Crushing On The Bully (Crushing on You 2)

“The bus station, restaurants, bars, alleyways. Hell, I’ll go door to door if I have to,” Skull said.

“I’d rather not go door to door,” Clarissa laughed.

“Okay, maybe we’ll skip that one, maybe,” Skull said.

“Good,” Clarissa laughed.

Upon arriving at the St. Louis Arch Clarissa swallowed hard. She had been to St. Louis before, but the sheer size of the city had always unnerved her.

“There’s a parking garage over there,” Skull said pointing to a building in the distance.

“I know,” Clarissa said, more harshly than she had planned.

“Sorry,” Skull muttered.

“It’s okay,” Clarissa sighed, “I’m sorry too. I’ve been here before so I know where the parking garage is, but I don’t think we’ll be at the Arch long, will we?”

“That depends,” Skull shrugged, “I don’t know. I figured we’d park the car for now and come back to it when we move to the next place.”

“Do you want to ride the Arch while we’re here?” she asked.

“Nah,” Skull said shaking his head, “We have too much to do and I’d like to do most of it while we still have daylight to burn.”

After six hours of being drug all over St. Louis several times over Clarissa was tired, hungry, and frustrated.

“My feet are killing me, Skull!” she said, sitting down on the curb, “I can’t keep this up.”

“You can head back if you want to,” Skull told her, “I want to check a few more places.”

“Skull, please, just let’s go home,” Clarissa said.

“I thought you understood how important this is to me!” Skull said and turned away heading down another alleyway.

“I do!” Clarissa shouted running after him, even though her feet protested with every step making her move in an awkward limping motion.

“No, you don’t!” he yelled back.

“Skull, I know this is important to you, but we’ve been everywhere on your list! We’ve been most places two or three times. We haven’t even met a single person who’s heard of Aaron! Come on, Skull, St. Louis is a big city! It was a shot in the dark!” Clarissa shouted.

Skull turned to face her and waited for Clarissa to catch up to him.

“I’m not saying to give up forever; I’m asking you to call it a day!” Clarissa said.

“Fine! Let’s go,” Skull said and began to stalk toward the garage where Green Grandma was parked.

“Skull!” Clarissa called after him.

“What?! You said you wanted to go, let’s go,” Skull said.

The drive home wasn’t pleasant. Skull sat in broody silence while Clarissa made weak attempts at conversation. He would nod or grunt in reply, but refused to speak.

“Skull,” she sighed, “I’m sorry, okay? I’m sorry I can only walk all over a damn city two or three times before I can’t take anymore.”

“Turn here,” he said as they turned onto Glenstone Avenue.

“Why?” Clarissa asked, missing the turn.

“You can drop me off at my apartment,” Skull said.