FicWad

He was so lying too… But there was nothing I could do about it… I mean I think Donna even knew it cause she kinda shook her head at him a little resigned as she put on her coat.

“All right, give her a kiss so we can go.” Donna sighs looking over at Gerard and I freeze up… She wants us to kiss? I kinda just looked at Gerard like oh shit… I mean Donna was standing there waiting for him to say goodbye to me. And she expected him to kiss me. I mean why wouldn’t she… its not like she knew we were fighting…

Wait, were we even fighting? Fuck. I don’t even know… We never really got to talk about anything. As far as I'm concerned everything is still up in the air. I mean I know in my heart that things are gonna somehow work themselves out and I really didn’t want to worry Donna with our bullshit… I could kinda tell Gerard was thinking the same thing. I mean I could see it in his eyes as he watched me put on my coat. I could also tell that he didn’t want me to go…

“Is there anything I could say to make you stay?” He says softly, as he stepped in front of me, watching me button up my coat. I just shook my head no a little without looking up at him as we stood by the doorway.

“Mikey lets go!” Donna yells out and Mikey comes running down the hall with his library book. Donna held the door open and nodded as he went out, then she turned her attention back onto me and Gerard…

“You sure you wanna do this?” I hear him say and I nod again with out looking up. “Elle.” He calls my name and I knew he wasn’t gonna let up until I looked at him.

“Yes Gerard I'm sure.” I tell him looking up into his eyes and staring at him insistently for a moment. He sighed a little in defeat once again and then reached over and started buttoning up the rest of my coat.

“Come on stop.” I tell him and I shifted in protest, but he tugged me back and buttoned the last two buttons on my coat.

“Its cold out.” He tells me and I make a face at him…I fucking hate those buttons up by the collar. I never button them cause it feels like someone’s choking me… I hate things like that tight around my neck, like scarves and buttons… But he always insists on bundling me up… I guess he doesn’t realize I just undo it the second he turns his back… “There.” He declares and I'm still making my annoyed face, which he seemed to find amusing…

“All right lets go!” Donna calls out again and Gerard leant forward like he was gonna kiss my lips but I guess changed his mind at the last second cause he turned my face from his and pressed his lips up against my cheek…

And it wasn’t just like a peck on the cheek… His lips pressed against my cheek and stayed there a few seconds longer then they should have. It was like he didn’t want to let me go…And part of me didn’t want him to…

“Goodbye Gerard.” I said weakly looking down at the floor as I stepped back from him and followed Donna outside. He didn’t say anything, didn’t try to stop me or anything. I guess cause his mom was there…

We get in Donnas car and Mikey was babbling to his mom nonstop about all sorts of nonsense the whole ride… I mean he was giving me a fucking headache… He insisted that we HAD to go by the library first. Honestly I would’ve preferred they dropped me off first. I mean I could only take so much of Mikey's mouth…

“So what are you taking a book out from the library or what?” I said trying to gauge how long this was gonna take.

“No I just have to renew this.” He says holding a book up and I raise my eyebrows up at him.

“Renew?” I ask and he nods. We were going all the way to the fucking library so he can ‘renew’ his book! Is he kidding me!

“Yeah its due back today but I'm not done yet.” He says and I make a face.

“Yeah but you could just keep it Mikey, it doesn’t matter.” I tell him and he looks at me in shock.

“You cant just KEEP IT!” He kinda yells a little flustered, like what the hell I said.

“Sure you can.” I tell him and he shakes his head at me.

“They’ll charge you a late fee Elle.” Mikey says knowingly.

“Yeah like what, a quarter?” I laugh and Mikey makes a face at me.

“Try more like fifty cents!” He says and I laugh again.

“Mikey you know how much a gallon of gas costs!” I tell him and Donna smiles too. “I can’t believe you're making your mom drive you here so you can save fifty cents.” I tell him and he frowns as Donna pulled up in front of the library. Mikey didn’t say anything back to me… He just jumped out and ran in to ‘renew his book’… Just in time too. Looked like they were about to close…

He gets back in the car a few minutes later all smug with his newly renewed book and Donna turns to me.

“Okay, what now Elle.” She says and I just looked at her blankly for a second… Fuck… I mean she said she was gonna let me do it on my own… I was kinda caught off guard.

“Well I guess.” Mikey tries to say and she shushes him.

“No Mikey Elle is going to decide.” She tells him and he shrugged a little.

“So where are we going Elle?” He says looking over at me slightly amused.

“Okay well umm.” I stammer a little and I see Mikey kinda roll his eyes. Which only motivated me more… I mean I could fucking do this… I'm not stupid…

“Okay well I guess we can go by my truck and I can write down the numbers off the side of the tires and then bring it to the shop.” I say and Donna nods and starts backing out.

“Or-“ Mikey goes to say and she whacks him in the arm.

“Hush now.” She tells him and a wave of panic comes over me… ‘Or’…that’s what Mikey said…or what? I mean am I doing something wrong… All these doubts starting swirling in my head… But I didn’t want to ask what he meant by it…

I mean would Donna let me run around like a fool? Hmmm. Probably. I mean I asked her to…Fuck I just wish Mikey wasn’t here to witness my stupididty… I mean he's being nice and all cause his moms here, but I know Gerard's gonna force a second by second run down out of him as soon as he gets home… If I fuck this up, he's gonna know and the pressure was just killing me…

“Where’d you park Elle?” Mikey snapping me out of my thoughts.

“Oh I'm not in the diners lot. I'm in the next one, but don’t go in there, I think there's glass or something on the floor.” I tell Donna and she nods. I still wasn’t sure how I got two flats… I mean I didn’t see anything on the floor, but then again I didn’t really check since I was so upset…

“How did you end up in that lot?” Mikey asks and I shrug.

“I missed the turn off for the diner.” I tell him and he smirked a little. I instinctively lifted my hand to flip him off and then remembered Donna was there so I ended up just kind cracking my knuckles and Mikey smirked again…

“Elle is that your truck over there?” Donna says with a strange tone to her voice…

“Uh yeah.” I say looking over as she pulled into the diners lot… Something was wrong… Well actually nothing was wrong. That was what the problem was… There was nothing wrong…my tires weren’t flat… Well not anymore…

“Elle are you sure they were flat? I mean-” Mikey starts to say asI open the door roughly and get out of his moms car.

”Yes Mikey I'm sure they were flat.” I tell him as I step over the cement divider between the lots.

“Well they don’t look flat to me.” He says and I frown at him.

“Trust me they were flat. You can even ask Frankie. I kicked them.” I say going over and examining them up close… “These aren’t even my tires.” I tell him and Donna and they both looked at me like I was nuts. “I mean these are new, I'm sure of it.” I tell them and Mikey leans over and looks at them a little skeptically...

“Yeah they are new.” He says like he couldn’t believe I was actually right about something…

“Well someone sure likes you.” Donna kinda laughs. “I mean brand new tires are pricey.” She says and Mikey makes a face.

“Yeah but who would’ve done such a thing?” I say totally bewildered.

“Aw come on Elle, you don’t know who did this!” Mikey says suddenly annoyed.

“No!” I exclaim and he looked at me like he didn’t believe me. “But if you do, I’d like for you to tell me so I could thank them, I mean it could’ve been anybody.” I tell him and he made a face at me.

“Elle how many people knew about this.” He says and I wrinkle my face as I thought about it.

“Not many.” I say reluctantly… I mean he was right. That defiantly shrunk the suspects pool down quite a bit…

“And how many of those people are a palindrome?” He says and I look at him totally lost.

“A gnome?” I ask and he smiles. "Like those freaky garden statues things?" I tell him wrinkling my face at him again. I mean is he fucking high or something?

“No Elle, a palin-drome .” He repeats and I just continued to stare blankly at him…I hate when people think by repeating it, it makes more sense… “You know words that are spelt the same way forwards as they are backwards, they're called palindromes.” He tells me and I cock my head to the side.

“Really?” I ask curiously. I didn’t know those things had a name…

“Yeah you know, like mom or dad or…Bob…”

“Mikey, Bob didn’t do this.” I say and Mikey rolled his eyes a little at me.

“Sure he did Elle.” Mikey replies and I was gonna insist he was wrong but I glanced over at Donna and changed my mind… I didn’t want to get into it in front of her.

“Well that Bob’s a real sweety hmm?” Donna says and I nod and give her a fake smile. I guess she could tell I wasn’t sincere… “What's the matter Elle?” She asks and I just looked at her not sure what to say. “You're not disappointed are you?” She says and it took me a second to realize what she was talking about. She figured I was upset cause I didn’t get to fix my tires by myself… She had no idea the real reason I was upset was cause I couldn’t figure out what the fuck was going on…

“Uh yeah…I mean no… I mean I.. uh.” I stammer at her and she smiles. “I mean I kinda wanted to, but I didn’t.” I tell her and she nods.

“You're probably better off. You're not really dressed for it.” She says nodding at my dress and I shake my head in agreement.

“Yeah you're right.” I tell her. I mean I was just gonna agree with whatever she said just to end the conversation… “Oh you know what. I left my book bag in your car.” I tell her opening the door to my truck and tossing my purse inside.

“I’ll get it.” She says and I nod… Mikey was still kinda examining the tires although I don’t know why… I waited until Donna was far enough away that she couldn’t hear us before whispering over at Mikey.

“Bob didn’t do that Mikey.” I say softly and he frowns as he turns his eyes back on me.

“Of course he did!” Mikey replies quite loudly.

“No he didn’t!” I hiss at him. “He went to bring Lia to work, there's no way he’d have time, and he wouldn’t have left her there alone to come fix my tires.” I tell Mikey and I could see him thinking about it.

“Well then who would’ve?” He says and I shrug as I watch Donna take my book bag out of the back seat of her car.

“I don’t know Mikey.” I tell him and he glances around the empty lot… I think maybe he was looking for clues. “The whole thing just kinda creeps me out.” I tell him and he shrugged and didn’t say anything so I stupidly keep talking… “I just got a really bad feeling again, like when the lady brought the cheesecake-“ I start to say and Mikey looked at me like he didn’t know what the hell I was talking about…fuck..I don’t know why I always open my big mouth.

“What cheesecake?” He says lowering his voice a little since his mom was now walking back towards us.

“Some guy sent over a piece of cake when Frankie and I were in the diner.” I tell him and he just looked at me like who? “I don’t know who!” I tell him quickly. “But it sounded like maybe the same guy that was at Pauls.” I tell him and he frowns.

“You mean the guy who broke in?” He says and I nod. “And?!” He demands waiting for me to go on.

“And I don’t know if it was even him I kinda freaked and dragged Frankies ass out of there and when we came out my tires were flat, and now they're like totally…not flat.” I tell him and he just looked at me like he didn’t believe me… Well I mean I think he believed what I was telling him, it was more like I don’t believe this crap in general, not that he thought I was lying to him or anything. “The whole thing just kinda makes me uneasy you know…ugh.” I groan a little and he nods.

“Maybe you should come back to our house Elle.” Mikey says and I shake my head no.

“No Mikey.” I tell him and he rubbed the back of his neck a little like he was stressed.

“Elle if you're scared.” He says and I laugh a little.

“Naw Mikey. I said uneasy. Not scared.” I tell him and I guess Donna was close enough to hear…

“Elle if you're uneasy you shouldn’t stay. You don’t have to prove anything.” She says and I shake my head a little at her.

“I didn’t mean ‘uneasy’.” I try to backtrack but it was too late. The damage was done…

“No Elle, just follow us back to the house.” Donna says quite bossily and I could suddenly see where Gerard gets it from…

“Mrs. Way please!” I cry out and she paused at my pleading. “I'm fine really. Its not a big deal. Its just a few hours alone.” I tell her and she sighed a little at me.

“Well I suppose.” She says and Mikey shook his head in disagreement.

“Mom.” He started to say as he looked over at her, and for a second it looked like he was gonna say something about all the weird crap that’s been going on but I shot him a nasty look and he kept his mouth shut…

“No Elle’s right. Its just a few hours.” She says and I nod. “And if I know my son it will be even less then that.” She says and I make a face at her.

“What?” I ask a little confused.

“Oh, you know him Elle. I'm surprised he didn’t follow us.” She chuckles and I kinda smile.

“Yeah but grandma might call for a ride so he can’t.” Mikey says and Donna grins a little.

“That’s doubtful Mikey seeing as your grandmother took a trip down to Atlantic City with the senior club. She wont be back until Friday.” Donna says and I smile. Mikey just looked at her in total disbelief.

“Mom!” He gasps, shocked at her cleverness I suppose… I wasn’t shocked. I mean I knew she had to have a few tricks up her sleeve. How else could she keep it all together…

“Naw give him a few hours.” Donna says referring to Gerard. “He’ll wait till he thinks I'm asleep before sneaking out to come over here and check on you.” She tells me and I feel myself blush a little, but I didn’t know why…I guess hearing her say that. Knowing that she knew that he cared so much for me… I don’t know. It was weird…

“Yeah but what if he doesn’t?” Mikey says and Donna looked at him like he was kidding, but I knew what he was implying… I mean Mikey knew about the fight we just had, Donna didn’t… Fuck, what if he doesn’t come? What if he gives me my space like I asked? …Well, I never really asked, but he knew what I was doing and why…

“Its all right Mikey.” I tell him ”Even if he doesn’t come, I asked Bob to come by, so I’ll be all right.” I tell him and Donna nods approvingly. Mikey’s jaw just kind of dropped open when I said I asked Bob to come...

“You invited Bob?” He says like maybe he didn’t hear right. I just looked at him funny. I was so sure he overheard us talking by the car but I guess not.

“Yeah he promised me he’d come.” I tell Mikey and he took kinda a deep breath and didn’t say anything…

“So you see she’ll be fine.” Donna declares. “Between Gerard and Bob-“ Donna says and I kinda look at Mikey like oh shit…

It just hit me what I did… I invited Bob to my hotel room… And there's a good chance Gerard's gonna show up and the only thing I can do is cross my fingers and pray that they made up…