Made of Glass Chapter 7

A little scandal to keep things interesting.

For the next few weeks life was easier for me than I ever thought it could be. School was easy. I was running on something like four hours of sleep a night between work and studying but at least I didn’t have as many nightmares that way. The best thing was that I had things to do. I didn’t have to use my crutch of drugs and books to keep me from having a complete psychotic break. I was distracted from my old life which was all I really wanted. Work was still trying but I couldn’t imagine a job that didn’t involve some kind of human contact so probably either win the lottery or deal with it.

Of course there was Edward to distract me from that too. He came more and more frequently and served as an excellent distraction from all the fake drama of the game. I sat by him most of my breaks and chatted whenever things were slow. Sometimes it scared me that he was so interested. He was always watching me while I worked and listening and observing. I was sure that he was going to call out my bluffs sometime. Just stand up and call me a fake in front of everyone. Tell them all that I was lying and that I was actually a fake smiler with a broken past. He did notice things that made me uncomfortable. Always asked me how I was doing on my bad days or when I relied too heavily on my happy pills he said I looked foggy. I tried not to take as many pills during the day so he wouldn’t notice.

Despite all of the uneasiness of having a good friend I wouldn’t stop going to his table and laughing with him. The worries only came when I wasn’t with him. When we were sitting at the table together, I didn’t really care about anything else that was happening in my life. I was smiling and it was easy.

Our relationship was constricted to the walls of the bar. I still worked every night so a social life wasn’t really possible. He never asked me out or invited me to go do something outside the bar. For quite a long time we were content just to sit and shoot the breeze.

It turns out he was premed as well. A couple of years ahead of me though. He took mostly night classes so it was unlikely we would ever have any together. He was a bigger fan of music than he was of books. He was shocked that I didn’t even own an ipod. He’d bring a few choice cds for me to listen to so my “tastes wouldn’t be so limited” as he put it. I have to admit that I did enjoy most everything he brought to me except for a few of the oldies. He described his taste in music as eclectic which was absolutely true. Everything from hard rock to pop to country to rock n roll to whatever nonsense they were playing in the sixties. That singer-songwriter vibe I didn’t like at all. It was all much too deep for me and made me think too much. He’d help me study by quizzing me when I walked by on busy nights. He tried to talk to me about television and movies and stuff but I was hopelessly lost on that front. I didn’t even own a TV and all I would bother to watch on the TV at the bar was football which he denied being a fan of. Despite the lack of similarities in our interests we never ran out of things to talk about. Mostly we just laughed with each other.

He only mentioned his family in passing very rarely. I learned that he had two brothers and two sisters and they were all adopted by Dr. Carlisle Cullen and his wife Esme just like Edward was. I mentioned that I was a foster kid too and he apologized like I had told him that someone I loved had died recently.

The hardest part of my days was waiting for him to come in. He wouldn’t arrive till pretty late in the evening after it had gotten dark. I wondered how he spent so much time here with me and going to night classes too but I wasn’t complaining.

Everything was going great until the drama of college girls suddenly caught me off guard. It was late after a particularly slow night. I was in charge of locking up with Ashley. It was never a good idea to have the two of us trying to work together, but luckily this night she just disappeared once the last customers left. I would rather go through all the work of closing up on my own than have to suffer through it with her. I was just about through and going to lock the door when I remembered that Bucky was staying late too for his weekly scrub down of the grill. I headed back to the kitchen to see if he was done but was surprised when he wasn’t in there. I wondered if he had left and I just missed it, but the grill still had layers upon layers of fat and grease on it. He wouldn’t have left without finishing his job. The only other place he could be would be the storage downstairs.

I headed down there wondering what could have kept him away from his work. I pushed open the large door and froze suddenly in my steps. There entwined in each other’s arms were Ashley and Bucky in a passionate kiss.

I was so shocked by the surprise I completely lost control of my limbs. My face was frozen with eyes wide and mouth hanging open.

“What the hell?!” If I had been thinking I would have slowly backed out of the room because they hadn’t noticed me yet but I was so surprised the exclamation just slipped out of me.

They jumped after my cry and stepped as far away from each other as the tiny room would allow.

I tried to form more words to demand some sort of explanation but I was too shocked. This place was like a freakin soap opera. Why do these things happen to me?

“Dolly!” Ashley cried frantically looking from me to Bucky and then back to me. “This isn’t what it looks like.”

“Oh thank God,” I breathed.

“It’s just, well, Bucky . . . and I well . . . you see,” she stumbled over her words.

Drat. It was exactly what it looked like. I groaned and turned away from the pair and ran back up the stairs. I shook my head as if the action would fling the images engraved behind my eyelids away from my consciousness. It didn’t work.

“Dolly!” Ashley called after me once I reached the upstairs. I reluctantly turned to face her but immediately turned back around when I saw she was in the process of righting her blouse.

She grabbed my arm while I tried to walk away. “You can't tell anyone about this,” I jerked violently away from her. This was not the right time to be touching me.

Like hell I can't. I could do anything I wanted. I was in charge in this situation. “No, you can’t be doing this sort of thing to poor Bucky. You can have any guy you want! Why would do this to a sweet guy like him?” I said alarmed by how very upset I was over this.

“It’s not like that, Dolly” she said looking at me with pleading eyes.

“What is it like, Ashley?” I challenged her. “Do you love him? Is that it?” I said in a mocking tone to reflect how ridiculous I thought that idea was.

Ashley looked away embarrassed.

No way! This was freakin ridiculous! She actually did love him? Ashley and Bucky, My mind was blown. “What?!”

“Okay, listen. This thing just sort of happened, alright? And he actually like I dunno, means a lot to me so you can't be telling everyone and ruining it all,”

“But how can you like him? He’s nice! And he doesn’t even talk!”

“I know. He’s so great,” she went all doey eyed.

“Wait, this is legal right?”

“Yes! Dolly. I’m 22 and he’s only six years older than me.”

No wonder Bucky worked around a bunch of girls all day. He was a cradle robber! I had no idea that he was such a perv. I did not see that coming at all!

“I know but you usually go for like . . . the attractive guys.”

“Bucky’s attractive in his own kind of . . . “

“Mobster way! And how can he like someone as shallow as you?”

“What?” Ashley said looking offended. I certainly didn’t care about how she felt about any of it.

“Okay, okay. Let me just start from the beginning. How long has this been going on?”

“Almost two years,”

“WHAT?!” seriously like brain matter being blown all about the room.

“It’s serious okay,”

“And you guys . . . like each other?”

“Yes,” she said earnestly.

“So why can't you tell people?”

“Well lots of reasons. There’s the game-“

I cut her off, “The game! How can he stand you throwing yourself at every d****e that walks in here.”

“He knows they don’t mean anything to me. I’m just playing the game.”

“You’re walking all over him!”

“I’m telling you he’s fine with it.”

“He must be some special kind of mad to be in this with you,” I said shaking my head.

“Look. The main reason is we can't all be like you, Dolly. Some of us do care what people think. You can be off in your own special world and be whoever you want to be without worrying about repercussions but people’s opinions mean a lot more to me.”

“So you care more about what other people think of you than Bucky?”

“No, it’s just this way I can have them both.”

“But-"

“And he doesn’t want people to know either. He’s worried about his job if Mrs. Westen finds out. It’s not like he is sleeping around with all the cute girls around here just me. But I know how it will look.”

Well yeah, that’s exactly how it looked to me anyway.

“I’m almost done here. Just one more semester and I graduate and then Bucky and I can do whatever we want. Until then, you just have to keep your mouth shut!”

Keeping secrets for Ashley was not something I ever wanted to do.

“Please.” She said sincerely.

Ugh. I needed to either go to one side or the other. Just be a completely evil b***h who actually didn’t care about any part of the world around them or think like the actual nice person I pretended to be. My actions were betraying my thoughts daily and it was getting harder. In this situation my thoughts were saying “screw Ashley! She’s screwed you enough times” but that’s not what I was going to do.

“Fine. For Bucky,” I clarified. She needed to know I wasn’t going to be doing any favors for her.

“Thank you, Doll. I mean it.”

I waved my hand in a dismissal. “Where’s Bucky?”

“Still downstairs. Are you going to talk to him?” Ashley said cautiously.

“Yes, he is a lot better friend of mine than you are. I am on his side in all of this not yours. I need to hear his take.”

I turned to head back down to the storage but paused at the foot of the stairs.

“Oh and Ashley, you break his heart, I break your face,” I said in complete seriousness.

She gave a nervous laugh.

Bucky was waiting, looking embarrassed in the storage room. He was shifting his weight back and forth between his two gigantic feet and twiddling his sausage sized thumbs. He looked up expectantly when I entered.

“Ashley?” I said incredulously.

He nodded his head somberly.

“You know she’s a b***h?” I asked.

He looked slightly affronted at my words but it quickly faded. That wasn’t something he could truthfully deny.

And then miracle of all miracles he started talking. “She’s different than what you know. You put her on edge because you are better at this than she is. She’s just jealous that you can be so comfortable being who you are. I think if you got to know her away from this place and the competition you’d like her a lot more.

“And I . . . I can talk to her.”

It was the longest speech he had ever given since I knew him. That alone had left me shocked but his words were just as surprising. He actually did like her.

“You can talk to me, you know,” I said.

“I do know that. And I consider you one of my closest friends. You’ve always paid me a lot more attention than any of the other girls and I appreciate that. But you’ve got enough pain to carry around with you. You don’t need mine added to it. I’m sorry that you have to keep this secret. It’s easy with Ashley because she’s never had a bad thing happen to her in her life, not really bad. She’s still so innocent. And I know that you aren’t,” he leveled a compassionate eye on me.

“Well Bucky you are full of surprises.” He understood more around me than any of the other girls did. People often assumed him stupid because he was big and quiet but he saw right to the heart of the matter. Of course he wasn’t exactly right. I wasn’t exactly comfortable being who I was. It’s just that I hated who I was because of what I thought not what other people thought of me. I didn’t really care that he knew my secret. Actually it was kind of nice to share it with someone.

 "You’re secret’s safe with me,” I gave him a sincere smiled which he returned.

I still couldn’t understand how Ashley could be into someone without all their teeth.

All in all I ended the night with a true friend. Something I had never had before.

Reviews

[Summer]

“Oh and Ashley, you break his heart, I break your face" I think I died laughing. That was so funny. Because Dolly is so tiny and Ashley is taller than her and Ashley is scared of Dolly! LOL! I love this book.