might not have made her change her mind about them.

Trust.

Who did she trust entirely enough to give them that for anything and everything?

She lowered herself and followed Eddie's lead, taking the barrel by the bottom lip and setting her other hand down on the top lip, lifting it above the ground and leading the way toward the open space by the bench.

She had her eyes lowered to the ground, making sure not to trip over dead vines, branches, or tree roots as she walked backward. However, she missed the delicate smile curling the ends of Eddie's lips as he watched how she bit down on the tip of her tongue in concentration.

The sight was too innocent not to smile upon. She was oblivious to his glances and it felt like he was watching something not meant for his eyes. Yet, he reveled in her distracted, green, glowing eyes and relished the sight of her tongue peeking out from between her teeth.

"Where?" she asked, finally looking up from the ground and catching Eddie off guard as he had been caught staring. A smile crept up to her lips and Eddie immediately blushed.

"Here's fine," he lowered himself and dropped the barrel down on the fluffy snow.

Lennon kept watching him as he rubbed his hands together to counter the cold metal weight that was released from his fingers.

"It's cold," he winced, pulling his lips to his hands to blow warm air into them.

"You think?" Lennon laughed, watching him make his move for the drugs before smiling mischievously.

She was about to ask what he was thinking but he had suddenly thrown one of his pill bottles over his shoulder and all Lennon could do was try to catch it before it hit her.

"Eddie!" she exclaimed, catching the bottle with a loud rattle.

Eddie smiled and threw another, then another, and never once did he hear it hit the ground.

"Eddie! What the hell?!"

"Fire!" he growled whimsically, turning on his heels with bags of drugs hanging from his grasp. "We shall grow a fire with thee blessed drugs!" he shook the bags and tossed one to her, clearing one of his hands so he could reach into his pocket for a lighter.

"What?" she giggled, catching the blue crystals and wondering what his head must have been like to have come up with such a thing.

"A fire!" he thundered as he did during his D&D games, pulling the small red lighter into the air and clutching it victoriously.

He moved for the bag of white powder in his hand and dropped the entire bag into the barrel, including the plastic which kept the coke from flying out of the small holes near the bottom. Eddie then turned back for the tabs and lit them on fire before dropping it into the barrel and watching a small explosion occur inside.

He jumped back and so did Lennon who was laughing hysterically.

"What the fuck was that?!"Lennon hissed, eyes wide and delirious on Eddie as he cursed under his breath and smiled at the sudden flame.

"Coke," he said so nonchalantly that it made Lennon laugh more.

"Why are you starting fires with cocaine?" she asked in between giggles, watching him grab for another container and empty out the contents which didn't result in an explosion but instead caught fire and began to warm up his hands that loomed above the top of the barrel.

"Because, thanks to you, I've realized I run back to drugs at the slightest inconvenience because it is convenient, isn't it?" he explained thoughtfully, walking between the barrel and the bench as he emptied his lunchbox right before her eyes. "I was wrong and... I thought this was a good way of showing you that I'm serious when I say I'm sorry."

She still didn't quite understand his methods but she was beginning to understand more than before. Her silence must have relieved her curiosity and confusion before Eddie continued.

"Oh!" he exclaimed as another thought crossed his mind. "And that little stunt you pulled last night," he waved his finger in the air accusatorily. "Calling my uncle," he warned her. "That was sneaky," he clicked his tongue and dumped another bag of heroin into the fire.

Lennon smiled guilty but she didn't apologize for it. She didn't regret it.

"It was better than risking you taking more when you got home," she admitted.

Eddie's playful tone turned softer and his shoulders slumped with appreciation. "That," he pointed in between her eyes and stopped in his tracks for a moment to gaze into them, witnessing the sincerity within them up close. "I didn't really believe I meant that much to anyone until you..."

Eddie licked his lips in thought, flicking his gaze between her eyes and nodding conclusively. "Yeah..." he said before stalking off.

Lennon didn't know what to say. She didn't even know what else to do other than stand there with her arms full of what drugs he had left.

"So!" he said matter-of-factly., turning to her and popping the lid of his remaining bottle. He dumped the pills into the fire without looking and dropped the bottle after it, obviously putting on a show for whatever reason. "I wanted to make it up to you..."

"By letting me burn your stash?" she giggled, raising her brows and following Eddie to the fire, inhaling and almost coughing on what came up from the contents.

She cringed and handed Eddie his drugs before stepping away.

"Yeah... Don't get a contact high. Stay over there," he waved her away playfully and finished the ritual with her watching from the bench.

"I know this doesn't make up for the fact I... overreacted," he stopped and considered what he wanted to say, correcting himself from sounding too condescending. "But it's the best I can do..."

Lennon smiled softly and he came over to sit across from her.

"It's enough," she promised. "Thanks..."

"For what?" Eddie asked with a puzzled expression written across his face.

Lennon sighed and picked at her shaking hands. "For taking a chance..." she trailed off, avoiding his gaze and focusing on the white skin flaking from around her nails. "On me and... taking the first leap..."

Eddie furrowed his brows and considered her words before speaking out. He watched how shy she had gotten, or maybe sheltered was a better word. She was quieter, more aware. She couldn't hide her care for him and it was nearly impossible to understate the severity of her feelings for him.

"With getting clean or getting with you?" he smirked, tilting his head down to make his eyes seem bigger and more earnest.

Lennon smiled sweetly and felt the heat rise to her cheeks. "Both."