You are no angel

by Emma Quinn

  “Urgh, Jake.” He rolled his eyes. “That guy always thought that he was so cool but really… what a loser.”

  “You were always trying to impress him,” I bit back angrily. “You didn’t think that he was a loser then.”

  “I wasn’t. He was a prick and I always knew it. I drove a car in to his fucking house for crying out loud! If that doesn’t tell you that I just thought he was a rich jerk, that’s all. I can’t believe you thought I liked him…”

  “You stole your father’s car to try and impress him. Why are you acting otherwise?”

  I wasn’t sure why this irritated me so badly but it did. Why was he trying to act like the history he shared with me didn’t happen? Why was he trying to pretend that the much better version of him didn’t exist?

  “Whatever, Mila. I didn’t steal it because of Jake. I did it for a laugh. You were there, you were a part of it. But all of those guys were losers. Jake was such a poser, thinking that his party was wild, In England, now that was wild. I can show you some wild times, if that’s what you would like. In fact…” He got a glint in his eye as he pulled something out of his pocket. I had no idea what it was until he explained it to me. “You want to snort this with me?”

  “Drugs?” I was horrified, and far more shocked than I should have been considering Jake had already warned me about the drug taking and the way that he clearly glamorized it online. Maybe I should have checked. “Are you serious? You aren’t doing that shit now, are you? You are much too good for that. What are you doing?”

  “Oh God.” Brandon snorted with derision. “You’re still a bore. I thought that college might have loosened you up. But if you’re hanging around with losers like Jake, then maybe not. Fucking hell, what a joke…”

  “I don’t hang around with Jake,” I retorted. “And it doesn’t make me boring if I don’t do drugs, it just means that I want a future. I don’t want to throw it away because of some powder up my nose.”

  “Always a fucking bore.” He rose to his feet and shook his head at me. “Whatever, I’ll be back.”

  “You’re still going to do that?” I couldn’t believe it. This was a horrible shock. “Even without me.”

  “I don’t need other people to have fun. That’s something I learned in England. I don’t rely on anyone. I should have known better than to hang around with you again, Mila. I thought that we were going to have something good but if you are still going to be a Debbie Downer, pulling me down all the time, then I don’t want to know.”

  “That’s what you think of me? What you have always thought of me? That I’m a downer?”

  “Why wouldn’t I think that about you?” He screwed his nose up at me. “That’s exactly what you are.”

  He stalked off, creating such a scene that everyone looked at him, my heart was hammering in my throat because I couldn’t help worrying. If people knew what was going on and followed him in to that bathroom to catch him doing drugs, then it was going to fall back on me. I couldn’t get in trouble with the law because of Brandon.

  I wanted to run, yet I needed to stay. I wanted to get the hell out of here to protect myself, to keep my place at college, to save my life that I had worked so hard for, but this was Brandon… Brandon. I had wanted him back in my life for such a long time that it was a real struggle to imagine running away from him.

  Me and Brandon… Brandon or me… who the hell was I going to choose? I was shaking all over at the decision.

  I didn’t know what I was doing, I could barely think straight, but all of a sudden my fingers were wrapped around my bag and I had bolted up right from my seat. My feet were running, I was leaving Brandon behind, escaping him. I wasn’t sure why I hadn't listened to my gut, why I let Brandon walk all over me again, especially when he clearly never thought very highly of me in the first place. When he thought that I was a ‘downer’…

  I couldn’t hang out with a druggie loser, no way. I had too much at stake for that.

  14

  Jake

  “ A

  re you okay?” It was awkward between me and Mila, it had been all week long. We hadn't had too many shifts alone together since she started working at the student union bar so I hadn't had a chance to confront her yet and to have this conversation, but we needed to now. “I do want to apologize to you because I was out of order before…”

  She relaxed. It was obvious by the way that her shoulders slumped forwards as soon as the apology got out of my mouth. “No, you don’t need to say sorry. You were just looking out for me, that’s all. I should have listened.”

  “Oh…” I didn’t know what to say next. I knew that she had seen Brandon since we last spoke, she made it very obvious in her phone conversation to him in front of me, but I wasn’t sure how much I should say about it. “Right.”

  “I… you were right about Brandon. He isn’t the guy that he once was. I guess time had changed him.”

  I searched inside of myself for the guilt that should have come with me ruining his life, but I couldn’t help remembering that he had a mind of his own and he didn’t need to get led. Not by me on that night and not by the drug taking in England either. He could have made the decision not to indulge. I had seen a lot of pills and powder in my time, but even in my heaviest partying days I knew that I wouldn’t ever take them. Drugs weren’t for me.

  I didn’t like what I had done to Brandon, but he had done a lot of it to himself as well. His choices were all on him and he needed to own them just like I had owned up to everything that I had done wrong.

  “I’m sorry that things didn’t work out with Brandon in the way that you wanted them to.”

  “I just don’t know who he is anymore.” She shrugged one shoulder at me. “But I suppose that’s what happens.”

  People changed. People changed all the time, I knew that better than anyone. “I see… well, if there is anything that you want to talk about, you can. I don’t know how much advice I will be able to give, but I’ll try…”

  She smiled thinly at me. “Thank you. It’s nice to know that you care enough to be a friend.”

  Friend… huh, that was the nicest thing that she had ever said to me. I would take it. Of course, I liked Mila a whole lot, more than I should have liked a friend, but those feelings were confusing and I wasn’t sure what to do with them emotions, so friendship was better than nothing. “I can be your friend. Whatever you need.”

  As she grinned at me again, I felt something shift between us. Something was building, something new, and that could only be a good thing. I was excited to see where it would lead us in the end…

  As the days passed and we worked an increasing number of shifts together, I started to see the Mila that I knew so well coming back. There was a bit of a blip when Brandon came in to her life and she seemed to put her college work second, but she was back to herself now and studying hard, even working on her essays during quieter shifts.

  When she was working, I couldn’t stop myself from watching her, admiring her, knowing that she was someone who deserved to be stared at with admiration. She was something else, beautiful in a way that I wasn’t expecting at all. She struck me, I found myself thinking about her a lot, more than I had ever liked anyone before.

  You are going to fall for her, I told myself firmly, forcing myself to look away yet again. Like… love.

  I couldn’t fall in love with Mila, not when she didn’t feel the same way about me. Sometimes, she glanced at me in a way that showed a glint in her eyes that I desperately didn’t want to fall in to because the rest of the time she was very carefully platonic with me, letting me know that she would never cave. If Mila didn’t ever intend to give me a chance then I couldn’t fall for her because I wasn’t sure how I would cope with a broken heart.

  “Everything okay?” Shit, she looked up and caught me watching her. “Just let me know if you need me to do any work. I tend to get lost in my reading and my essays when I’m really caught up in it all…”

  “You don
’t need to do anything.” I needed to say something, anything otherwise she would think that I was weird for staring at her like a weirdo. I didn’t want her to hate me. “I was just wondering if you want a ride home tonight.”

  “Oh sure, thanks. That would be really great. Thank you. I have to watch this movie for an essay and I wanted to do it after work because it’s the only chance I will get. If I get a ride with you then I won’t be up too late.”

  Phew, she went along with my excuse, and I was helping her. That was nice, I wanted to help her as much as I could. Especially when I knew how much her work meant to her. Her course seemed interesting as well. Unless that was just the way that she talked about it with such intense passion. It was impossible not to get sucked in.

  “What movie?” I leaned across and saw what she was writing about. “Oh, I have always wanted to watch that. Would it be totally weird if I watched it with you? I’m always pretty wired after work.”

  “Really?” She stared at me as if she was trying to see if this was some kind of trick or something. “Of course. As long as you don’t mind discussing it with me all the way through… and keeping me awake.”

  It sounded like a date, much too much like a date for me when my head was all over the place when it came to my feelings for her, but instead of shutting this down before it got out of hand and I ended up hurt, I found myself nodding eagerly. “Yeah, of course. I can do that. Brilliant, I am looking forward to it.”

  Looking forward to it… why did I say that? That was fucking stupid. Now she was going to think that I was an idiot. But she smiled and nodded as me as if she wasn’t looking too deeply in to my words at all. Okay, so it looked like it was on. Me and Mila watching a movie tonight. Anything could happen…

  Uh oh, anything could happen…

  Not that it would. I was her ‘friend’, but still the idea was going to get to me all through the shift. It was already hard for me to focus on pulling pints for drunk students, but now I had no idea how I would hold it together.

  “Mila?” Uh oh, she was sleeping. Sleeping on my lap. She hadn't fully drifted off until the last five minutes of the movie, but now she was definitely crashed out and nearly snoring. “Mila, shall I carry you to bed?”

  I tried to wrap my arms around her, to hold her, but honestly she had my heart racing too quickly it was too much. I felt like I was about to take her home with me instead of to her bed, it was too intimate.

  “I’ll get you a blanket instead,” I whispered as I gently lay her on the couch. “Let you sleep here.”

  I had to go into her bedroom to get a blanket, which felt all strange and intimate as well. I couldn’t help myself, I had to take a little look around as I did, and her room screamed ‘Mila’. Books and work everywhere, in an organized mess all over her room, and just a few photographs because her head was firmly in the game at all times. I couldn’t help but smile as I spotted a picture of her with Ashley though because they made friends because of me and my party. That was the one good thing to come from that whole fucking sweet sixteenth mess.

  Finally, I got the blanket to Mila and as I draped it across her body, I found myself watching her once more. I liked to look at Mila when she wasn’t examining me right back because her eyes stared right in to my soul and it scared me. But admiring her, watching her, well, it made me fall increasingly in love with her by the minute.

  “No, don’t love her,” I whispered to myself. “You can’t love her. She doesn’t love you…”

  It was time for me to go. If she woke up and saw me staring at her then she would hate me for sure. She would think that I was a massive freak. Just as I would if someone was watching me sleep. But that didn’t stop me from walking backwards and keeping my eyes on her until I got to her front door, and then it took a second for me to exit because it was hard to stop looking. She was just so stunning… but more than that, she had an aura about her. Something which drew me in and made me want to hold her and never let go. I wanted to have her in my life properly, in a way that I hadn't before. I wanted to treat her differently because she meant something new to me. Something that I wasn’t used to but that I liked a lot.

  “This is going to end in trouble. Big trouble. But for me.”

  15

  Mila

  V

  ictoria sat beside me, studying some documents hard as I tried to get the necessary reading done for my course in the library. It was nice for us to be able to spend some time together even if we couldn’t exactly talk. College was busy at the moment, for the pair of us, and so this was the best that we had.

  “I like having you here, Victoria,” I declared in between paragraphs. “I’m glad that me and you are at the same college. I missed you. I don’t think I realized how much I missed you until now. Like, I always knew that it was weird without you around but I tried to cope and now… well, now it’s good to see you ever single day.”

  She turned and grinned bleary eyed. “Well, I always knew how much I missed you, little cous.”

  “Thank you for getting me the job at the bar. It’s helped me to keep a roof over my head. Without having to live in the college housing because honestly, I’m finding it hard enough to concentrate and get everything done.”

  Victoria turned around to stare at me head on now with inquisitive eyes. “Yeah, I’m not surprised, because you have a lot of drama going on at the moment, haven’t you? Not that you’ve told me much about it. I have only heard a little bit through the grape vine from Matt and Jake. Jake has been worried about you I think because of some guy.”

  “Brandon?” I half smiled and nodded. “Yeah, my old best friend in high school is back from England.”

  “What happened? Why did he go to England? And was he just a friend or was there something more?”

  God, it seemed like I really was obvious with my feelings for that man. I sighed and explained the story of me and Brandon and him leaving in the most succinct way possible, but I could tell that I still had Victoria confused.

  “I know, it’s a lot, isn’t it?” I huffed. “And now… he’s different. He’s not the nice, geeky guy I liked so much back then. He’s all bad boy and in to drugs and everything. It’s hard to be around him. I actually ran away from him when we were hanging out the other day because he was being all weird and using.” I shuddered. “I hated it.”

  “You should have gotten out of there then.” Victoria looked horrified at my confession. “That’s good. Running away was the best thing that you could have done. You don’t want to get caught up in that. No wonder Jake has been worried about you. He didn’t give me any details because he doesn’t think that it’s his place to…”

  Jake… I don’t know what to think about Jake. He has been really sweet to me recently, kind, an actual nice friend for me. Nothing like I expected. I’m starting to see what he’s been trying to tell me all along, that he is different. And this with Victoria just confirms everything. He has expressed his concern for me without giving anything away.

  I feel all warm and fuzzy inside, like something sweet is washing over me in waves, it’s nice and I can barely keep the smile off my face. I don’t know what Victoria thinks about any of this, but I can’t stop feeling this way. I didn’t know what it was about Jake but I couldn’t stop the world falling out from underneath me when I thought about him. It was crazy, I sometimes felt like I was utterly unhinged because of him which was why I threw myself in to work more. If I focused on my textbooks and my essays then I wasn’t worrying about him.

  “Well, Jake doesn’t need to worry anymore, nor do you. I won’t see Brandon anymore. I don’t have any time anyway. I’m studying all the time and trying to get through this year with decent grades. I’m not going to be spending any time with people who aren’t helping me to move forward. I will make sure I tell Jake that when I see him.”

  “Does he always give you a ride home when you work together?” Victoria asks, continuing to probe about Jake. “Because you live in the same building, do
n’t you? So, that’s nice of him. Makes it easier for you.”

  “Yeah, he does, especially if we work late together. It’s good, it saves public transport which I wouldn’t like late at night. You never know who is going to be on the night bus and I don’t have time for that.”

  “And what do you think about him? He’s a nice guy, right? I know that you had some concerns in the beginning.”

  “I did, but that’s because of our high school experiences together. He was a different guy back then.”

  The cocky, arrogant, childish idiot had transformed in to quite a lovely man. He made me smile and laugh far more than I would have ever expected. In the last few weeks, I had actually began to look forward to my shifts with him, especially the ones that we were alone during, and the ones that resulted in him driving me home. Our rides back to the apartment block were nice, we talked about a lot and I felt like I knew him a lot better now, and we often hung around by his apartment door or mine chatting for a little while longer than necessary, as if we couldn’t let go.

  “He will be student president after me.” Victoria burst through my thoughts with this fact. “I can just tell. He’s that sort of person, isn’t he? Dedicated to the student body and popular for all of the right reasons.”

  “You sound like you are into him,” I chuckled, while trying to ignore the twisting in my gut. “Are you?”

  “Jake? Nah, not for me. But he would be good for you, you know.” She raised a knowing eyebrow. “I could see the two of you together, you know. You would be a cute couple. Oh my God, why don’t you ask him out?”

  I laughed and immediately averted my eyes because there was a definite heat burning in my cheeks now. I didn’t want to admit it, especially not to Victoria, but even the thought of being with Jake made me feel all weird and hot. My pulse raced faster, my stomach churned and flip flopped, nerves damn near got the better of me…