First Love Only Love (The Life 2)

My lips were already starting to swell when I cleaned the blood away, and I could barely see out of my left eye. I had the urge to just let myself cry just this once but again fought it back. Instead, I let the anger build up inside to help fuel my rage.

This is what it feels like to be bullied I guess because that’s exactly what they’d done. Sure, no one else even said anything, only Gia, but it’s the same since they just stood around and watched. My stupid mind tried reminding me that I’d done the same and worse to her over the years, but I killed that stream of thought because she deserved it, I didn’t, and this just proves it.

She’d waited until mom wasn’t here to protect me, coward, that she is. She’d never have had the nerve had mom not been in jail right now. The reminder that I was all alone made my knees weak, and I felt a kernel of fear start to grow, followed by a play-by-play of all that had gone wrong in the last week or so.

The feeling of imminent doom that overcame me only made me want to explode, and I needed some sort of release before I went insane. I looked around the room, ready to throw something but then had a better idea. I ran from my private bathroom down the hall to Gia’s room, looking for anything to destroy.

I’d barely stepped foot in there when the phone I’d forgotten rang in my pocket. I was going to ignore it, but I can’t afford to do that these days because I have no other way of communicating with anyone since I’d been kicked off the school forum and Twitter had suspended my account for a week. Some asshole had reported me for making threats.

“Hello!”

“Get the fuck outta that room.”

“How do you…?” He hung up, and I looked around in surprise and fear. How did Gabriel Russo know I was in here? I started to ignore him, but something in my gut told me to walk away for now. Maybe this is the problem. I’ve been too rash lately, and that’s why all of this was happening.

I’ve never had to think about these things before, never had to watch my step, because Gia had always known her place, and besides, she’s afraid of me, or so I thought. But now, with the Russos backing her, she seems to think she can get away with shit like this. I backed out of the room and went back to mine, feeling miserable and sore.

My mind tried to come up with all the ways Gabriel could’ve known the moment I stepped into the room and settled on one thing; he had the room bugged or something. That explains how he knew to come to her rescue the day I put glue in her hair, how he got here so fast. I felt unsafe alone in the house, not knowing what that creep could see and hear. Did he have eyes in my room too?

I wanted to go into my closet and hide at least until Felix came home, but my mind was too unsettled. I caught myself just in time as I started to pull my hair out. I can’t let Gabriel see me acting like that. I was still holding onto the tiniest glimmer of hope that I could turn this thing around.

I looked around at the chaos that was left of my room after that bitch Ella had cleaned it. She’d spitefully left the broken stuff on my desk with the excuse that she wasn’t sure what I’d like to salvage from the wreckage, but I’ve always known she preferred Gia, and that’s why she’d done it. She wouldn’t have dared had mom been here. My lips stung when I sneered, and I felt the first tear fall.

Because there was nothing else I could do, I lay across my bed feeling sorry for myself and imagining all the ways I was going to make Gia pay. The humiliation set in, the more time passed until I wanted to crawl out of my own skin. My room took the brunt of it again, and by the time I had calmed down, I’d destroyed even more of my stuff. The room spun, making me nauseous and that mixed with my anger had me dropping back down on the bed in defeat and frustration.

More than being jumped, it was the way Gabriel had come to her rescue, the way he’d stood so protectively in front of her that still stung. That should’ve been me. I’m the one he should’ve rushed to like that, and the way he’d looked at her when he ran into the room, like a knight coming to the rescue. My chest hurt as the tears I’d held in check was given free rein.