As soon as they'd gotten in his room, Sky dropped her bag on the floor and sat down on the edge of his bed without even asking if she could - as if it was the most normal thing in the universe.

Eli's throat went tight.

I have a girl in my room. In my fucking bed!

Well, not thecnically in his bed, as much as on his bed, but still - that was the most amazing thing that had ever happened to him in his whole fucking life. Even if the girl herself seemed to be totally oblivious to the fact that Eli's whole world had just turned upside down.

"Thanks for texting me," She said, "And asking if I was okay. I really appreciate it."

Eli leaned on the wall and stuffed his slightly trembling hands in the pockets of his jeans.

"So, are you? Okay?"

"No," Sky said with a shrug. "There's a YouTube video of me getting coffee all over myself, called 'Crazy Slut wins wet T-shirt contest'. I've lost all my so-called friends and the school suspended me for a week. So yeah, I've had better days." She made a face. "Though, I've had worse ones too."

Eli looked down at his toes. Of course, he knew none of that was really his fault but still he felt guilty.

"I'm sorry—"

"Don't. It doesn't matter. I know how to study by myself anyways, so." A small moment of silence followed. Sky let out a sigh and looked down, so that her red curls fell to hide her face from Eli.

"I just... didn't want to be alone tonight." She continued. "You know, whenever stuff like this happened before, I would go to my best friend Kat - she lived next door - and we would talk about it, but now—"

"Oh, I get it, she still lives in–"

"She's dead." Sky replied, and Eli's jaw dropped. Whatever he had expected, it sure wasn't that.

"Oh. Oh, shit, I'm sorry Sky–"

He momentarily forgot the awesomeness of the fact that he had a girl sitting on his bed, forgot to be awkward and nervous, and just sat down by her side, so close that he felt the warmth of her body in the air between them.

"You want to... talk about it?" He asked, and Sky replied with a shrug of her slender shoulders.

"Kat and I, we were friends since kindergarten. Kinda like you and Demetri. She was like a sister to me. I fucking loved her. And now... she's been dead for six.. no, seven months." Sky said silently, still staring at the floor. "And I miss her so, that it drives me mad. Sometimes it gets me so fucking low. I just... I just miss talking to her."

"What happened?" Eli asked. "How did she—"

Sky made a small sound, which could have been a laugh or a sob.

"If I go there, I'm gonna cry. So let's not start that. Today has been shitty enough already."

Eli was pretty sure that there was something he was supposed to do or say in a situation like this, but for the life of him he couldn't think of anything. He desperately didn't want Sky to start crying - he was already so bad at interacting with girls, and if they were crying, well, just the thought of it made him panic.

It probably had something to do with the fact that he was on the spectrum. Social situations had always been difficult for him, so full of shades of grey, his black and white brain just couldn't grasp.

Luckily Sky seemed to be oblivious to Eli's inner torment. She turned to look at him, and as their eyes met, Eli's heart skipped a couple of beats. Even now, pale and tired and clearly at the verge of tears, Sky was so pretty, his throat went tight.

"I like talking to you." Sky said, her voice silent and soft. "It's easy. With Sam, and the rest of them, it was always like they never really listened. And I couldn't talk about Kat to them, they wouldn't have understood–"

"I like talking to you too." Eli said, and then quickly shut his mouth before he could say more.

He still couldn't quite believe that Sky was here. That she was actually here, sitting on his bed, and she had said that she liked talking to him–

Part of Eli was still scared that this was some kind of a clever trick, to get him to reveal things that the bullies would use against him. He suspected he could never trust people with ease, not after all the things Yasmine, Kyler and the rest of them had put him through.

But he wanted to trust Sky, wanted it so very badly, wanted for all this to be real and not just a game - and hadn't she proved herself to him enough times already?

Sky gave a long sigh, and lay down on the bed, on her back, and threw her arms to her sides. Her legs still dangled over the edge, her small sneaker covered feet almost touching the carpet. The hem of her shirt rose a bit, revealing a strand of bare skin between the waistband of her jeans and the shirt. Pale, smooth, soft girl's skin—

Eli's throat bobbed, and he had sudden difficulties in swallowing. His eyes were drawn to her body, to the soft rise and fall of her chest, the curve of her breast under the fabric of the shirt—

Sky glanced at him through her lashes, and he felt like he was about to fucking melt under that gaze. He suspected that she knew exactly what was going through his mind, and it made him feel like an idiot. She had come here because she needed a friend. That was all he was to her, and he wasn't gonna complain, because he would take whatever it was that she was prepared to give him. Still, it made him feel like a creep - she was sad, heartbroken thinking about all the stuff that had happened, mourning for her dead friend, and what was he?

Nothing but a fucking horny idiot.

"Have you always had that scar?" Sky asked then, out of the blue, and instantly Eli covered the said scar with his hand. He turned his eyes down.

So that's all she sees when she looks at you. Just like everyone.

You were a fucking moron to think anything else.

He shook his head, swallowed his bitter disappointment.

"Yeah, almost. I had a... a cleft lip when I was born. They fixed it with surgery."

"You know, I think scars are cool." Sky said silently. "They tell stories of things that happened to us."

"Cool?" Eli felt a sudden anger stirring inside of him. "There's nothing cool about this! This... this makes me a freak! You know the things they say–"

"You shouldn't listen to what those idiots say. They know nothing."

"Well, easy for you to say. You're beautiful! I am... I'm a fucking monster!"

A moment of silence followed his outburst. Eli took a deep breath, and another, to push the anger, the hurt back down. It wasn't Sky's fault, none of it was. He just had so much anger inside, built on years and years of repression, that sometimes it was hard to keep it all under the surface.

"I'm sorry–" he mumbled. "I didn't mean to–"

"Eli."

He turned to look at her, and froze as he saw what she was doing. She was still lying on the bed, on her back and her slender fingers were opening the buttons of her shirt, one by one, revealing the moon-withe skin underneath - and that sight hit Eli straight to his gut like a fucking wreckingball.

"What–?" He cleared his throat. "What are you doing–?"

Sky didn't reply, but finished opening the buttons - she was wearing a pink lace bra underneath and just seeing it made Eli's brain overheat. He could barely breathe, and suddenly his jeans began to feel too tight.

At the same time, he was painfully aware of the fact that the door of his room was wide open, and that Mom was home.

"Look," Sky said, and pulled the shirt off her left shoulder.

And that's when he understood. The heat in his body subsided, as he looked at the large, star-shaped scar on Sky's shoulder, right under her collarbone.

"What..?" he didn't know what to say. The scar looked new, it was bright red and raw and big, and he thought it must've hurt like Hell when she got that. It looked like she'd been shot—

He looked back up, met her green, shadowed eyes.

"What happened to you?"

"A story for another time." she said, and broke their eye contact. Quickly she sat up, and started buttoning up her shirt again, hiding the white skin and the pink bra, and the scar.

"I had no idea." Eli said. "I'm sorry."

"Please don't tell anyone. I don't want them to know."

"Yeah, okay."

As soon as she was finished with the buttons, Sky stood up and walked to her bag, which was still by the door. She bent to take something from it, and when she turned around, Eli realized it was a bottle.

"So yeah," Sky said, with a bitter tone as she opened the bottle and took a large gulp of whatever was inside (Eli had a feeling it wasn't water). "You got your sob story, I got mine. Hell, I got more than one."

"I guess someone would say that everyone has a sob story," Eli noted.

"Well, not everyone," Sky replied. "Some people do have it fucking perfect. Like Yasmine. Or Moon. Hey, you want some?"

She offered him the small glass bottle.

"What is it?"

"Tequila," she said. "Works for everything, broken hearts included."

"I don't think–" Eli started, and glanced at the door. It was still open, and he could clearly hear Mom downstairs, moving around the kitchen, probably making supper.

"What?" Sky laughed, and followed his glance.

"Probably not the best idea to start drinking here." he said in a low tone. "My Mom–"

Sky took another sip of the bottle, and then walked to the door and slammed it.

"Please don't tell me you have an 'open door policy' or something."

"Actually–"

"I just said don't tell me." Sky replied and then switched off the lights, leaving them in shadows that were only softened by the street light entering the room through the curtains. She walked back towards him, and offered him the bottle.

Hesitatingly, Eli glanced at the flask, and then back to Sky.

He wasn't used to drinking. They had tasted beer with Demetri last summer, but they'd only managed to sneak a couple cans off Demetri's parent's fridge and so there wasn't really much to talk about that. Besides Tequila, he suspected, would be another thing entirely.

"Go on, Tiger," Sky said with a crooked smile. "Just have some. Your Mom will never know."

Her eyes were dark, and her pupils were huge, they had swallowed the green irises and Eli could see his own wide eyed reflection in them.

He snatched the bottle, and brought it to his lips, took a big gulp of the liquid - and almost choked on it. It fucking burnt all the way down, and his eyes teared up as he fought to keep the booze down.

Sky made a small laugh and took the bottle from his fingers, her eyes never leaving his, closed it and tossed it on the bed. And then - oh fucking God - she laid her small hands on his shoulders, and climbed to sit on his lap, straddling him so that her thighs were both sides of his hips.

Her lips were only inches from his, her breath tasted like tequila and Eli's mouth went dry.

"Sky–" he breathed, his voice suddenly weird and thick in his throat, but he didn't even know what he wanted to say and in any case he didn't get to finish that sentence, because–

Because her lips were on his, and he was falling in pieces.

It wasn't at all like the small kiss she'd given him after school the day before, the pity-kiss as he had begun to think of it.

No, this was the real deal.

Sky's soft lips pressed tight against his mouth, and he reacted instinctively, opening his lips as she buried her fingers into his hair.

He was fucking burning.

Their tongues met, and he drank in her taste of salt and iron and tequila, fell into the feeling of having her this close to him. Her breasts were squeezed against his chest, and images of soft, white skin and the pink lace bra were flashing through his mind, as he brought his hands to her waist and gripped her hard. The insides of her mouth were so fucking hot and slick, it blew his mind. He couldn't think about anything else, he didn't even want to think about anything else.

His blood was rushing through his veins in a burning flood, his heart was hammering in his chest so that it felt like it was gonna escape through his ribcage - but he didn't fucking care. All he cared about was that they were kissing, and she was making soft moans into the kiss, she was moving her body on him, trying to squirm even closer, her hips were rocking against his–

Eli made a desperate groan into her mouth. He realized that Sky must feel the massive hard-on that was stretching his jeans, and it was both embarassing and fucking awesome.

He had never been this turned on in his whole life. He knew he'd fucking explode if she kept on like this, but still, he wanted this never to end–

And right then the door opened, the bright light of the hallway entered the room and Sky broke the kiss with a gasp, her chest heaving.

"Eli!" Mom stood at the doorway, staring at them with a shocked expression on her face. She held a plate of sandwiches in her frozen hand.

Sky was on her feet in a nanosecond. "I'm sorry!" she gasped. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have–"

She picked up the bottle that had fallen to the floor, grabbed her backpack and fled the room, passing Mom on the doorway. Eli heard how she ran the stairs down, probably two steps at the time.

"Eli–" Mom started, turning her wide-eyed gaze back at him. "The open door policy! You know better, than–"

"Mom, you've ruined everything!" he shouted, the emotion making his voice crack. "Just– just leave me alone!"

And with that he got on his shaky feet, grabbed the door and shut it on Mom's face

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