Managing Boys

Managing Boys (14)

The ride home from the club was silent, but I was expecting it to be. Grim and I had never exactly been the chattiest while we were together, and what had just happened was not going to help with that at all. I wouldn’t have been surprised if we never spoke to each other ever again after everything that I had told him.

I thought he was going to just drop me off at home, so I was surprised when he parked down the street and got out of the car with me. Not that I was complaining, because I didn’t exactly want to be alone right then. I never noticed how nice it was to actually have someone around.

When I opened the front door to my house, it was quiet. The lights were on downstairs, but no sound. It almost felt like a scene in a horror movie.

“Everything okay?” Grim asked me as he came inside and noticed I had stopped to listen.

Without even answering him, I made my way toward the living room. Not surprisingly, my father was there, fast asleep. It was pretty late, but it hadn’t even passed my curfew yet. It was pretty early for my dad to be asleep, and the same for Sophie, who I assumed was upstairs and asleep, since her light was off.

I turned toward the stairs, quickly making my way up them so I wouldn’t wake my father up. Grim followed right after me into my room.

“You didn’t have to walk me up to my room,” I muttered when he opened the door for me. “To be completely honest, having you act so kindly toward me is really weird. I’m not used to it.”

Grim shrugged. “Well, you will be.”

I just stood there, unsure of what to do next. I could have gotten into bed, but I felt that would be too weird and awkward with Grim standing right there beside me. So I just stood in the middle of my room, staring at him.

“Do you think your dad would kill me if he found me in your room?” Grim finally asked me after a few moments of awkward silence.

I merely shrugged. “I don’t know. He doesn’t know what happened to me, so it isn’t like he’s worried about something like that… But who knows. You’re a boy.”

I didn’t want to talk about what had happened to me any longer. I just wanted to forget, even though I knew I’d never be able to. But I could have at least tried, couldn’t I?

When Grim’s phone started to ring, he shoved his hand in his pocket and pulled it out, trying to answer it before my father could hear it downstairs. If I was lucky, Sophie was already asleep so she wouldn’t have been able to hear it. She could almost sleep through anything.

“What?” Grim snapped into the phone. I sat down on my bed, hoping he had read the caller ID so he knew who it was. "What do you want?"

“Grim!” I heard the familiar voice of Ben whine through the phone. He was so loud that I could almost hear him clearly. “Did you seriously take the car?”

No amount of concern flickered across Grim’s face, but I expected as much from the blonde boy. “Yes, I did. I took Aria with me, too. It’s nice that you noticed she was gone.”

I could tell Ben blinked a couple of times, as if he was trying to remember who I was or something. “Aria came with us?”

“Is he drunk?” I had to ask, afraid of the answer that I already knew.

Grim let out a frustrated breath. “You had to ask?”

I didn’t even dare ask about Sawyer and Ash, because I was almost sure I wasn’t going to like what Grim told me. All I could do was hope that they didn’t get caught like last time, because I knew I’d be fired for sure. I was supposed to be watching them even closer now after everything that had happened to them.