by Jeff Hale
I watched as she hurried off, taking enjoyment in the way her body moved, letting it distract me from my own discomfort. When she returned she had a dumbfounded look on her face as she handed me the tissue.
“What’s wrong? You look like someone just stepped on your dog,” I said as I wiped the blood off my hands and mouth.
She glanced back over to the bathrooms, then back to me. “Um… well… I… don’t know…”
“Whoa, calm down, take it easy, and start from the beginning.”
“Okay. Well, um, I went into the women’s bathroom, to get you that tissue. Well, the dispenser is just inside the door, so I didn’t have to go all the way inside. Uh, you know how we planned to talk to Dave and Nina separately to see what was going on?” Her voice dropped to almost a whisper. “You thought that maybe Dave wasn’t keeping up with Nina? Well, I think you’re right in so many ways.”
“What happened?” I asked again, a sinking feeling coming over me.
“I saw Nina in there.”
“Okay. It is the women’s bathroom, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, but… well…” She gestured towards the bathrooms as though she were having a difficult time articulating her thoughts.
“What? Was she sick? Is she okay?”
“Oh no, she’s fine, I guess. Well, not if... look, here’s what I saw. Nina was straddling this guy, um… what’s his name again? Oh yeah, Roger. You know, that popular guy that’s class President? Anyway, I don’t think they saw me. I’m just… I don’t know… surprised? And I felt strangely… drawn to her...” She sounded somewhat confused.
“You were probably just in shock. God dammit, Nina, what the fuck? Ah the hell with it, I’m gonna go break up their little party,” I said as I stood up. I still felt weak, but anger was buoying me now.
“Are you sure this is a good idea?” Kat’s hands went out to steady me.
“I don’t give a fuck, Nina’s not going to do this to Dave. Fucking bitch.”
“Poor Dave.”
“What the fuck? I’m away for a month and this whole place goes to hell.”
“Not like you control everything here. It would have happened anyway.”
“You’re probably right, but it doesn’t mean I have to like it, or sit here and do nothing.” I started walking towards the women’s bathroom, setting a brisk pace across the courtyard, Kat right on my heels. I pushed the bathroom door open. Moans and hushed voices emanated from inside and I recognized Nina’s. I walked the rest of the way in. The scene was just as Kat had described it.
“What in the fucking hell?!” I yelled as I took three steps into the room and almost fell over, only pure adrenaline and the need to not look weak at the moment kept me standing on my own.
Nina had her skirt hiked up around her waist, riding some guy in the middle stall. She about fell over backwards at the sound of my voice.
“What..? Rick? It’s not…. Don’t tell Dave. Please?” she pleaded, quickly finding her feet and pulling her skirt back down. The guy stood as swiftly as he could and turned away from us, presumably to put his equipment away without anyone watching.
“And why the fuck shouldn’t I? How many, Nina? Huh? How long? I knew Dave was scrambling to keep up with you in your relationship, but fucking hell, Nina, I had no idea that he was this far behind! That any of us were! If you can do this to someone you claim to love how can anyone trust you? How can I trust you?” I looked over my shoulder and saw that Kat had left, probably figuring that this needed to be a private conversation.
The guy, who I assumed was Roger, was standing uncomfortably behind Nina, the desire to escape obvious on his face. He was the poster boy for a boy band: average height, lightly muscled, short well groomed brown hair and brown eyes.
“What? Are we taking up your time, princess?” I asked snidely, looking directly at Roger.
“What did you call me, you fucking prick?” he asked indignantly.
At the same time, Nina said, “Leave him out of it!”
“No, I won’t leave him out of it. Everyone knows about you and Dave, and he still had the nerve to fuck you.” Roger shifted slightly, eyes narrowing belligerently at me. I threw him a scathing glare. “You heard me, princess.”
My words provoked him to step up between me and Nina. “You wanna try me? Huh? Come on, do it! I’ll fucking kick your ass!” Roger threatened, pushing his chest out as far as he could. He stood there for a few minutes, doing his best to stare me down, then he put his hands on my chest and pushed.
It took everything I had to not move. In fact it took more than I had and I had to pull on the Aether to help my body stay put.
“Everything going okay in here?” Kat asked brightly, sticking her head back in the door.
“Yeah, fine,” I said evenly as I continued to stare at Roger. “In fact I was just about to maim this little fucker.”
“Oh, okay. Play nice now.” She stepped back and closed the door again.
“Go ahead, try it, bitch,” Roger taunted through clenched teeth.
“See, I’m not playing around. Or did you not hear what I did to Terry and Nick? Huh?” I asked calmly. I wondered if I could actually take this guy without Aetheric help at the moment, and I really didn’t want to find out. I was hoping my confident bluff backed up by reputation would do the trick.
“Wait, you’re Aerick?” he asked, backing up a little and almost stepping on Nina.
“Heh, yup,” I said, grinning slightly.
“Ah, fuck me, this isn’t worth it for some emo bitch. I’m outta here.” He pushed past me and I let him go.
“Emo bitch? What was that? What the fuck, you unimaginative small cocked mother fucker! You weren’t saying that when you were begging me to get your dick in me!” Nina screamed over my shoulder as he left the bathroom.
“I can’t believe you,” I said, shaking my head. She just didn’t get it. I turned to leave.
“Why? Because I made a mistake?” Nina asked, the pleading tone creeping back into her voice.
“A mistake?! Adding two and two and getting five is a mistake! Taking a left turn when you needed to turn right is a mistake! This is fucked up! You’re going to ruin a perfectly good relationship, with a perfectly good person, just because your pussy got a little wet over Mr. Backdoor Boy! Come on now! You expect me to take that as a simple mistake? I sure as hell know that Dave won’t,” I said, still looking over my shoulder at her as I pulled the door open.
“But Dave doesn’t have to know, Rick! Please!” Nina yelled after me.
“I don’t have to know what?” asked a tight voice.
I turned my head and saw Dave standing on just the other side of the door, looking like his balls had been kicked up into the vicinity of his throat, someone had run over his cat, and like he was pissed enough to kill someone, all at once.
Aw shit.
SEVENTEEN
“Go ahead, Nina, tell me what I don’t need to know,” Dave said, barely above a whisper. Kat was standing right behind him, a sympathetic look on her face, one hand out to touch his shoulder. I squeezed by him, not wanting to be in between them, and Kat moved her arm to hold it out to me for support.
“Dave… I…” Nina went silent, staring at her feet.
“Tell me, Nina,” Dave said again, a little louder, taking a step closer to her and holding the bathroom door open.
“You… weren’t… I…” Nina still couldn’t seem to make a coherent sentence and there were tears streaming down her face.
“Go ahead! Tell me, you cheating bitch!” Dave yelled suddenly, and I saw Nina stiffen under his verbal assault.
“You know what? I don’t owe you shit, Dave! I don’t have to tell you anything! If you were there for me—” Nina was cut off by a sudden motion from Dave. He slapped her so quick I barely saw it, and hard enough to knock her into the wall behind her. The side of her face turned red and blood welled from a split on her lip.
“I’ve always been there for you! You were always looking
somewhere else!” Dave was actually shouting, which no one thought he was really capable of. He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “You know what, you ungrateful cunt? You aren’t worth it. Everyone in the school knows you’re a cheating whore now, no one will touch you. No one will trust you. Not in a relationship anyway. Oh sure, you’ll have guys lining up to fuck you, but that’s all you’ll ever be to them; a fuck, because that’s all a slut’s good for. Rot in your loneliness.” With that, he turned on his heel, shouldered past me and Kat, and walked off, hands in his jeans pockets and shoulders hunched in.
It must have been in-between classes because everyone was milling about the courtyard area, though many had turned to watch the unfolding drama, and as Dave stalked away they applauded him.
“Rick, look, talk to him for me? Please?” Nina said, touching my shoulder. Her eyeliner was a black smear under her eyes.
I pulled away and leaned into Kat, feeling the weakness catching up with me in spades. “Why should I? He’s right. Goodbye, Nina,” I said with some finality. I looked at Kat. “Let’s go.”
We started to walk away, Kat helping to keep me upright. Nina ran up next to me, tears still rolling down her cheeks.
“Please, Rick. We’ve all been friends for too long for this. Please talk to him for me,” Nina pleaded desperately.
“He said he was done with you, Nina. I suggest you give him some space,” Kat said softly. This had to be hard for her. She and Nina were friends, but Kat was obviously backing Dave on this.
I stopped and just gave Nina a disbelieving look. “And say what exactly? That it’s okay that you cheated on him? Yeah, not gonna happen.”
“No, explain to him that…”
“That what, Nina? Dammit, there’s nothing I could say even if I wanted to, and I don’t want to. You deserve this, Nina, you brought it on yourself. You don’t deserve to be with Dave, he is far too good for you. I see that now. Funny thing is, you always had people believing that Dave wasn’t good enough for you.” I felt the warmth of Kat next to me again. I shook my head. “I should have seen this a long time ago. Maybe I did. Maybe I just wanted to be blind. I don’t know. Either way, there is nothing more to say.”
“Yes, there is, Rick, just let me explain, please?” Nina begged and I felt myself give in.
“Fine, but make it quick. And don’t think that any explanation you make is going to be good enough for me, let alone Dave. The only reason I’m even listening to you is because you’re right, we’ve been friends for a long time.”
“Fine. Okay, so here it is. I haven’t been in love with Dave for a long time. I just didn’t have to courage to break up with him and hurt him.” Shame colored her face, almost matching the slap mark. “That’s my own fault. I guess I started sleeping around because I was hoping to get caught.”
“How long has this been going on? How many?”
“You don’t want—”
“Yes I do, or I wouldn’t have asked.” One guy, maybe two, that I might be able to forgive.
“Two years… or so… and around what...?” She glanced up as she thought a moment or two, then ticked off some silent numbers on her fingers. “Thirty-seven guys, probably about twelve chicks mixed in there somewhere too.” She wouldn’t even look at me when she said it.
“Holy hell, Nina. And you say you wanted to get caught? You obviously didn’t or you would have been, a long time ago.” I was just about staggered by the numbers she’d given me. Poor Dave.
“That’s just it! I would have been caught, a long time ago actually, if Dave had paid attention. That’s why I fell out of love with him. He never seemed to give a damn about me. He never seemed to notice when I was gone. I… didn’t feel wanted by him, not for a long time. He seemed to grow more and more distant.” She shrugged as she tried to shift the blame to him.
“Maybe he knew, and didn’t want to bring it up for fear it was true? Maybe he was just hanging on as best he could, and he couldn’t take it this time because he knew there was no denying it to himself anymore,” I suggested coolly.
“But I just wanted him to show a little bit of jealousy, something, to let me know it mattered. He just never seems to get intense about anything. Have you ever known him to be? At all?”
“When we were younger, sure. Before his dad drilled it out of him. Remember how his father used to yell at him like a drill sergeant for crying, laughing, or showing any sort of emotion when he was a kid?” I knew damned well that Dave felt plenty of emotion. He’d just learned to keep it bottled inside, to hide it.
“Wait. I didn’t know about that.” Her face went pale. “He always seemed to act like his parents were perfect.”
“You mean he never told you?” I figured Dave would have at least shared it with her.
“No, he didn’t.”
“I thought he told you everything. Shit.”
“Well, fuck. It all makes sense now. And now… I’ve… I’ve fucked everything up.” The tears started again, and this time she broke down into wracking sobs that dropped her to her knees. Nina had no problem with showing emotion.
“I’m sorry, I thought you knew. Why do you think he moved out the day after his eighteenth birthday? I thought that… you knew that you were the only good thing he had left. Now you’ve taken that away from him, no matter what your reasons were. You decided to give yourself to someone else behind Dave’s back. Er, well lots of someone elses, whatever. Fact remains, it’s done.” I knelt to try and comfort her. The bell rang and I knew I needed to get to class. Part of me wanted to stay and comfort Nina, but another part of me knew that she didn’t deserve it.
No matter why she did what she did, despite any explanations, despite any reasoning, she had still done the only thing that would hurt the one person who truly and deeply loved her, and for that she didn’t deserve any sympathy. She had brought it on herself. I patted her on the back one final time and headed towards my P.E. class, Kat still guiding me, where I knew I was going to have a lot of time to think about this.
The rest of the day went by without any further incident. I knew that going to the Wall after school just was not going to be what it normally was today. I went anyway, just to see who would show up. Kat appeared shortly after. Surprisingly, it was Dave who showed up next, Malcolm and Jessie not far behind him.
“Hey, Dave,” I said, waving as he approached. “How’re you feeling, bro?”
“Like I just had my heart removed and put in the wrong place when it was put back in, like in my stomach or something,” he said as he walked up to where I was.
“She tried to explain things…”
“I don’t want to hear it, man, I really don’t. I don’t give a damn if she was being paid a couple million dollars to do it. Fact is, she still did it.” He sat down heavily next to me and lit up a cigarette.
“Well, she’d have us believe it’s your fault.”
“My fault?!” he exploded, causing Kat, Malcolm, and Jessie to break off their whispered conversation to look in our direction. He took a long pull on the cigarette and let it out in a cloud of smoke. “My fault? Like I helped the guy fuck her? Like I asked her to go lift her skirt for some other guy? Right. Whatever.”
“Something about how you were distant, like you didn’t care about her.” I chose my words carefully.
“What the fuck ever. You know that I loved her more than anything in this world.”
“I know, but I guess she didn’t see it.”
“That’s because she was always looking for something better and maybe rightfully so. I don’t know.” He flicked the cigarette forcefully away.
“Oh, hell no, don’t tell me you’re actually buying into what she wanted everyone to believe?”
“Which is?”
“That she was too good for you.”
“Isn’t she, though? Wasn’t it just a matter of time? I’ve been hanging onto this relationship, onto her so hard for so long now that I never thought I’d be able to let go. Maybe this happening is
a good thing. I always thought she might try and find someone else because I wasn’t what she wanted. I mean, dude, look at us. She’s a party girl, and I’m a homebody. Everyone always looked at us and wondered how such a lively, exciting girl could end up with such a boring boyfriend, and don’t tell me you’ve never thought it. Everyone has, at some point or another. I’m sure of it.” He snorted out a rueful laugh.
“First off, you’re the one that’s too good for her, not the other way around. Today just proved that. You’ve always been loyal to her; she hasn’t been for a while.” I immediately regretted the words.
“Wait, what do you mean, for a while?” Dave pounced on them.
Fuck. Might as well tell him now. I’m sure as hell not going to lie to him. “Uh, well, she told me she’s been stepping out for about two years now.”
“Well, that makes sense now. There were nights that she never made it home after one of her raves. Now I know why. I always wondered, but I never asked, was too afraid of the answer. Figured ignorance was bliss, and left it at that. Especially when she’d have an excuse before I even asked. I just wanted to believe her, I guess. So who with? Do you know?
“Er, no. I didn’t ask for a list.”
“A list?!” His expression turned to one of complete shock.
“Yeah, she was saying something like thirty-some-odd guys, and about a dozen chicks mixed in.”
“Shit, man. All I can think at this point is I hope that skank didn’t give me something. She better have been safe.” His whole body did a little shudder.
“I hope so too, but back to what I was saying…. Yes, I’ve thought at times that you were just hanging on for the ride as hard as you could. And I figured at some point you might slip, and not be able to keep up at all. Hell, me and Kat were going to get you two away from each other and talk to you guys about what was going on between you two. You guys always put on a united front, like nothing was wrong, but I know that there must have been times behind closed doors where that wasn’t the case. You guys are an extremely private couple, despite the appearances. Hell, I don’t think you guys have ever even invited me to come over to your apartment to hang out except that one time at the beginning of the school year.”