In the Garden of Discontent by Lily White

Author:Lily White [White, Lily]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2020-02-19T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Noah

December 20, 1996

Girls are weird.

It didn’t take me long to figure that out since I was practically surrounded by them. I guess my mother was normal, a hard worker who deserved happiness. But Ensley?

Fuck, I needed a cipher to figure out everything going through her head. One minute she was normal and the next so freaking distant that I was constantly afraid of saying or doing the wrong thing.

Over the past few months since she returned to school, everything at night was the usual. She would sneak over to my house after tucking the kids into bed, would crawl through my window and check the alarm clock, would curl up beside me while I did homework or we watched a movie. She would sleep with her body wrapped around mine, tucked in place where she fit so perfectly.

But she wasn’t the same. And I didn’t know why.

To make it worse, she would remind me every night that she wasn’t my girlfriend, would stare at me with no uncertainty in her eyes, driving the point home by making me repeat the words back to her.

As if they weren’t breaking my heart.

As if they didn’t mean I wasn’t good enough for her.

What was so wrong with me that she refused to see me as anything more than a friend? Had the sex been that bad? Had that moment meant nothing?

At school, Ensley was missing a lot of her classes, and she would walk up to sit beside me at lunch, a wretched expression on her face as she opened the bag I always brought for her and pulled out the food I knew was her favorite. Barely touching it, she would stare off into the distance not saying much.

What worried me most was that she smelled like pot smoke. I knew Ens better than that, knew she didn’t use drugs, but I was afraid she was spiraling out of control while refusing to talk to me about it.

She was going to talk tonight. Whether she liked it or not. I would confront her and corner her and hold her down if I had to.

Like clockwork, she crawled through my window, her lips stretching into a smile as she walked across the room to check my alarm. Satisfied she’d wake up at exactly seven, she raced over to my bed to sit down beside me.

I was leaning against my headboard wearing nothing but a pair of thin sweatpants. It was December, and still the Florida heat was creeping into my house. I hated this state because it was living at the gates of Hell, even in winter.

“Hey,” Ensley said. It was what she always said the moment she saw me. Hey and everything was supposed to be okay, even when it wasn’t.

Shoving my books off the bed, I dropped my empty notebook on top of them because I hadn’t been able to concentrate on the writing assignment that was worth a quarter of my grade. “Hey.”

Grey eyes peered up at me.

“We watching a movie tonight or what?”

“Or what,” I answered because it was now or never.

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