Trainwreck (5 page)

Chapter 7

Asher paused. "It might be," he said, but a smile touched his lips as he regarded the girl in front of him. "Why did you break up with Tony, and don't give me that vague bullshit; I want to know the details."

"It's... hard to explain," Sadie replied, looking up at the ceiling in hopes to grasp the correct words from there. "I just realized I wasn't in love with him anymore, if I ever was. He didn't really treat me that well." Her brow furrowed at this, and she glanced away, unwilling to make direct eye contact with Asher. "He always criticized what I was wearing; sometimes it was too sexy, sometimes it wasn't sexy enough. He liked when I wore makeup, but because I rarely ever do, he assumed it was for another guy. He thought my hair was way too messy. He wouldn't kiss me after eating, claiming bad breath. He rarely ever took me out or got me things, but asked for everything. I hated..." Her voice hitched as fresh tears sprung into her eyes. "I hated that he would always be high. Like, the whole weed thing is whatever, but he was
always
high, even with me, and I started to feel like I wasn't good enough, you know? Like he needed to get high to spend his time with me." She smiled, realizing she had confessed a lot... but not everything. However, she quickly swallowed and managed to look up at Asher. "Why are you always goofing off when you know it'll get you a detention?"

Asher paused a moment, his wispy brown hair falling into his face. He had to think for a while about why he would rather spend time here with a bunch of assholes and Stewey rather than with his friends, with his... "It keeps me out of the house," he said, as though it wasn't a big deal. Her eyes narrowed into his, and Asher felt as though those green eyes could see right through him. However, for whatever reason, she didn't press him, and he was thankful she wouldn't. A question popped into his head, and he narrowed his eyes back into hers. "Are you a virgin?"

"God, what is it with that question?" Sadie asked, shaking her head. "Why do guys even care? I mean, I'm damned if I am, and I'm damned if I'm not right?"

"Just answer the question, princess," Asher said, an amused smile touching his lips.

Sadie was silent for a long minute, and Asher began to think that she wasn't going to answer. However, a sigh was emitted from her nose – one that he was beginning to associate with surrender. On his part, he tried to hide his triumphant smirk and succeeded only slightly. "Yes," she replied, and then quickly asked, "Did you ever date Paulina?"

"Date?" Asher asked in disbelief and then shook his head. "Nah. But she's been acquainted with certain parts of my anatomy in eighth grade..."

"That was you?" Sadie asked, her brows thrown up. "Paulina told me about doing...
that
, but she never mentioned it was you."

"That doesn't actually surprise me," he replied dryly as he rolled his eyes before looking at Sadie in surprise. "Wait a minute; are you telling me you and queenie over there were actually... friends?"

"Is that your question?" There was a slight challenge in her eyes.

"Yeah," he said after a moment. "Yeah, it is."

"I moved here from Fountain Valley in seventh grade," Sadie told him. "Me and Paulina got super close because we were both smart and we had ambition and stuff. We told each other everything, but once we hit high school, it all changed. She was popular and I was... Well, it doesn't matter." She shrugged carelessly, glancing at her shoes once again. "Paulina's a bitch." She tossed her head to the side, her hair flowing over her shoulder, exposing the column of her throat. As she thought of her next question, Asher's eyes ran up and down the skin of her neck. "Have you ever been in love?"

Asher blinked and leveled his eyes into hers. "What?" "Love," she stated blankly. "You know, the emotion?"

"What?" Asher asked again, and then as the question sunk in, he contorted his face into a disgusted scowl. "Oh, no. But I've said it a couple of times."

"I'm sure," she said.


"Have you ever smoked weed?" Asher asked, his eyes shining bright with excitement.

"God, yes," Sadie said, rolling her eyes. "I hate that stuff. I hate the smell. I hate the - You know when you first smoke it, your chest feels like it's on fire, and you're suffocating?" Asher was clearly amused at her enthusiastic disdain for the drug, and he showed that by grinning. "I was coughing so hard and it felt like my chest was ripping inside out. It was
burning
. It's just not worth it to me to go through that pain and agony to get high. And getting high really didn't do anything for me; I was just –" She caught herself, blushing a bit, before saying, "tired. It made me tired. And Tony was such an ass; he'd already be high so when I was taking a hit and coughing, he'd be laughing. But I..." She looked up at Asher. "I wanted to do it for him, to try it. Out of all the things to get high on, weed was less dangerous, so..." She shrugged. "But I hated it, and I hated the smell and I hated kissing him right after but he thought it was funny, so..."

"Why did you stay with him if he was such a dick to you?" Asher asked, ignoring the fact that it was Sadie's turn to ask a question. "I mean, you're a smart girl, or so they say... Why let him walk all over you?"

"Pride," Sadie said, clearly forgetting that it was her turn. It was apparent that she had thought long and hard about this particular question even before Asher had asked it. "I mean, for me, and any other girl, I wanted it to work because I put so much time and effort into the relationship. I got into tons fights with my Mom, my brother didn't like him at all, and I lost a close friend because of him. He was all I had, really, but he was also bad for me. And to be honest, I thought everything would work out. I thought I would get my storybook ending. I guess some of it was my fault. All girls want to be with a bad guy and have him change for her, but I guess life isn't always like the movies..."

"You don't get with someone to change them," Asher told her.

"I didn't get with him to change him," Sadie said, surprisingly not offended by his comment. "I really liked him. I know he isn't exactly cute or chiseled or whatever, but he had a nice smile and he could make me laugh. The first month of it was really sweet; he was so... but then I found out he smoked weed, and he knew I wasn't into that kind of thing."

"Wait, you didn't know he smoked?" he asked her in slight disbelief.

"Looking back on it, I know I should've realized it," she replied. "I mean, he would tell me when to come over but if I showed up early, he would say I couldn't come see him until exactly the time. I tried to compromise; I really wanted to make it work. But it just got to be too much." She pursed her lips in a small frown. "Hey; now I get to ask two questions." Asher just looked her with a tiny smirk but said nothing to stop her. "Hmm... I want to see what's in your wallet."

"That's not a question," he stated in that dry manner of his.

"Duh," she retorted in the same tone. "But I still wanna see."

"Fine, but only if you let me see what's in your bag," he said.

Sadie rolled her eyes, but nodded, and then reached out her hand expectantly. Asher unchained his wallet and slid it from his back pocket and handed it to her, then proceeded to grab her bag from its place against the wall.

Sadie opened the wallet, her eyes heading straight for the clear photo slots. Oddly enough, besides for his license, there weren't any pictures. However, occupying the slots were scraps of papers filled with different phone numbers with random female names on the top. Asher rummaged through Sadie's bag in disbelief. She had a few books, two notebooks and an assortment of pens and pencils. When he found her wallet, he unsnapped it and began to rifle through it. There were three different pictures of her and a different guy, probably at prom or some other nonsense where the people had to dress up. A few discount cards, a couple of membership cards, and a debit card were tucked away as well as movie stubs and a driver's license. Some cash was also in there as well.

"Are all of these girls your girlfriends?" Sadie asked, arching a brow but keeping her eyes on the contents of his wallet.

Chapter 8

Asher shook his head. "Nope," he replied.


"Then why do you have these numbers?"


"There are times when I like to hang with them," was his curt reply.


"Do they know that you're not exactly faithful?" Sadie asked, chewing the side of her lip very lightly.

"Yeah," he responded and shrugged nonchalantly. "They don't care." Sadie's brow raised as her eyes fell from his face. He pushed his brow together and glanced up at her. "Do you?"

"Yeah," Sadie said, as though it was the most obvious thing in the world. "Monogamy is how it should be in a relationship."

"Good thing I'm not in a relationship, eh?" he teased, perking his brow.


She poised her brow in the same manner, except hers was more of a dry look than amused.

"
And I wish I could save you. I wish I could run away with you. To wherever you want to go. And I wish I could save you. But for now, all I can say to you. It's going to be alright."
Asher looked up from the opened notebook to Sadie with a serious expression, ignoring the fact that her cheeks were burning. "Who'd you write this for?"

Sadie paused, not quite able to form words. Nobody had ever read her poetry; not her family, not her friends, and not even Tony. How could she forget her poetry was in there? "Nobody," she finally said in a soft voice. "I just... I just wrote it."

Asher seemed to accept this answer and glanced back down at the notebook. Sadie knew that if it was any other time, she would have reached down and snatched the notebook away from him, but her eyes caught something decorating the very right side of Asher's face. Quickly casting a glance at his eyes, she realized he was pretty consumed with her words, so she slid off the table and onto her knees. She wasn't really clear with what she was doing as she crawled over to him. He finally noticed her presence when her fingertips softly brushed the side of his face. It was bruise, she realized. He jerked back from her, his brown eyes now hard. Any defenses he might have let down during their conversation was now fully erected, and he dropped her notebook and sneered at her.

"What the hell are you doing?" he asked her in a very low voice.


Sadie swallowed, unable to look away from him. However, her arm dropped back to her side. "I..."

"I said,
what the hell are you doing
?" he seethed, and then jerked back from her so fast, that Sadie's first reaction was falling on her rear and holding her hands up, as though she was trying to defend her face. Asher paused at this, and then crawled over to her, so their shoes were brushing. "You did it again."

"Did
what
?" Sadie asked, letting her arms drop and glaring at him. They both knew she knew what he was talking about.

"You flinched," he said quietly. "Did you think I was going hit you?" Sadie opened her mouth, but abruptly shut it and gritted her teeth so her jaw popped. Her eyes were glistening again and she looked away. "Who's been hitting you?"

"Who's been hitting
you
?" she asked him in defense.

"I asked first," Asher snapped.

"No one's been hitting me," Sadie told him. "A couple of times..." It was hard for her to actually say anything because she had tried so hard to forget everything. Nobody knew about this. "Tony would..." She let her voice trail off, trying to say it in a way where she didn't sound pathetic. "He never actually hit me, but he would push me just so it hurt. He would grip my face tighter than necessary. When we were fighting, he would throw me on the bed before pinning me down underneath him so I couldn't get away. I remember one time, a week before we broke up, we had this really big fight, and he threw me on the bed, but my foot landed the wrong way. I went to go ice it in the living room, and when he came out and saw me, he started to laugh. I tried to get over it, but... I was just done." She quickly stole a glance at him; he was looking at her with an unreadable expression. "Your turn."

"My old man," he said, remembering that the only reason she agreed to say anything was because he agreed to as well. He sighed, leaning back on the wall. "He forgets to stop drinking, and whenever he drinks, he gets upset and takes it out on me."

It was silent for a long moment, but oddly enough, it wasn't awkward. The two were unable to look at each other, clearly lost in their own thoughts.

"I wish I could run away," Sadie murmured with a soft smile. Asher looked at her, and a similar smile touched his lips.

She met her eyes with his. "I mean, my dad left my mom when I was in the fourth grade so I've been living with my mom. I love my mom and everything, but her focus has always been my brother. He's sixteen months younger than I am, and he has Asperger’s, you know, like a form of autism, so she's kind of sheltered him from everything. Every single accomplishment he has, we celebrate in some way, but even though I get better grades and stuff, it's almost like it's expected from me; it's like... I'll never be good enough."

Asher watched her intimately for a while, cocking his head to the side so hair fell back into his face. "Why'd your dad leave your mom?" he asked after a moment.

"Isn't it my turn to ask the questions?" Sadie asked, giving him a small, teasing smile. He arched a brow, but remained silent, awaiting her question. "If you could go anywhere in the world, where would you go?" she asked finally, her eyes sparkling with curiosity.

"I don't have the money to go anywhere," Asher told her, rolling his eyes carelessly.

"If money wasn't an option," she persisted.

"Money is always an option. You can't want to go anywhere without thinking about shit like that. Why should I plan to go somewhere like Ireland or Spain or somewhere like that when I know it's never going to happen?"

"God, you're such a pessimist, Asher Boyd," Sadie muttered her breath. "You have no idea what's going to happen to you in the next five minutes, let alone the next five years of your life. So why don't you quit feeling sorry for yourself and answer the goddamn question?"

"You wanna know what's going to happen to me in the next five years?" Asher asked, his tone once again defensive and his eyes hardened. "I'm going to graduate and then get some shit job at a construction company, probably get some random chick pregnant, marry her out of obligation, and start a family I can't afford."

"You don't know that," Sadie told him with a soft edge in her voice.

"Yeah, I do," Asher said, still upset. "You, well you're going to graduate with an outstanding 4.0, get into some Ivy league back east, make a million dollars, get married to some rich guy, pop out a few puppies-" At that point in his speech, Sadie and leaned forward slightly so her lips brushed against his collarbone. Immediately he froze and then probed her eyes with his as she sat back in her place. It was silent for a long moment, and though Sadie was blushing slightly, there was a very tiny smile on her lips. "Why'd you do that?" he finally asked, his eyes desperately trying to read hers.

"You didn't know
that
was going to happen, did you?" she asked in quiet, clear voice, arching a brow. When he didn't answer, she tilted her head a bit. "You should probably get back. Stewey will be there soon, and we can finally go home. It's not worth risking another Saturday of your life here, now is it?"

"I'm already here for the next three Saturdays," he replied in a sheepish manner.


Sadie grinned. "Why am I not surprised?" she asked him, and then nodded to the door. "Go on, then."

The whole detention group ended up relieving Sadie of being in the storage closet. Paulina gave her dirty look, almost as though she had an idea of what happened between her and Asher, except a bit more physical. Roxy and Anthony were surprisingly speaking intently together while Edward had a soccer ball at his feet, dribbling it with the inside of his toes. Asher gave Sadie a mysterious smile, and she couldn't help but grin back, grabbing her bag and stepping into the group alongside him. They walked around the office until they came in front of the school. Anthony's mother and little sister were already there, and it appeared that Paulina and Roxy were carpooling together. Edward slipped into his father's truck, and before they knew it, only Sadie and Asher remained.

"Looks like it's just me and you, princess," Asher observed, and as Sadie looked up at him, a sly grin broke out onto his face.

Sadie tried to refrain from returning it and succeeded only mildly. "Apparently so," she replied. She reached out and unclipped one of his chains from his grey Dickies pants. Asher watched with intensity as she slipped off a silver ring with a fake emerald in it and onto the chain, before attaching both ends together and slipping it over his head. She smiled, seeing that it actually didn't look bad on him.

"You know how you said that I don't know what's going to happen in the next five minutes?" he asked her softly. His head was tilted down, so hair carelessly hung in his face. She remained silent but nodded nonetheless. He grinned, and said, "Well, I don't think that's completely true." And before she could react, his lips were on hers.

It was a soft kiss, filled with tenderness rather than passion, and it lasted only a short moment. When the two pulled away, Sadie grinned, and from the corner of her eye, she could see that her mother's black Pathfinder had just pulled into the school's parking lot. However, Asher apparently didn't see the same thing, and went in for another one, but Sadie quickly turned her head so his cheek grazed her neck. He let out a soft growl of frustration, but Sadie just smiled and bit her lip, stepping back and heading into her mother's waiting SUV.

Asher watched her with a new sort of gaze. It was almost territorial, but with happiness and wonder meshed along with it. She quickly buckled her seatbelt and gave him a mysterious smile before her mother began to drive off. Asher stood there, watching the car take off, his hair slightly messy, but out of his face. He followed the car with his eyes until it turned and was out of sight, before caressing the ring with his fingers, staring at the jewel hanging from his neck. His lips tugged into a smirk and he glanced back up, satisfied with all that occurred that day.