HIS FAVORITE GINGER ✓

THIRTY-ONE.

...i could tell you was analyzing me, i could tell you was criticizing me, i could tell you was fantasizing that you would come slide in me and confide in me...

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Alejandro

I watched as Gray clutched Sapphire tighter to his chest, as if the cat was going to be one with the air any moment, while the cat's food plate dangled around his fingers as we stepped into his new home - our mansion.

He didn't seem angry again - well if you didn't count the many attempts to pummel his very own father to a pulp. Taylor would've easily restructured his bones like an French fries with those yam muscles of his but I had to cool Grayson's blazing ass off - that was if cooling off meant applying a painful, offensive karate move of paralysis.

Momentarily contemplating whether to act all homily hospitable and not hardcore hostile like three hours ago, I yelled with cringy enthusiasm, "Welcome ho -"

"Shut. It."

My mouth instantly clipped shut at his envenomed voice exasperated from all my miserable efforts of cheering him up during our ride here.

I could practically smell the anger radiating off of him, if I exclude the thick cloud of grief surrounding him that is. And don't be surprised I know all this, he practically poured out every drop of his soul to me while he packed.

Imagine this.

Your mother eventually impaled her throat after years of chronic alcoholism, minutary madness and heavy depression. All because of a simple divorce.

You've worked in uncountable places and have done even more uncountable jobs here and there since your mother is already a jobless mess. Everything is just to provide food for the hungry mouth - with a s - at home.

You sponsored every school fee, every house bill, every visit to and fro hospitals after hospitals, therapists after therapists, psychologists after psychologists, psychiatrists after psychiatrists. Every while, running helter skelter.

You stubbornly rejected the allowances and visits from your dad - the court ordered him to - and refused to move with him or inform the court of your mom because you love her despite her condition and do not want to abandon her for a random rich family.

You almost killed yourself too feeling all empty and bitter - like why the hell was I born to a family or to this people or why is life so unfair to me or I'm too young for this - and those miserable shit.

Then the fateful day after the unfaithful day, the main cause - aka your father who's now the stepfather of your crush - decides to show up. You have to leave the house where all your childhood was spent and eventually move in with him since you're not 18 and even can't afford your own apartment without snapping into two.

The most bitter part is that you can't help it but it's true as the gospel. You can't hate your father.

I rest my case.

"Welcome darling." My mom - Freya opened her arms wide and engulfed him in an hug that lasted probably thirty minutes. "I'm so sorry for what happened. Things like this shouldn't even happen to you. You're way too young."