Noah
Sometimes I wondered if Lee Carter regretted her kids ever meeting me because I spent most of my time in their home, helping Low and his triplet brothers Cameron and Colton raid the fridge and make a general mess of things.
As per usual the four of us were pigging out in their living room, playing Xbox and wasting away another Friday evening.
"Is it still on later?" Low asked in a quiet tone, eyes locked on my face.
I nodded, not wanting to say much in front of his brothers. I got along well with all of the Carter's but Low was the one I trusted explicitly. He'd never given me a reason not to and trusting people didn’t come easy to me. Before moving to Thirteenth Street I'd never stayed in one place long enough to make friends or feel grounded, my father's job entailed a lot traveling and moving around. It wasn’t until my dad died and we moved to The Hill that I discovered what a real family was – because it sure as hell wasn’t the family I lived with...
When Ellie's father, George, signed me up as a member of the gym in the Henderson Hotel when I was fifteen years old it was one of the few great things he'd done for me.
Of course he had his own agenda for wanting me groomed and primed, but I didn’t care about his reasons. Joining that gym led me to meet the owner's family who for all intents and purposes had become the family I never had. George had unintentionally given me a lifeline that three years later I still clung to…
"It is what it is, Low," I said calmly as I met his stare head on.
I was sitting on the couch between the Cam and Colt, watching them as they beat the shit out of each other in a wrestling game. Across from me, sitting on an armchair was a pissed looking Logan. I knew why he was mad, and he knew there wasn’t a damn thing I could do to change it.
I didn’t have a choice.
"What it is, is bullshit, Noah," Low hissed and I couldn’t have agreed more with him.
It was bullshit.
My whole life was one complicated concoction of bullshit.
"Boys will you please take your feet off the table," Lee Carter said with a heavy sigh as she pottered into the living room with an obvious look of dismay on her face. "I just polished in here."
I dropped my feet to the floor and earned a megawatt smile from Lee.
"Thank you, Noah," Lee praised before shooing both Cam's feet and Colt's off the coffee table. "If only the rest of you were as obliging." She tried keep her expression stern, but failed miserably and ended up smiling lovingly at her children.
"Thank you, Noah," Colton mocked in a feminine tone as he tapped on his Xbox controller.
"Good boy, Noah," Cameron snorted.
Colton waited until his mother left the room before asking me, "So what's going on between Ellie and Teagan?" as he tapped furiously on his controller, eyes locked on the huge flat screen television in front of us. "My sources tell me your sister's got some major beef with blondie across the street."
"Your sources," Cam snorted as he leaned forward, concentrating on the game in hand. "Why don’t you just say your sister, dude?"
Colt, ignoring Cam's comment, continued his lecture. "She was spreading some nasty rumors today."
"Do I look like Ellie's keeper?" I muttered, even though an abnormal amount of anger bubbled inside of me at the thought of those bitches at school whispering about Teagan. The girl pissed me off worse than anyone else, but that didn’t mean I wanted to see her get bullied…
"That's true – she told Amy that Teagan has an eating disorder," Cam grumbled, brows furrowed. "And a lot more besides that."
My gut twisted. Fucking Ellie… "And you guys are telling me this because?"
"Teagan's all right, Noah," Colt said in a serious tone he rarely used. "She doesn’t deserve to be Ellie's next victim."
No, she didn’t deserve to be Ellie's next victim.
"You bagged her during the summer, didn’t you?" Cam accused. "Ellie only targets the girls you've been with."
"No, I didn’t fucking bag her," I spat, anger bubbling inside me.
"It would explain why she annihilated your car, dude," Colt offered. "There's no worse wrath than a woman scorned and all that…"
"I didn’t bag her," I snapped. "Whatever's going on between Teagan and Ellie has nothing to do with me."
"Whatever. Denial is a river in Egypt, dude," Cam said with a shrug. "Either you bagged Teagan, or you wanna bag her. There's no other probable explanation for Ellie's jealous behavior."
"I don’t have time for this crap," I grumbled, checking my watch as I climbed to my feet. I cast a meaningful glance at Logan. "I'm late for work."
Logan let out a heavy sigh and shook his head sadly. "I'll give you a ride."
"Thanks, man," I replied gratefully when we reached the front door and were out of earshot of his family.
"Doesn’t mean I agree with this, Noah," he muttered under his breath. "I don’t and I never will."
Low was the one person on this planet who knew what I'd been wrangled into, and he stood by me regardless of the danger a guy like me presented.
Our friendship meant a hell of a lot to me, and I fucking hated when he looked at me with disappointment in his gray eyes.
It caused the helpless feeling inside of me to skyrocket.
****
The entrance leading to the Hub was crammed with cars, bikes and trucks by the time I made it up there – an hour later than requested thanks to Cam and Colt's stupid fucking conversation.
Hidden from roadside view, several miles down the secluded dirt-road leading to the old abandoned quarry, the Hub was the hangout of the immoral and undesirable and was based in an old quarry warehouse set in the mountains that had closed down in the early seventies.
Because of Teagan's tantrum I was still without a ride and had to ask Logan for a ride. I fucking hated that he was here and had to see this side of my life and that caused my anger with Teagan for screwing my ride to intensify.
"You should go home, Low," I told him, still mentally cursing Teagan as I walked around to the back of the building. "I can find another way home."
"Yeah, that's not happening," Low replied in a dry tone as he followed me inside the back entrance. "The only way I'm leaving this place is with you in the passenger seat."
Every time I found myself back in this dump, which seemed to be more and more frequent these days, something my old boxing coach once told me always reverberated in my mind.
"Keep your eye on the donut, Messina," Chancy had rasped out, cigarette hanging out of his mouth as he watched a ten year old version of me getting an ass kicking in the ring. "And not the hole."
At ten years old I hadn’t realized how big an impact Chancy's advice would be on my future. But now, with my eighteenth birthday around the corner, I recited those words like a Christian would the bible.
The make-shift bar was bursting to the seams with patrons when we stepped inside.
Women were stripping on tables, men were fisting themselves as they watched and I had to swallow my own vomit as I walked through the crowd with my best friend flanking me, my head held high, and my focus on the donut.
****