Page 32 of Endgame

Christ, we started back at school soon. I would have to look at her every damn day. I wouldn’t be able to avoid her there like I had been managing to do at home. She would be a senior like me, and I knew full fucking well my father would pull some shit and have her put in my classes. It was a given.

Goddamn, why’d she have to go and be all nice to me tonight?

It was so much easier to hate her when she was a bitch.

And why the hell did Millie tell her about my mother?

I didn’t want Six knowing about my momma.

She wassacredto me.

My memories were all I had left of her and I didn’t want anyone fucking with those.

Laying in complete darkness, I reached into my nightstand drawer and pulled out the old journal. Remaining perfectly still, I held it to my chest and exhaled a heavy sigh. This damn traveler’s notebook had given me more comfort than any blanket or pacifier ever had. It still did.

The notes and letters it contained, I had read thousands of times. I knew each page by heart, but the ink on the pages was her marking. Her words. Her touch. I cherished it.

Looking up at the ceiling, I pictured my momma’s face in my mind. I invented a voice I wasn’t sure had ever existed to go with the face.

When I had the picture just right, and when I’d pretended to hear her whisper she loved me, I closed my eyes and fell asleep.

Mercedes

AFTER OUR TALK, it didn’t take Rourke long to return to his normal asshole self.

That flicker of vulnerability I had seen for the briefest of moments the other night was well and truly gone now – replaced with an impenetrable wall of sarcasm and wit.

He clashed happily with me on absolutely everything and was never more content then when he was making me feel unwelcome. Dick.

It was my day off from work the following Tuesday and I planned on spending it going over a bundle of notebooks and old test papers that Amelia had managed to snag from Rourke’s room.

It was inevitable that Rourke and I would be in at least some of the same classes when school started and I wanted to compare the lesson plans from his teachers to my old ones.

Laying on my stomach on the rug in the living room, I splayed several books, sheets, and papers out on the floor and concentrated.

Rourke’s notes and test papers irritated me much more than they should. Because he was smart. Like seriously, high IQ level intelligent.

In the dozen or more papers I had in front of me, the lowest my stepbrother had received was a 92. It pissed me off. And he could draw. The doodles and random sketches of buildings on the inside of his textbooks and copies wereinsane. So he was beautiful, rich, good at sports, smart, and he could draw? Ugh. The best I could do was a match stick man.

Glum, I forced myself to ignore that pesky inferior feeling trying to swallow me up and focused on Rourke’s English Lit notes. It wasn’t easy though, not when my eyes kept returning to those damn doodles.

Admitting defeat, I gave up on Shakespeare and grabbed the A4 sized note pad. As I flicked through page after page of building sketches, my jaw fell more and more open. He was good. He was really good. I turned another page then and froze when my eyes lands on a graphically detailed sketch of a naked woman. The woman he’d sketched sort of reminded me of a cartoon version of Jessica Rabbit.

She had long locks with sultry eyes and big pouty lips. She was sitting down against a blank backdrop with her legs spread open in an extremely provocative pose.

Of course, she had the standard over inflated breasts teenage boys seemed to be obsessed with.

What really caught my eye though, was his accuracy in her…lower area.

Oh, my freaking god.

As I gaped at the sketch, I had a burning urge to run upstairs to my room, ditch my clothes, and grab a mirror. The boy had drawn the most realistic vagina I had ever freaking seen. If it wasn’t for Rourke’s impressive attention to detail, I would have hurled. Actually, I still might.

“Having fun?” Gabe’s voice came from behind me and I slammed the book closed, feeling like I’d just been caught watching porn or something.

“Just reading up on some of Rourke’s…uh… notes for school,” I replied, red-faced and mortified. Scrambling onto my knees, I quickly piled all of the notes and books on top of one another.

If Gabe knew what I’d been looking at then he hid it well. “Really?” His brows rose in surprise. “I’m surprised Rourke shared those with you. He’s usually so...” His voice trailed out and he shook his head and smiled at me before saying, “Never mind.”

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