42A/N- This chapter is supposed to be longer, but since I'm going on a bit of a mini-hiatus, I guess y'all deserve it. I've been through a lot of crap lately, and I just found out something that made it a lot worse, so...
This is dedicated to the stalkee I lost and will probably never find...It's hard to stalk somebody when you don't where they are.
(To make matters worse, I find out that she's left her Fictionpress account without leaving a forwarding address, so to speak, in the middle of healing heartbreak. If that's not some bull...)
I barged into Logan's house, not bothering to knock. I figured we had passed that point long ago- back when things were more high school drama and less star spirit shit. There was an odd comfort to being able to barge into somebody's house and be able to bare your soul to said somebody, whether they really cared or not.
Logan barely glanced up from the television when I came bouncing into the room, and Caleb grunted in acknowledgment when I flopped down on one of the overstuffed arm chairs. There was silence for a moment, except for the sound of people bickering from the television, until Logan finally spoke.
"So, how's this whole star spirit thing going?"
"Pretty damn bad."
He nodded and directed his attention back to the TV. The whole situation felt kind of familial- at least, what I assumed a familial situation felt like. With Bible Barbie and drunken mother, it's kind of hard to know what it's like not to want to impale yourself with a rusty rake.
"If they're following you, why haven't you called the cops?" asked Caleb, not even looking away from the television as he yawned widely.
"Have you considered the possibility that maybe they aren't totally insane? I mean, what if they're telling the truth?" I shrugged. "Besides, have you met me? Can you name one cop in this town that would show up if I called?"
"You're considering the possibility that the people who have been telling you that you're a star spirit and their queen are not only sane, but have been speaking the truth?" he shot back.
"What am I supposed to think?"
"Have you had anymore flashbacks or whatever since you fell out of the tree?" Logan spoke up.
I waited a moment before answering sullenly, "No."
"Did you have a concussion after all?" asked Caleb suddenly, and I opened to snap at him when the doorbell rang.
We all kind of stared at each other stupidly for a moment before Logan had the presence of mind to say, "That's the pizza."
"What, and you want me to get it?" I grumbled. The silence was answer enough, and I wondered how long it would take to smother both of them with those enormous couch cushions as I slid off the chair and padded towards the front door. The doorbell sounded again, echoing the impatience of whoever was ringing it. "I'm freaking coming, okay?"
"Oh, when have I heard those words before?"
I think the next thought that ran through my mind was, Someone is going to die. The next thing I knew, I had flung the door open and tackled the pizza boy, although in the most delicate way possible. Violence was great- squashing the pizza? Not so much.
"Ow, ow, get off! Damn it, Ara!"
A pair of muscular arms removed me from a boulder-like chest, and I grabbed the pizza from Chay Fisher in mock-annoyance.
"Why is it that 'Damn it, Ara' is everybody's favorite phrase?" I demanded, as Logan appeared behind me, waving around a twenty dollar bill.
"Because you're just so damn annoying?" he asked tiredly, handing the money to Chay, who was watching Logan and I carefully. As the older brother to my best friend, Chay was always getting on me and Kaelin's hit list just for the hell of it, and I was sure everybody in school would 'know' that I was sleeping with Logan by six the next morning.
On my list of things that would make me want to commit suicide, that used to be numero uno. Now- and maybe it was the knowledge that Logan was gayer than a rainbow on LSD- it was just kind of funny.
"I take offense to that."
"I'm sure you do," Logan muttered.
Chay stood on the porch a moment longer, looking back and forth between us, then leaned forward to hug me, maneuvering around the around mumbling something in my ear that I'm sure was a vague threat to reveal the nonexistent romance I'm sure Chay was envisioning. The boy's a hopeless romantic, a trait that's fine for people I don't have to deal with on a regular basis, but, when it comes to friends and family, I have a strict no tolerance policy.
Logan grabbed my wrist and yanked me back into the house, grumbling to himself as he dragged me back towards the living room, my arms struggling to stay wrapped around the two cardboard boxes. The smell of napalm-hot pizza was more than a little overwhelming, and I wondered how much Logan and Caleb were planning to eat and whether I would need to fight them for it.
"I want five slices." The words popped out of my mouth the moment Logan had shoved me back into my chair, and the pizza boxes nestled closer to my chest. There were traded looks of revulsion and disgust between Logan and Caleb- obviously they had no knowledge of my less than lady-like eating habits.
Hey, when you can scarf down more than the biggest linebacker on your school's football team in one sitting, it's not something you brag about...Well, it's something I brag about, but still.
"Where will it all go?" asked Caleb after a moment, reaching forward to try and tug the pizza boxes out of my grip.
"The same place it always goes, I guess," I said, shrugging one shoulder, letting him take one of the pizza boxes and clutching the other to my chest. "To my ego."
That got a laugh from him- well, more of a smothered snort- and we sat around Logan's living room and ate, chuckling at each other and fighting over the remote. It felt...weird. And somehow comfortable. Like on one of those movies, where they have the shot of the dysfunctional family eating dinner? Right, so replace the 'kooky' parents with two in the closet gay guys and the black sheep with a girl who may or may not be a star spirit, erase everybody else, and that's us.
Really, it was too comfortable.
A/N cont.- Short, but done just because I'm really broken up and...I dunno. Seemed like the thing to do, for some reason.