I throw my head back as my back bone lands on the cold iron of the truck.
I don't understand why they decide to pack Stella and I in the backspace of a trailer fill with hefty cylinders which contain what I have no idea of but it does not smell nice. Stella and I continue peering at each without a word as the truck starts moving after what seems like an hour.
I feel so grateful they decline restraining us.
"I'm sorry... I brought you into this shit." Stella apologizes.
Only if she knows how selfish I am, that I pick my family over saving her, she will realize she owes me no apologies.
"Well, you don't have to. It's not like it's your fault." I shrug.
"It is, Haley." she snickers humorlessly and insists.
I open my mouth to argue further but she halts me.
"He is obsessed, Haley." she declares and I knit me brows in a mix of concern and dubiety.
"Ralph Olsen is obsessed with me." she repeats.
Her fragile blue eyes convey the truth, I chuckle finding it rigid to believe. Stella is his late brother's wife.
"But... You are married to his brother, how come?" I manage to ask, as the whole thing makes me want to puke.
"Ralph and I attended the same high school, he wasn't one of the cool kids back then so he didn't have a share in popularity," She hauls in a comma and sucks her lips, her eyes match up with mine.
"Ralph wrote me anonymous love letters back then," She huffs as she looks like she recounts those moments.
"He was psychopath sicko stalker, it wasn't freaky fun, sometimes I...I did feel someone staring at me in my sleep," Tears gathering at the edge of her eyes almost falling.
"So, when my friends found out he was the sicko stalker. They didn't take it easy on him. He got bullied because of me, I know it was pretty hard for him, but, what could I've done, Haley?" She bats her eyelashes and tears lapse. I feel my body tightens, sweat mounting up on my body. People have history, a history that can break others.
"I was scared, he had like gazillion pictures of me. Even nudes, my friends; Gally, Kyle, and Cassie. They did horrible stuff to him. One day, He disappeared. He never came back to school until we finished the senior year." She wipes her face with her stained hand.
"That's...." I bite my lips as I think of a perfect word to use, "...er, epic."
"Yeah, it was. The next I knew, he appeared a week before my wedding to Gabriel." She laughs dolefully.
"He's Gaby's brother,"
I gasp, it's expected.
Gabriel is Jeremy's late Dad and Ralph is his brother.
I know they had to meet again for this to have happened, just that I never thought it will be a week to her wedding.
"I know I should I've called off the wedding, but I couldn't, I... I, uh, I couldn't leave Gaby... I was too selfish to."
I try not to smile at the way she keeps saying 'Gaby'.
"Hey, hey, it's okay, here."
Clambering anxiously on the knobby aluminum pattern that tends to fling me anyway haphazardly, I crawl to her when she starts sobbing uncontrollably. I draw her head close to my chest and pat her hair which sultriness doesn't smell pleasant as I imagine. I let slip the smell and hug her tightly as her arms welcome my amenity.
"It's okay, sssh, it's okay." I calm her.
She pulls away and stares at me, "You don't get it, do you?" She looks skeptically petrify, "I made him like this, and I drive you into this mess. I—"but I impede her from further condemnation speech.
"You didn't do anything wrong, Stella. He is the obsessed one, Heh, not you. I mean I would definitely be mad seeing my nudes on some stalker freak's phone. Well, I could file a petition against the dude. Trust me."
She giggles and I tag on, listening to her heavy breath fanning the cock of my neck. We stay in the position for a while as I process everything she told. I try to reason with her truly, but the fact that Ralph must have gone through hell in the hands of her friends bothers me. I've never been bully in high school and I don't know what it feels like, except the fact that I have a similar story to Stella's.
I was the mean type or at least a teaser, I dated a few guys and gain some popularity shit. Tracy and I had a girl at that time we find it as a pleasure to tease, we called her, Titanic loser, hence she was a nerd who wears rimmed glasses and she kind of had flesh. It was dreadful for her. It was so, so bad and I feel so guilty now.
Ralph's a stalker and he has probably never gotten over after her marriage to his brother, he still stalks her, follow her while trying to get everything about her.
"We should elude."
"What?" Stella pulls apart completely from me, her eyes popping at the edge.
"If someone can be this crazy about you that he didn't care if he has your consent or not to do all this nasty, eh–you have to trust me. He's no human." I admonish.
Fear overshadows her eyes, she seems scared of something or protecting someone.
"I... I... I, don't thin-k it's, gonna work." she shivers while she stammers. She shies away.
"Before you regret it," like my words hit the right spot on her skull, she looks at me.
"We're gonna regret it if we continue to sit here without doing anything. Think of Jeremy, don't you want to see him again?"
"His smile, Stella. Don't you wanna see his angry face raging with heated passion? You don't wanna hear how he fell for me?"
Her sapphire eyes soften as she entertains my seduction. She looks down in guilt pouting her lips, she holds my hands, making me pay attention to her.
"Ralph won't spare me this time."
Heaving a sigh, "You have to trus–" at the crook of my sentence, the truck joggles separating Stella and I. My body trundle conversely to my will, I thump on one of the cylinder and yelp in distress.
"You're okay?" Stella asks panting.
I look round the aluminum sheet container for her, the cylinders are no longer together. They are shattered and rolling around the place as the trailer moves, I sway to one of the black cylinders for support. Standing up I see Stella behind it, she also clutches firm for her dear life.
"Yeah."
"I have a plan." I inform her.
"You do?"
I nod at her, I look round the sealed container. The place is pitched with cylinders junks. I wonder what is contained in each cylinder.
"What's your plan?" she buzzes with worries in her eyes.
Unconsciously, I smile at her, so sure of my plan and how perfect it will work.