This is not a very long chapter, just so you know. I promise the next chapter will be back to the usual 4 pages. Tune in on November 2015. I'll be joining in on the National Novel Writing Month. I'll be posting chapters of my new novel. It will be in the BDSM genre. 50,000 words, which is about five chapters plus two Wallflower chapters. So, rate/comment/email me. Hope you enjoy the chapter :D
P..S Thanks for whoever spotted Nicholas's age discrepancy. I went back to look at my character profiles and realized he is in fact 23. I'll edit it when I do my final draft.
*****
'What am I going to do with my life...I can't spend it the way it is now.'
Lily sighed as she looked at the fridge. One...two...three...four...five...six... It had been six weeks since she had graduated from high school. Other than her recent change in lifestyle, friends, and living situation, not much had changed. With the way things were going in her life, she'd be an old, forty-year old woman with nothing going on in her life, but a sadistic Spirit to keep her company.
'Oh fun,'
Lily thought, rolling her eyes as she flipped some of the bacon in the frying pan. When she placed the cooked bacon on plate, she looked back at the calendar. Her bland future was not the only thing that had Lily begrudging the coming days of her life. Next month was the first days of college. An experience that she wouldn't be able to get to be apart of. The bitter thoughts of the unfairness of it all clouded her brain and made its way down to the tip of her tongue. Lily didn't want to say it. She didn't want to add being a bitter old woman on top of her life sentence. But the words tickled her tongue, urging her to at least say it once.
"All that hard work...and all I get is a dead end minimum wage job," Lily said aloud as she pushed the scrambled eggs around in the skillet. "No...because of some bitch who has the audacity to call herself a mom." Lily's temperature rose as her anger wanted to erupt with just thinking about her.
She hadn't thought of her mom in weeks, and she liked it that way. The woman was apart of her past, and that is where Lily wanted her to stay. Her mom never called her to see if she was OK, sick, or even possibly dead, so Lily held the same attitude towards her. She didn't even entertain any wishes of misfortune on her either. Her mom couldn't do anything to hurt her anymore. Lily just had to pick up the pieces of her life and go on from there. The only piece that seemed to be in place was her job.
'I mean I like my job, but...I can't waste my life away there. Only thing I can do is get an education.'
And getting an education cost money. Money she was surprisingly able to save because of low rent and the few times she actually needed to use her car. But of course she didn't have the kind of money to be able to go to a university at the moment. Only a community college. Lily mentally sighed at the thought. She had been a straight A student who was apart of every honor society available and graduated top ten percent. Lily smirked to herself as she flipped over the pancakes. But there were so many other students who had backgrounds the same as hers, but only a select few got full scholarships.
At first, she had protested the thought of not going to college. She had the grades, the awards, and the extra curricular activities. A school had to give her enough money to go there without paying a dime. That's when she realized reality was a real bitch. And that reality was no matter how good her grades were, unless she was some six-foot heavy bound football player with an impressive record no school was going to give her a full scholarship. And America is supposed to be supporting academics? Supporting academics her ass.
At that point of her life, Lily thought community college was out of the question, but at this stage in her life, she had no choice. She had to apply to a community college, fill out FAFSA, and unfortunately, apply for a student loan that would take forever to pay off. But, hey, she had to do what she had to do.
"What's with the long face, cowgirl," she heard Nicholas say behind her. Lily looked behind her to find Nicholas lumbering into the room with an extreme case of bed head and dressed in only his boxers. Lily no longer stared at him in his state of undress. This was now her normal to serve Nicholas breakfast in his underwear.
"Nothing," she muttered. "Just thinking."
"About what?" Nicholas asked as he looked into the fridge for his personal carton of orange juice.
"About going to college." Lily reached into the cupboard and got a plate to put the pancakes on as they began to turn a golden brown.
"You should go. You're smart. Where do you want to go?" Lily glanced out of the side of her eye to see Nicholas leaned onto the fridge, drinking his orange juice while staring at her through his hair.
"The local community college." She flipped the pancakes onto the plate, but stopped as she heard Nicholas splutter and choke on his juice. She turned around and saw Nicholas was bent over and coughing while turning red. Lily quickly placed the plate on the counter top and hurried over to him to give him a couple of smacks on the back.
"What in the blue devil is going on?" Mrs. Yates said, appearing in the doorway.
"Nicholas just choked on some juice is all." Lily looked down at Nicholas, rubbing his back as his coughs subsided. Nicholas began to stand up while gasping for air. He wiped way the drool before fixating his eyes on Lily.
"Are...are you...out of your...mind?" Nicholas asked while still gasping for breath. Lily stared at him confused.
"What are you talking about?"
Nicholas let out s final cough before straightening up. "Lily, you have to be out of your mind to go to community college."
It felt like a weight fell on Lily's head. When being around Nicholas, this feeling became the usual. "You have got to be kidding me!" Lily raised up her arms in exasperation as she walked back to the stove to check on breakfast. "I think you're nearly choking to death, but what you're really doing is just being a drama queen!"
"Did I miss something?" Mrs. Yates asked as she sat down at the table
"Nicholas is having a drama queen moment," Lily murmured.
"Well I just think that you're too smart to be going to community college." Nicholas interjected. It's for people who didn't do good in highschool, don't know what they want to do, or-"
"Or what Nicholas?" Lily turned around and placed her hand on her hip. "Broke? Because that's what I am. I work a minimum wage job, have to room with you and a sadistic ghost for low rent, and end up only having enough to pay for groceries and maybe a few extra things. I don't have enough to pay for community college even when I get paid! I have to take out a student loan just for that!"
"Why don't you just apply for a scholarship like everyone else?"
"Scholarship month has already past. I have to use my own money to pay off the tuition, classes, and books."
Nicholas and Lily stared off against each other. She, daring for him to say anything else, stared back with crackling fire in her eyes. He, trying to think of something to get her to abandon her thoughts of going to community college, scrunched his face but realized this was one battle he was going to lose.
"You're eggs and bacon are done, hon," Mrs. Yates interrupted while sipping on coffee that Lily didn't even notice she had gotten during their exchange. Lily tore her eyes away from Nicholas to take the skillets off the heat and scrape them onto a plate. She sat each plate down before retrieving a plate for herself.
When she turned back around, Lily saw Nicholas's back as he walked out of the kitchen. "Aren't you going to eat breakfast?" she yelled behind him.
"I don't feel like eating," he called back, barely containing his anger as he trudged up the stairs. It took all the will Lily had to not slam the porcelain plate on the table as she sat across from Mrs. Yates.
'That fucking, ungrateful, sonofa-'
"He really can be insufferable," Mrs. Yates remarked before pressing her lips to her mug of coffee. Lily gave a small snort in response as she reached over to put a few stacks of pancakes on her plate.
"More like bipolar. One moment he has this carefree attitude, the next he acts as if I pissed in his cereal."
"Maybe it's because he likes you."
Lily's face heated from the possibility but easily pushed it aside and put a piece of pancake in her mouth. "We're just friends."
"I never inferred you were anything else, dearie. It's just obvious." Mrs. Yates got up from her seat as she fetched herself a plate. "If you never came to live here, he'd still have kept that woman around both here and at work. What happened at that shop was a disaster waiting to happen. Just too bad that you had to get caught up in all that."
It was just Lily's luck, or Anna Belle's stupidity, that the unstable woman tried to attack her while Nicholas was right beside her. Now that Lily really thought about it, the incident was definitely due to Anna Belle's stupidity. Nicholas was Anna Belle's boss. How did the woman think she had the balls to get in his way, literally, cause a scene in front of everyone, and try to attack someone in HIS shop right in front of him? Lily rolled her eyes at the remembrance of the whole thing.
'He really needs to pick his stalkers better,'
Lily thought as she speared another piece of pancake to put in her mouth.
At least Anna Belle would no longer be a problem. According to Nicholas's employees, the chick was in a mental hospital. Lily knew the chick was crazy, but not to that extent. But then again all Anna Belle really needed was a little "push" off the deep end.
Lily's fork clattered onto her syrup laden plate as the thought flickered like a sparking lighter and then grew to consume her entire brain. When she was first told of Anna Belle's fate, she had chalked it up to the chick over reacting to Nicholas cutting any ties with her and as a result her obsession with him consumed her. But then again, what had caused Nicholas's epileptic attack after he left? It could have very well have been stress. But with the Spirit inside of him, Lily could not rule out that He caused Anna Belle's insanity. Whatever he did, it was worse than what he had done to Louis. The possibility of something worse than his "pranks" were unfathomable. Could the Spirit really be that cruel?
But anything was possible when the Spirit was involved.
