Tell Me Your Truths

Chapter 3: Elio

I pull up to the new house Ayla and her mom lived. It wasn't much, a quaint little narrow two-storey home they had gotten from a settlement they made instead of the 'ol steel bars for Charlie Pierce.

The old bastard had gone by years of molesting Ayla who kept a tight-lip in all of it. She bided her time though, to gather evidence to put his disgusting ass in jail. He almost did, except one minor detail that made them already lost their case before it even begun: wealthy men always get away with everything.

In the end, Ayla agreed not to have pursued the case and instead settled for an agreement that Charlie would lease them a house so not to let them wander the streets scouring for a cardboard above their heads and a huge wad of cash I have no idea the amount of. All I know is that Ayla said it was huge.

I wanted to murder him the day I found out about it. Jackass was lucky Ayla was there to stop me at the front porch.

His luck did ran out a week later. With the drunk courage I got from Dane's stupid party after a massive blackout that lasted for two hours, I broke into his house and beat the hell out of him. It wasn't much, but I defended a small part of Ayla's honor.

The fuckin' dickhead deserves every inch of hell I have to give him.

Of course, I had the sense to fuckin’ cover my face otherwise it would a b***h if he pressed assault charges on me.

My headlights shone across the front porch and I see Ayla walking out of the door in a cute little pink matching shirt and pajamas, a small plastic bag in hand.

She furiously waves her hand signaling to my bright headlights. She probably didn't want her mother to know she was having someone over which I didn't think made sense since her mother wasn't exactly a mom. Ayla was calling the shots in their family and she knows it.

One of the things I adored about her. She still respected her mother despite the lack of meaning in the word. I don't think I have much respect for my dad anymore so I don't understand the whole concept of respect thy father and mother. Then again, Ayla's mother wasn't a murderous son of a b***h who drinks and drives. Nor was she a shovel and throw and plant a new seed type of parent. 

Guess if he wasn't too busy gardening for a new legacy than the withered plant that was his sons, I wouldn't hate him so much.

Pushing my truck’s door open, I greet Ayla with a taunting smile. "You look cute." By cute, I mean a Hello Kitty obsessed child who never grew out of being six. She looked adorable.

But her scowl and droopy eyes contradict my statement. "Don't start." 

I jog up the steps and park my ass next to her on the porch swing. "How about it?" 

She yawns. "What? Why? And how often?" 

I have to roll my eyes. Ayla has her own rules when selling to people especially with new clienteles. She asks three questions: What do you want to buy? Purpose of purchasing. And how long do you think you want to keep purchasing. The wrong answers were always spiking another man's drink, peer fuckin' pressure, and no longer than five months of personal use.

She sometimes has a way of reading people's minds if they were telling the truth. She doesn't hesitate to cut a b***h off from the source if they start having signs of being addicted to the stuff. 

Not sure if her drug lord boyfriend approves of that but I doubt he knows otherwise he wouldn’t have let this go on. Then again, Ayla’s never one to bow down and fetch.

I hold my hand out, waiting. "I'm not a freshie, Ayla. Don't ask me that stupid shit."

She holds the small bag between her middle and index finger and I make a grab for it but she moves away. 

"It's your first in a while. I hate to break it to you but I'm demoting you to said freshie." 

"You selling me it or not?"

She hesitates for a moment before finally caving in. I push a twenty in her grasp and pocket the weed. "What do you need it for, anyway?" She paused. Her nose scrunch up. "You smell like Jack Daniels. How much have you had?" 

"Enough," I clipped. 

Ayla clicked her tongue. "Rough night with Maddie?"  

I shake my head. I don't exactly know how to put it into words without sounding like a pity fool. "It's not that." Despite her knowledge of what went down with my life five years ago, I'm not exactly too keen on broadcasting s**t to her ears again.

She sucks in a breath. "Is the little dinky giving you trouble?"

It was my turn to narrow my eyes at her. "My d**k is perfectly fine, thank you very much. And I can assure you there is nothing little about it."

Her eyes crease, mocking my attempt at telling the truth. "I don't know, man. You're not talking so I'm just assuming all cards are on the table. You test positive—"

"No," I immediately say not bothering to wait for her to finish the sentence. "And this has nothing to do with my s****l life." 

"Okay," she finally relents but her tone suggest otherwise. A beat pass and for a second I thought she finally dropped the topic. Until she opened her mouth again. "You finally out of the closet?"

"Ayla."

She laughs. "I'm kidding. You're welcome to seek refuge in La Morales Suite anytime you want if you need it," she offers making my heart pound. Ayla never had much but she was always so selfless to offer her commodities to people with a much more privileged life than her.

There it was again. The feeling in my chest that never cease to slow down whenever she was around me. I try so hard not to let that little feeling grow into more but the little fucker was just a madness that never listens to my bloody brain.

"Want a sandwich?" she asked, pulling a Tupperware from behind shoving it my way. I politely decline. "Suit yourself."

We were silent for a minute, Ayla munching with big bites, none of us bothering to disrupt the quiet air. 

Awkward silence never made us uncomfortable. Her presence always reminded me of good times.

Ayla, my brothers, and a friend of ours, Dane, used to hang out all the time. Until Dane and Julian graduated that is. As much as I wanted for things to stay just the same, change was always inevitable. 

Now they were doing their own thing, Julian an hour away with his professional racing living with his girlfriend, Dane with his college in New York, and Levi entertaining the thought of fuckin' boarding school thousands of miles away. f**k knows what he was thinking.

He's never going to go because first of all, I won't let him. If Julian was here, he'd agree with me.

I don't know what compelled me to confess, but I let the words out freely. "Nightmares. Horrible ones."

"Do they involve long tentacles or eight legs?" 

"Not exactly."

"Then how worse can it get?" You have no idea. She must have noticed my upturned mouth because she pursed her lips. "Apparently, way worse. Wanna talk about it?" 

I shake my head. "Not tonight."

"Okay." She bites the inside of her cheek. "You know what I do?" 

"Apart from selling drugs?" 

She rolls her eyes, taking another bite of her sandwich. "About the nightmares, i***t. When I have a bad dream, I pretend they're not real." 

I snort. "Yeah, no shit."

"No, really. Sometimes people tend to believe that their dreams are the sum of their characters or that they harbor strong feelings for the person involved in their dreams. Just think that it's all just images your mind conjured up that was plucked from certain memories that don't mean a thing."

If only it were that easy. "What if my nightmares was the past? Your genius plan to pretend it's a figment of my imagination is a bust." 

"Well, I guess I could say that you haven't moved on from it." 

"It happened a long time ago," I point out.

She gives me a look. "Doesn't erase it from your memory. Time isn't always the solution."

But time did help ease the pain. Most days, I had almost forgotten about the scars on my back. Just because the pain isn't there doesn't mean the marks aren't either.

Ayla sighs. "Sometimes, running is easier." Her gaze looking out into the distance, I can't tell what was going through her mind.

She snaps out of it as quickly as she was entranced. "And sometimes, we won't get past the state line if we don't stop for gas. You need closure, Elio."

That might be true, but I have no intention to see that b***h anytime soon. 

I clear my throat, getting up on my feet. "I should get going. Maddie might be wondering where I am."

Her back straightened. "Wait, so you left your girlfriend alone at your house while you went for a weed run? Damn, I never really said it to you before but congratulations. You are officially a dick."

I give her a mocking face and she responds by giving one of her own.

I walk back to my car, feeling better than I did a couple of minutes ago. 

I stop on my heel before I could open the door. "What are you doing tonight? I mean tomorrow night—the next sundown. f**k, Sunday night! What are you doing Sunday night?”

Ayla snorts at my fumble. Screw her for making me become a stuttering thirteen-year-old when told he was having s*x with a supermodel. “Busy. Hanging out with Cole. We're watching Dawn of the Dead at the theatre. They're making reruns again for Halloween."

Of course. I forgot how much of a horror buff she was. If it involved a man with a scary mask or flesh eating monsters, she was the go-to gal pal you want to hang out with.

A bitter taste was left in my mouth at the mention of certified douche, Cole Jenkins. I don't know why she hangs out with him. All I know is that I'd rather plunge a ballpoint pen into my eye than stare at the two making googly eyes at each other.

"Have fun," I say despite not meaning the words. If anything, I hope they don’t. Not with him.

I put the car in reverse and speed away. 

Ayla and Cole together can go to fuckin' hell for all I care.