Chapter Twenty

I was still fuming Sunday morning. I banged a plate of toast down on the table, being careful to side at the opposite end of the table as my mother. I chewed the toast viciously, titanic bites that bulged at the side of my cheeks. My mother quietly asked me to stop. I chewed harder.

I stood up to put another piece of toast in the toaster. Crumbs were scattered about my shirt, my mouth speared with jelly. My mother pursed her lips, watching the dreaded crumbs fall onto her spotless tile floor. It made me wince chewing like that, I hate messy eaters, but I pulled it off, and my mother was, though she didn't show it, thoroughly disgusted.

Slipping out of the shower, I pulled on a sweater and a pair of jeans. The doorbell rang. I ran a brush through my hair as I dashed to get it.

"Oh. Hi." Grey stood in the doorframe, his strong, slender build perched on the top step.

"I was going to run down to the supermarket at the end of the road, my mum needs some baking soda. Do you wanta come?"

I smiled, yelled over my shoulder at my mum, and, without waiting for her answer, Grey and I set off.

"So what's up this weekend?"

"Not much. I have some junk to do on Monday, but other than that just boreing old week."

"What kind of junk?"

"Oh, this family counseling. My mother wants us to go."

"That sounds intresting." I glanced up at him.

"It sounds like crap." He questioned me as to why. He was getting on my nerves again. I hated it when people asked me how I felt. I glanced at his grey eyes.

"Because," I say, "my family is annoying. I haven't seen my dad home from work for more than two hours since," I paused. I didn't tell him the bit about running away from the last appointment I had with Blair, "a while. My mother is too prim and proper to admit that she has a problem. My dad doesn't care."

"Why don't you go?"

"I'll just blow it off. We should go out with Emily and them Monday night."

"No." I looked at him, surpised. Grey continued, "You should go. Really. Just try, you know, to work through this stuff."

I didn't say anything. He did. "Please. Just this once. I know that familes suck, my parents divorced when I was ten, and when my mother remarried I thought that I'd hate my stepdad." I didn't know this piece of infomation, we rarely talked about familes, I avoided it. He smiled and me. "But now, he's one of the best guys I know."

"Please just go. Just this once."