Beautifully Broken

The world around me comes to a screeching halt. I think I’m going to be sick. I force my gaze up and look over both of my shoulders. No one in particular stands out, but it doesn’t help that I’m a hot topic today, attracting more attention than normal. I look down at the note again. The paper’s a bright white, the words handwritten. I run my thumb over the blue ink, the letters smudge. It’s fresh. Someone dropped this in my locker just before I got here.

“Hey.”

“Mercy.” I jump, not expecting anyone to be behind me. I crumple

the note and shove it in my pocket. I don’t know what I’m going to do with it but sticking it back in my locker seems like a bad idea.

Slamming the metal door with more force than intended I look up to see Rex. He’s taking this boyfriend thing seriously, leaning one shoulder against the wall of metal all sexy-like, like Stefan from the Vampire Diaries. I think I may be a Netflix junkie now. “Did you get my texts?”

Texts? Oh right, lunch. “Yeah, sorry. Mrs. Hale caught me while I was reading them. Couldn’t respond.”

“It’s cool.” He pushes off the lockers and I look up into his eyes, a mistake because those blues are a vortex of beauty and wonder. I get lost in them, counting the colors that swirl within. The only good part to this vortex is for a moment I forget about the note and appreciate how amazing Rex looks. “Are you ready?”

I forgot he was waiting for an answer. Out of the trance that is Rex, worry creeps back. Whoever wrote that note will probably be in the cafeteria watching, reporting my every move across the tracks. “I don’t know Rex.”

“How about compromise. Let me buy you lunch and we can eat at the big tree you like.”

That’s doable. No one will see us there and maybe I can relax a little. Rex has a way of calming my nerves, maybe eating together would be a good idea. The worst I’ll have to do is brave the lunch line. If we hurry, we can be in and out before it gets too busy. “Okay.”

The ziti is delicious. Most school’s food sucks but our principal has a top notch chef in the kitchen. Ziti and prime rib are just what’s on the menu for today and tomorrow. Heaven forbid rich kids eat normal school food like the taco mush my elementary school had.

My mind’s running a mile a minute, bursting with questions I don’t know the answers to. I decide to distract it. It’s evident now more than ever that I have to leave and soon. With our time ticking away, I want to know everything I can about Rex. The more I have the longer I can hold onto the memories. “I have a question.”

“Shoot,” he says playfully.

“Why do you think your dad hates you?”

Rex drops his fork on the empty tray and runs a hand through his hair. “Can’t start with the easy ones, can you?”

I shake my head and shrug. “The easy stuff is boring. I can probably find out your favorite food and color from a Google search.”

That annoyingly beautiful grin settles over his face. “Green and chicken cordon bleu, in case you’re taking notes.” He exhales loudly, his smile falling and looks down at his hands. “Well, for starters I don’t have a single memory of him and I.”

My heart hurts for Rex. I think back to the photos on the wall. His parents looked so happy, but he wasn’t in any of them. Their life carries on and he’s stuck looking at a family that isn’t really his. “What about when he wasn’t on tour? Or holidays? Wasn’t Kip home?”

Rex pulls at the grass, taking a single green blade between his fingers and ripping it before grabbing another. “Holidays are usually romantic getaways for him and mom. I can’t remember the last birthday my parents spent with me and any time we happened to be in the house at the same time Dad would lock himself in his office.”

“Shit, that’s terrible. I’m sorry.” My childhood was crap, for obvious reasons but I think Rex’s might have been worse. I knew what to expect from Monica—nothing. But Rex had two parents who should have loved him.

“Sometimes I wonder if I’m even Kip’s.” Rex stares off into the distance. “I don’t look anything like him, or my mom. If she cheated, my dad’s hatred for me would make sense.” I can’t imagine anyone cheating on Kip Montgomery. He’s made sexiest man alive the last three years, and he’s old as fuck. I can only assume he was just as gorgeous eighteen years ago. “Enough about me. Tell me something most people don’t know about you.”

There’s plenty that people don’t know about me, but not much of it I can tell. “Um. I am terrified of scary movies.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Nope. Zombies are the worst. I tried watching The Walking Dead once and had nightmares for weeks.” True story. I was thirteen. I thought my normal nightmares were terrible, but no. Take Monica and turn her into a flesh eating zombie that won’t die no matter how many times I shoot her in the head. Yeah, never again.

“So Halloween Horror Nights at Universal Studios is out this year then,” he teases.

“I’d go for you.” If I were around next year, but I won’t be. I’ll probably be living in the mountains doing God knows what for money. Silence falls between us. I chew on my plastic fork.

“Piper?”

“Hmm?”

“Can we talk about what happened to you?”

“What’s there to talk about? You heard everything. Bad guy tried to rape me. I ran away from bad guy. End of story.”