30: To Run Away From Reality

"Shut up, count your calories!" Beach Bunny sang through my earbuds, masking the outside world so that I could try and focus better on my precalculus homework. I was trying desperately to figure out why I kept getting the wrong number. "I never looked good in mom jeans!"

I didn't even notice it when my bedroom door opened. My attention was only torn when I felt something touch my shoulder, effectively causing me jump and almost fall off of my bed. My heart only relaxed when I realized that it was just Mom, her eyes amused as she looked down at me.

Taking out an earbud, I offered an annoyed expression. "You scared me."

"You were in the zone, that's not my fault." She replied, smiling softly. Her black hair was curled neatly, her makeup soft and pristine. That meant that she was heading out to likely run some errands. "How's homework going?"

I glanced back down at the mess of papers and books scattered across my bed. "Horribly."

She rolled her eyes. "Does it ever go well?"

"No." I deadpanned.

"You are so dramatic. I don't know where you get it from."

"Both of you."

Mom just sighed, straightened out her sweater, and then seemed to remember why she came in here in the first place. "Well your father and I are going to do some light grocery shopping. I was just wondering if you needed anything."

She always forced Dad to go shopping with her. It was their peculiar way of spending time together despite all of the chaos they chose to partake in on their own time. It used to sound absurd to me, but I could now admit that I didn't entirely hate the idea of going shopping with Sam. "No, I'll be fine."

"Okay. Just call if you change your mind. Love you." Mom nodded to herself, then turned to leave.

"Love you too." I called to her.

I waited until I heard the front door close to jump up from my bed and run to my window. Ever since what happened when they took those photos of me sleeping, I made sure that my window was always closed, locked, and the curtains were blocking out any crack of light. So I just very carefully lifted the corner to peer outside. That creepy van didn't seem to be around, which was a bit relieving. But it did beg the question as to where it actually was, since it often liked to park a leisurely distance from my home. All I could do was hope that it wasn't finding new ways to make my life difficult.

Sitting back down on my bed, I opted for unplugging my earbuds altogether and keeping the volume low. That way I could hear anything that might be happening in the house. I was becoming a much more paranoid person than I used to be.

"I was never cut out for prom queen!" The song continued. It was one that Millie loved.

I reluctantly returned to my homework, trying but failing to understand what I was doing wrong. Above all else, math was my sworn enemy.

This carried on for a little while before my phone suddenly began to ring. Much like when my mom entered my room earlier, the suddenness of it caused me to startle. I picked it up to read the caller I.D.

Druggie Douche

I furrowed my brow, wondering why Sam was calling me right now. We hardly ever talked on the phone, and if we did, it was almost always reserved for text messages. That caused my stomach to turn uncomfortably and I pressed the answer button. It was impossible to not be instantly worried.

"Sam?" I spoke when he didn't.

"Hey, sugar." He mumbled, his voice a bit breathy.

"What's going on? Are you alright?" He didn't even have to tell me anything for me to know that this wasn't just some cute little check up call.

"I can't go home right now. Would I be able to come to your place?" He sounded nervous.

"Why can't you go home? My parents just left to shop, so you won't have to worry about them."

"I'll explain when I get there. Thank you."

I was both extremely confused and worried. "Sam, what's going on?"

"Love you." Was all he said before he hurriedly hung up. I looked at my phone screen, where it was flashing the end call screen.

I uneasily went downstairs and paced. Sam could be sweet, but this was clearly not one of those moment. He couldn't go home? But why? That was incredibly unlike Sam, and all I could do was imagine the worst scenarios as I impatiently waited for him to show up.

It felt like an eternity went by before I heard a car enter the driveway. I ran to the window and peered out. There was no doubt in my mind that it was Sam when I saw his expensive Mercedes Benz. No one else in this neighborhood would have a vehicle like that.

I went straight to the front door and threw it open. My eyes went wide when I saw Sam walking towards me. My heart dropped.

"Sam, what the fuck?" I put a hand over my mouth, trying to stop myself from speaking further without thinking.

His eye was swollen and red, his lip busted. Dried blood was smeared on his upper lip, as if he just finished having a bloody nose. All of those bruises that had begun to fade were right back where they began. I was starting to wonder if I was ever going to see Sam's normal face again. Were bruises and scabs simply apart of us now? That thought made me sick to my stomach.

He was looking to the side as he stood in front of me, as if he was ashamed of the way he looked. His expression was solemn, his lips pressed together firmly. I reached a tentative hand out, softly grazing his cheek.

"How did this happen?" I asked gently, trying my best to sound comforting rather than terrified.

"I was jumped." He admitted quietly, still not meeting my gaze.

I knew that look on him. It was the same expression he made when he cleaned my face of blood. To witness that pain again, it tore me open.

Moving to the side, I pulled him inside and closed the door behind us. After triple checking the lock, I decided to study him further.

"Why?" I knew who jumped him, there was no question about it. But just like everything else our tormentors enjoyed doing, it simply made no sense at all. Their actions never had a rhyme or reason to them, like it was all just a game they decided to play when they were bored enough.

"They want the rest of their money on Monday." He trained his gaze on his shoes, face twisted in anger. Sam had shown me many sides of him recently but it had been a while since I saw him truly pissed off. I wasn't sure if that was any better than the pooling sadness. "They wanted to make sure I understood."

"So it's almost over?" I asked hopefully. It wasn't necessarily supposed to be a question, but it was such an uncertain truth that I couldn't help but hesitate from being too hopeful. It wasn't in my nature to be positive anyway, but it was best if one of us tried to be optimistic when the other couldn't.

"Maybe." He nodded, reaching out and wrapping me in his arms. He slumped his weight into me, all of his exhaustion pouring out in the motion. "I hope so."

"How come you couldn't go home?" I decided to ask, holding him tightly around the waist. Sam loved being held.

"My parents are home, and Chloe's family is over." He muttered. "The last thing I need is their reaction to this."

"Well they're going to see you regardless. What have they said up until this point?"

"They've yelled at me every single time. Many lectures about how violence isn't acceptable. Questions about if I'm being bullied." He sighed into my shoulder, his grip on me tightening. "They're on the verge of contacting the school."

"My parents have been saying pretty much the same things." I said.

"What do you tell them?"

"Nothing." I admitted.

He laughed. "Same here."

Finally we drew apart long enough to look at each other. I didn't care that the blood from his nose and lips might have rubbed off on my shirt. I just cared about his safety, and not even that was something I could ensure. Being seniors in high school was supposed to be stressful, but this was just debilitating.

"Come on." I grabbed his hand and led him away from the front door. We went upstairs together, and then to my bedroom.

Sam immediately began looking around, excitedly taking in my decor and belongings. There wasn't anything particularly interesting about my bedroom. I never cared much about aesthetics anyway.

There was a framed picture of Millie and me on Halloween in third grade. We were dressed as Lydia and Beetlejuice, because she just saw the movie and decided that it was the coolest thing in the world. I did whatever she wanted me to. There was a desk, a bedside table. My bedspread was gray. My curtains were also gray. My walls were eggshell white. I had a Shutter Island poster since I used to be obsessed with the movie in middle school, and a Ferris Bueller's Day Off one, which Millie gifted me years ago.

Other than that, there was really nothing. Just some clothes strewn about and my homework haphazardly covering my bed. It probably reflected my personality just as well as Sam's room reflected his, but it was hard to say when I wasn't an outside perspective.

His lips lifted into a smile. He looked at me. "I like your room."

As annoying as it was to have him finally over when I never even thought to clean my room because I was too busy worrying about him, I brushed the thought away and tried to focus. "It's looked like this since I was like thirteen."

"That's so you." Sam chuckled.

"I'm choosing to ignore that." I rolled my eyes, walking over to my bed and pushing all of my papers, notebooks, and textbooks over to one side. "You can sit here."

He did as I instructed and sat down. "Were you doing homework?"

"Unfortunately." I nodded. "I'll be right back."

I didn't wait for his response, rushing to the bathroom, wetting a cloth, and making my way back. As soon as I returned, I took a seat beside him and grabbed his chin to angle his face. For the millionth time, we were right back to cleaning wounds. Our relationship began from open wounds. All I could do was hope that it wouldn't end the same way.

"How bad is it?" Sam hesitantly asked.

"Worse than it was." I told him as I began dabbing at the blood dried around his nose and down his chin.

"Great." He huffed. "My parents are going to kill me."

"I don't know if that's your biggest worry right now."

"Parents can be pretty scary when they're concerned."

I finished wiping away all of the blood, my face contorting into unease. "I like taking care of you, but this is fucked up. We shouldn't have to do this so often."

"We shouldn't have to do this at all." He replied, touching a finger to his lip to feel the damage. His face was back to being serious.

"What happens if Monday isn't the end?" No matter how much this whole thing made me want to run away from reality, I couldn't. We had to talk about it.

"I'm going to find a way to end this." He held both of my hands in his, looking down at them. "I promise."

"Sam." I touched my forehead to his. "You don't have to bear the weight of the world."

"I can do this."

"But you don't have to do it alone."

He closed his eyes. "I love you, Sawyer."

He dodged what I said, and I wasn't stupid. "I love you too, Sam. That's why I'm here."

Instead of saying anything else, he leaned in the rest of the way. Our lips locked in a slow kiss, an exchange of stress and worries from the both of us. His hand found my cheek, and mine found his neck. He was trying to shut me up because he clearly didn't want to discuss all of that right now. Lucky for him, I fell for the distraction.

Sam pressed closer to me, deepening the kiss. It soon went from slow and sweet, to rushed and emotional. Sometimes I felt that I could tell everything about Sam by the way he kissed me. I could feel of the things he felt, know all of the things he knew. It connected people in a way that words could not.

He grabbed the loops on my jeans to pull me into his lap. My arms wrapped around his neck, his hands grazing the skin of my hips beneath my shirt. Despite the everlasting dread accompanying us, we were both officially in our own little world as our make out session showed no signs of stopping. It became my lips and his, his hands and mine. Nothing else existed.

Until something did.

It came in the form of my bedroom door squeaking. I couldn't jump away and search for the culprit fast enough. I felt like throwing up when I saw Mom staring at us with eyes wide and her jaw dropped all the way down to hell. Where I was surely going to end up after this encounter.

"Um..." I tried to come up with something to say, but my mind was blank. All I could do was stand up and make sure my shirt was on correctly as I contemplated burying myself in a hole. Death seemed to be the only solution.

"Sawyer Jay." She said slowly, eyes flitting between Sam and me repeatedly. "Who is this?"

"This is..." I turned to Sam, trying to collect my thoughts long enough to fix what was happening. But there was nothing I could do. She walked in on me in his lap. My face was beet red, and my brain wanted to fry itself.

"I'm Samson Warner." Sam cleared his throat, holding out his hand to offer a polite handshake as he also stood. He definitely wanted to die just as much as I did, but he wasn't letting it show. Sam was good at charming people, so I just had to hope that he would put those skills to good use.

"Okay." Mom awkwardly shook his hand, openly scrutinizing him. "I assume you're the Mercedes Benz parked out front?"

"Yeah, I'm sorry if it was in your way." He apologized sincerely.

"No, no. It wasn't." She sighed and once more met my mortified gaze. "This is the romantic interest, I presume?"

Now I really was going to die.

"Yes." I replied begrudgingly.

Sam snorted. "Romantic interest?"

"Shut up." It was taking everything in me to not jump out of that window.

"This certainly wasn't what I expected." Mom admitted, frowning at Sam's appearance. "You're Vicki and Lance's kid, aren't you?"

"Yeah." He nodded.

"I know them from the school board. Do they know that you look like that right now?" She was talking about his bruised complexion.

Sam didn't reply right away, glancing at me as if I had any idea what to say. I was far more inclined to just manifest this entire interaction away rather than face a moment of it.

When I turned out to be no help, he slowly shook his head. "No."

Mom released a long breath as she contemplated how to deal with this incredibly bizarre scenario. I was never the type of son who liked to bring people over. Only Millie, who was my best friend since childhood so she barely even counted. So there was never any risk of me bringing over someone who I felt differently about. Because of my previous abstinence, my mom and I were about to have a conversation we never had before.

That window sill was looking more and more tempting.

"Please tell me you two are at least dating?" Mom then decided to ask.

"Mhm." I nodded. I hated every second of this.

She rubbed at her forehead. "That's better than meeting the guy my son is hooking up with."

That caused a strangled sound to escape my throat. Even Sam seemed embarrassed now. "Mom."

"What?" She then planted her hands on her hips and cast an annoyed look my way. "I don't know what I'm supposed to say to all this!"

"You could start by leaving the room and pretending that this never happened." I begged.

Mom was too obstinate. "I don't think that would be a good idea. You two clearly shouldn't be alone together."

"Oh my god!" It was like she was trying to make this as awful as possible.

"This is your first..." She paused, furrowed her brow, and decided on the terminology. "...relationship. I've never had to parent you in this way before."

"You don't have to parent me at all." I told her.

"I saw a mysteriously expensive car in our driveway, so I came up to ask about it. It's not my fault that you happened to be..." Mom waved her hand in the air as if that would conjure up the words she was looking for without the awkwardness that accompanied them.

"I'm really sorry about all of this." Sam suddenly found his voice again, biting at the scab already on his lip as he looked at both of us. "This is mostly my fault. I didn't want to meet you like this."

"It's alright." Mom mustered up a smile, and it felt genuine. "I was your age once too."

I groaned.

"Sawyer Jay, you're so dramatic." Mom pinched my cheek. I bat her hand away. "But I hope you didn't feel like you couldn't tell me."

"I just didn't want to yet." I told her. I didn't expect to be doing this in front of Sam, but here we stood.

"Well I love you regardless. Is this why you never dated before?"

Even though I was closer to Mom than Dad, it still felt weird to talk about personal things like this. I was never the type who liked to discuss my private life in general, not that I had much to relay in the past. So it was hard to feel comfortable explaining all of this to her, especially with my boyfriend watching. "No, it's not why. I'm not gay."

She quirked a brow. "You're not?"

Sam did a poor job of stifling a laugh. I sent him a death glare. "No, I'm like somewhere in between, I guess."

Mom planted both palms on my cheeks and looked me firmly in the eyes. "It doesn't matter anyway, you're still my son and I'll love you no matter who you love."

Affection was also not our thing. "I know. Thanks."

"You should tell your father."

That caused a frown to immediately twist my lips. "I don't want to."

"Sawyer Jay, he loves you too." Mom reminded me.

"He's going to be weird about it, Mom." I protested.

"You won't know that until you tell him."

That did not sit well with me. I didn't reply.

Mom stepped away and sighed. "This is your call, but he's going to find out eventually. Knowing your carelessness, he just might find out the exact same way I did."

Mom walking in on us was absolutely horrifying and sickening, but the idea of my dad doing the same exact thing somehow multiplied that feeling tenfold. Sam wasn't even supposed to come over, the whole thing just sort of happened. I didn't think to lock my bedroom door because I was a bit caught up in other things. Our luck was truly a sight to behold, because it seemed that shit was constantly going wrong without us even having to try.

"Why don't you just tell him?" I asked her. It probably wasn't any better than if I did it, but I really didn't want to.

"You would rather me tell him?" Mom looked at me as if I was crazy.

"At least I don't have to see his reaction then."

Sam once more decided to speak. "Wouldn't you want to tell him yourself?"

"So now you're on her side?"

He shrugged, trying to read me. I rarely talked about my dad around Sam, so he didn't really know what the situation was like. "Do you think he'll be upset?"

Mom tsked. "He'll be fine."

"He'll be weird about it." I reiterated, huffing to show my current disdain for the both of them. Then I grabbed Sam's sleeve and dragged him out of my room. Mom followed nosily behind us, which wasn't shocking. We went downstairs where I found my dad putting groceries away. He looked to the doorway when he noticed our presence, his usual bland expression tinted with confusion.

"This is my boyfriend. His name is Sam." I rushed out, wanting to get the whole thing over with so that I could move on with my life.

As expected, he just continued to look at us for a while. His face remained unreadable. Dad was the one I was less inclined to tell, because I always felt like I was never quite what he wanted me to be. My only friend was a girl. I hated sports, especially football. I wasn't all that intelligent nor personable.

And even though I never really cared all that much about pleasing him, it still felt like I was just a disappointment to him. Most of the time I didn't feel any particular way about it, but in that vulnerable moment the feeling returned. At least it was in the air now. No going back.

Finally he picked up something out of a grocery bag and went to put it into the fridge. The silence was unbelievably loud in the time it took for him to finally speak. "What happened to his face?"

He sounded a little bit angry, and that surely didn't make me any less nervous. I glanced at Sam, not knowing what to say.

"I was mugged." Sam managed with a shocking amount of believability.

Dad trained his gaze on Sam. "Are you the one who did that to Sawyer?"

Flabbergasted, I turned to Mom with the hope that she would say something, but she seemed just as inclined to hear the answer. I didn't let Sam say anything before I touched a hand to my scabbed cheek and scowled at my dad. "He had nothing to do with this."

That was mostly true. They didn't need to know all of the details, and I sure as hell wasn't going to offer any.

"I want to have a talk with you." Was the next thing Dad decided to say, directing his words at Sam. He simply left the room without another word, and after offering me a nervous look, Sam followed.

"Great." I muttered.

"He's just being cautious." Mom put her hand on my shoulder.

"He's going to kill him."

"He won't." She said. "Unless he was the one who did that to you."

"No." I rolled my eyes.

"We just love you, so we want to make sure you're safe and happy. The last thing we want is to see someone break your heart."

This was enough interaction with my parents for a lifetime. "I can handle myself."

"I don't know why it's so difficult for you to let us love you." Mom ruffled my hair. I tried desperately to escape her reach.

That wasn't exactly a wrong statement. I struggled heavily with accepting affection and declarations of love, it was simply apart of me. Maybe that struggle lessened a little bit more every time Sam got all sappy with me, but it didn't exactly make it any less uncomfortable to listen to other people. Mom I was a bit used to, but Dad was a whole other story. He and I simply coexisted more often than not, so sometimes it was easy to forget that he was every bit a parent as Mom was.

I dreaded whatever embarrassing thing he was saying to Sam. The last thing I wanted was to be boiled down to some helpless kid who could have his heart broken at any given moment. Even though I had never been through a breakup before, I was sure that I would be able to handle it. After all, I was the emotionally unavailable type.

Just because I was dating a guy didn't mean that I was suddenly more fragile. I hoped that my parents understood that, but it was hard to tell. That was an answer I would probably never know, since my first partner didn't turn out to be a girl. Thus I had no way to compare the two scenarios.

Every minute that they were gone felt like an hour. Until finally they came back into the room. To my complete and utter shock, they were both laughing as if they were old best friends.

This day really couldn't get more bizarre.

The second that I could, I insisted that Sam couldn't stay for dinner since he had to get back home. Which was partially true, even though I was sure that Sam would rather kill time here than deal with his family's reaction to his new bruises. I didn't care, because I had dealt with more than enough for one day.

As I walked out to the driveway with Sam, I let out an arduous groan. "That was humiliating."

"At least they were cool with it." Sam smiled.

"I knew Mom would be, but Dad..." I furrowed my brow. "What did you even say to him that made him suddenly like you?"

"He was lecturing me about treating you well and all of that, and then he asked what sort of prospects I had. So I told him about football."

I couldn't help but laugh at that. Of course it was fucking football. "My dad doesn't love anything as much as he loves football."

"Good thing that's what I'm good at." Sam leaned against his car, watching me as if he was contemplating closing the distance between us.

"Don't you dare kiss me goodbye." I warned him. "There's no way my parents aren't watching."

"I don't see them."

"They're sneaky. I'm not risking it."

Sam seemed to concede as he opened the car door. But at the last second he planted a kiss on my cheek. "See you at school, sugar."

I cringed. "Stop calling me that."

"Never." He grinned.

I stayed outside for a minute as I watched his car drive down the road. We got so distracted by the chaos that accompanied my parents that we never really discussed the druggies. Monday was our last meeting with them. But only if they upheld their end of the deal.

In that driveway I was stood between two worlds. The traces of Sam and the nightmares that followed him. And the normalcy that accompanied my busybody parents.

What I wanted to do was lose myself in Sam's lips again. What I did instead was go inside to face even more questions from my curious mother.

We want to make sure you're safe and happy.

I was happy being with Sam. But I wasn't safe, and I had no idea if I ever would be.

•O•O•