Firecracker

24 ✔️

I KNEW, WITHOUT A DOUBT, THAT THIS PSYCHOTIC B*TCH WAS going to shoot me if she had to.

I could see it by the look in her eyes.

She didn't—never, cared about me. Not legitimately. This whole entire time, she'd been playing me. I had been just a plan to her. The reason for her romantic failure with the love of my life—the only guy that I've ever been in love with.

"Lydia," I began softly, slowly pushing Michael aside. I didn't want him to fight this battle. It was mine. Though this had to do with him just as much as me, I was the only one she was going to be willing to hurt, "You are my friend"

She scoffed and rolled her eyes, tightening her grip on the gun, but I decided to continue nonetheless.

"You're my best friend," I ignored how Michael tensed beside me, "We've done everything together for the past two years"

"Your point?"

"Has all of that meant nothing to you?" Instead of fear and curiosity and sadness, the feeling that began to gather at the pit of my stomach was anger, "I've told you everything. How much Michael had hurt me, how much I still loved him, how much you meant to me by helping me through it all. Are you really going to stand there and tell me that you would really put a bullet through my head after all of that?" I balled my fists at my sides, looking for something, anything to tell me that she had ever cared about me. That there had been maybe one moment over the past two years that she actually considered me her friend and not her enemy.

But there was nothing.

Nothing.

"You took away the one thing that mattered to me-"

"You took away the one thing that mattered to me!" I cut her off, "And you're still trying to do so! All of this, Lydia. You are doing all of this because of something that I was never in control of to begin with?" I was incredulous now. I couldn't, wouldn't believe that she was this mentally insane, "Are you seriously going to shoot me right now? Because you can't move on from a guy that has never liked you-"

A shot went off.

It was quick, it was loud, and it hit the wall to the left of me, right in between Calum and I. I didn't move.

It was then that I saw it. In her eyes.

She didn't want to shoot me. I was right.

She did enjoy our friendship. I could get through to her.

Michael was back in front of me again, shielding me from Lydia's direct aim of the gun. Almost immediately, she lowered it, not wanting to risk shooting him.

"Move, Michael" she told him, her voice wavering. The gun in her hands shook slightly as she held eye contact with him.

"You're sick" he spat, anger in his words, his body rigid. I could tell that his words hurt her, and I saw her eyes glaze over.

"Don't say that baby-"

"You're a-"I touched his shoulder, silencing his words before he could say them. Lydia watched my every move.

"Don't hurt her" I told him softly, part of me still caring about her. Lydia, whether I knew it was her or not, had been there for me for the second hardest part of my life. Whether I wanted to admit it or not, she was important to me. Just like Michael and Calum were. I didn't want to see her get hurt by Michael's words, because I knew that she had already been going through too much pain.

It hurt me a lot when Michael had begun sleeping with other girls, and it hurt even more when I would catch him doing it in the house that we shared. Lydia had to watch Michael and I together for years, and then watch him with other girls as well, and then with me again. I knew what that felt like.