There were maybe twenty of us in the change rooms. I was in taking a shower and when I came out, I could hear Ben telling Aaron all about the things Katrina would let him do to her. I did my best not to listen in because it seriously made my chest hurt to hear him talk about her like that, but my ears wouldn’t tune him out.
By the time I was dressed and had my shoes on, I knew exactly how far she had let him go, in explicit detail. I swear that steam was coming out of my ears as I tried to breathe through my anger.
“I reckon if I play my cards right, she’ll let me go all the way at the Formal After Party,” he bragged, earning himself a high five from Aaron.
“She’d better put out. All the other girls are giving it up, and you’ve waited nearly six months for her,” Aaron said.
“For sure man, I so deserve this.”
I’m not sure how I got from the other side of the locker room to standing behind Ben, but all of a sudden I was there saying, “Do you know what you deserve Ben?” I don’t even think he realised who it was, because he turned around grinning like a fuckwit. “This,” I told him as I rammed my fist into his gut, doubling him over as he stumbled back into the wall behind him.
“You fucking bastard!” he spat at me as he righted himself.
“Stay the fuck away from her!” I yelled.
“I knew it. You are into Katrina? Well, too bad mate. She doesn’t want you. She wants me. I’m the one that’s touched her in those special places. Not you,” he taunted me, getting spit in my face as he leaned in close to prove his point. “And I am going to fuck her after the formal. All. night. long. and there’s nothing you can do about it.”
A rumbling growl built in my chest and exploded out of me, echoing through the change rooms as angry red colours coated my eyes, and my fist shot out and slammed into his jaw, sending him reeling backwards.
I physically launched myself against him, ramming him into the brick wall behind him where we embarked on a blow by blow fist fight. There was cheering and yelling around us, and eventually, I was hauled off him, kicking and spitting, swearing that I was going to take his life if I ever heard he touched her.
“You’re fucking crazy!” he yelled at me.
Immediately, we were hauled into the principal’s office. Our parents were called, and we were both suspended for three days.
My mother also grounded me for a month. I was to go to school and come straight home – no friends… no Katrina.
That night, I heard a gentle tapping on my window. I opened the curtains, knowing exactly who would be there.
“Trina, are you crazy? You can’t go walking around at night on your own!” I hissed at her through the darkened window.
“I needed to talk to you. Your mum said you were grounded, and Ben won’t tell me what you were fighting about.”
I pulled on a pair of shoes and jumped out the window onto the ground next to her. “I’ll walk you home. It’s not safe around here. What were you even thinking?!”
“Why is it safe for you to come to my window, but it’s not safe for me to go to yours?”
“Trina, I can’t even believe you don’t see the difference. You’re a girl - girls shouldn’t walk around at night on their own. Simple as that.”
We walked back to her house in silence for a while. “Are you badly hurt?” she asked.
“I’m ok. I'll heal.”
She pulled me to a stop under a street light and grabbed me by the chin, turning my face from side to side as she took in my battle wounds. She then picked up my hands, and ran her fingertips lightly over my grazed knuckles.
It wasn’t cold, but a chill ran through me as she gently stroked my hands. Sighing, she looked into my eyes. “Tell me what the fight was about.”
“He just pissed me off, and I snapped.”
“Did it have anything to do with me?”
“Let’s keep walking,” I said and started moving toward her house.
“David!” she called, jogging to catch up. “Answer the question.”
“We got into a fight because he’s a fuckwit alright. I know he’s your boyfriend Trina. But the guy’s an arsehole.”
She didn’t say anything more to me until we were back at her house.
“Here I’ll give you a boost,” I said, interlacing my fingers and holding my hands open for her.
“It has something to do with me, doesn’t it?”
“Trina,” I sighed. “I’m sorry I fought with him. He said some shit that I didn’t like, and I snapped. Don’t read into it. Your choices are your own – they’ve got nothing to do with me.”
“What did he say about me?!” she demanded in a harsh whisper.
“Are you going to let me give you a boost or not?”
“Fine,” she said planting her foot in my hands and letting me heft her over the fence while she mumbled about squeezing blood out of stones.
“Good night Trina,” I told her as I turned to leave.
“Whatever David,” she said from the other side of the fence before her head popped up again. “You know something? I would have thought that out of everyone in that locker room, you would have been the guy to tell me the truth. What is this? Some stupid bro code? I thought I meant more to you than that.”
I moved closer to her, taking her head in my hands as I planted a soft kiss upon her forehead. “You mean the world to me Trina, and I don’t want to upset you over guy talk. It’s all my problem ok. You haven’t done anything wrong. Now go inside before your parents hear us and ground you too.”
***
During my suspension, my mother left me a huge list of jobs that I needed to have competed by the time she got home each day. She also swore that she was going to drop by randomly to check on me and alluded to having some sort of surveillance set up to make sure I stayed home.
I wasn’t in the mood for socialising anyway. I spent my days trimming trees and weeding garden beds, as well as cleaning out all of our storage areas. I wish that the list of jobs took my mind of things, but they didn’t. I hated, HATED, hearing Ben talk about Katrina like she was any other girl out there. It made me sick. I kept feeling like he was goading me on purpose. I guess that’s what I get for trying to move away from the group, all of a sudden, by my own actions, I wasn’t one of the top dogs of our grade anymore. I had made myself a target, and I was going to have to get used to it.
That didn’t mean that I was ever going to stand by and listen to any of them bad-mouth Katrina.
On the third day of my suspension, Katrina detoured past my house on her way home from school. I was busy raking leaves in the front yard, so I didn’t realise she was there until she called to me.
“Are you back to school tomorrow?” she asked, standing on the council strip and talking to me over the garden bed.
I paused what I was doing and leaned on the rake. “Yeah. How’s it been in my absence?”
“Boring, enlightening, and a little lonely.”
“Okay…?”
She bounced a shoulder and chewed on her lip a little, I could tell she was deciding if she wanted to tell me something, so I waited.
“Do you know Ethan? He’s in year twelve and gets off a stop before us on the bus.”
“Yeah. I know Ethan.”
“Of course you do. He’s on the basketball team isn’t he?”
I simply nodded, feeling pretty sure what was coming next.
“Well, Ethan sat next to me on the bus today. He told me what Ben was saying about me and what he said would happen after the formal. He told me how he was provoking you.”
“I should have just ignored it. It’s none of my business Trina. You can do what you like.”
“Yeah, but the stuff he said. It’s not true. Half of it hasn’t even happened, and I’m certainly not ready to… you know. Anyway, tomorrow morning I’m going to break up with him. It sucks because I really liked him, but he’s been pressuring me a bit and well, I don’t like being spoken about that way. It’s supposed to be priv
ate you know?”
“Yeah, Trina. I do know.”
“Do you think Loren and the rest of them will let me come to the formal in the group limo still? My plans are kind of ruined now.”
“I’m pretty sure they’ll let you. I’m not sure if I’m going though. I’m grounded remember?” It was at that moment that my mother’s car turned into the street. “Oh shit, now I definitely won’t be able to go.”
“Hi Mrs Taylor!” Katrina called happily as my mum pulled into the driveway, a stormy look on her face.
“David’s grounded Trina. That means no friends, not even you,” mum said as she got out of the car.
“Oh, I actually came to talk to you Mrs Taylor. If you have time,” Trina smiled, hitching her bag up higher on her shoulder as she headed toward my mother who narrowed her eyes suspiciously, but still smiled, nodding toward the house to tell Katrina it was fine to follow her.
“Back to work young man,” my mother said to me with a smile. “You’re suspension isn’t over yet.”
I finished up in the front yard, bagging up all the leaves and cutting up the palm fronds that never seemed to stop falling from the tree next to our letter box. By the time I was finished and putting the tools away, Katrina was leaving my house and calling goodbye to me, leaving me wondering what she’d been inside talking to my mother about.
“You’re not grounded anymore, and you can go to the formal,” my mother said as soon as I walked inside. “Trina just told me what the fight was over. Frankly, I think he deserved to be hit for talking about our girl like that. You should have told me David. I wouldn’t have been so hard on you.”
The next day at school, Trina and Ben had a very public break up. I think that perhaps they had secretly tarnished Katrina with the same brush they were using for me, because they all sided with Ben. Katrina then came to sit with me and the new group I’d been hanging out with.
“Did they kick you out of the club?” Loren asked her.
“Truthfully, I never really fit in. I’m not that much like those girls.”
Being in the same grade level, we all knew each other anyway, so there wasn’t any need for introductions.
“I don’t get why anyone would want to hang out with those stuck-up bitches anyway Katrina,” Loren’s boyfriend, George told her. “They’ve never said a nice word to anyone other than their own. You and David though, you two were always nice to everyone. We actually thought you were a couple until you started dating Ben.”
“Nah man, she’s just my friend,” I told him, nudging Katrina playfully with my arm.
“Well, whatever you are to each other, welcome to the group Katrina.”
Chapter Six
During the last couple of weeks leading up to the formal, Cassie was a fucking bitch. I’m sorry, I know I shouldn’t talk about people like that, but that’s what she was. She got the shits that I wouldn’t go to the formal with her, so she started up a rumour that she was pregnant, and that I refused to speak to her until she got an abortion.
How seriously fucked up is that? I felt like such an idiot for ever getting involved with her in the first place. I mean, a girl who throws herself at you repeatedly, despite you constantly telling her that you don’t want a relationship is, in my books, either totally self-aware, or a couple of sandwiches short of a picnic. I just wish I'd been smart enough not to get involved with her in the first place.
On the upside, I was so lucky to have found the group of people that I was now hanging out with, and Katrina seemed much happier too. They didn’t for a second, believe the shit that Cassie spouted, but they’re just ten people out of a hundred and fifty, so there were a lot of people that still did.
The whole year seemed to be getting pretty jazzed about this formal thing. Admittedly, I was kind of happy about riding in a limo, because I’d never been in one before, and I was glad that Katrina was coming with me instead of going with Ben. We used to be friends, but now I had some pretty deep-seated feelings of hatred towards him.
In my experience, the guys who brag the most are the ones who aren’t doing anything. I understand that now, but every time I looked at him, pictures of him feeling up Katrina plagued my mind and drove me crazy.
“Hey, what’s got you frowning like that?” Katrina asked me one lunch time while I was staring off into the distance, watching some of my ex-friends playing footy. We were lying next to each other on the grass not far from the oval.
“Nothing really,” I responded, rolling over onto my back, so I was looking up at the sky with my arms folded behind my head.
Katrina leaned on my chest, her long hair falling over her shoulder and brushing against my face as she moved it over to one side. “Do you miss it?” she asked, peering down at me, a look of concern in her blue eyes.
“Miss what? Playing footy?”
“Being popular. Do you miss it?”
“I’d only miss it, if you were over there instead of right here with me,” I smiled, reaching up and tucking some of her hair behind her ear.
She laughed slightly through her nose as she rolled off my chest and onto her back next to me. “So are you going to dance with me at the formal?”
“Sure, why not. You’re not worried about dancing with a monster like me? You aren’t worried it will ruin your reputation?”
“Oh David, my reputation was ruined the moment I let you sit next to me on the bus all those years ago,” she laughed.
***
The day of the formal rolled around, and we were all meeting at Erin’s house to wait for the limousine. Erin's family owned an indoor sports centre, and their home was a flat attached at the back of it. I think everyone’s families completely filled the parking lot as they crowded around us all, taking photos like they were paparazzi and were about to score their next big pay check.
It was a really warm night, and while all the guys were sweltering in suits, the girls were in dresses that showed off all of their lovely curves and kept them cool. Katrina wore a short, pale blue spaghetti strap dress, that looked amazing on her.
She’d had her hair cut and styled so that it fell in soft curls at her shoulders and wore a pair of low-heeled shoes, so she was about the same height as me. She was truly stunning. and I honestly had trouble keeping my eyes off her.
We’d always been comfortable and tended to touch whenever we were near each other, but that night was different. My hand kept wandering over to rest on her back, to hold her hand, to wrap around her waist. I felt an overwhelming need to keep her by my side.
I suppose we both put it down to a protectiveness after the altercation I’d had with Ben in the change rooms, but at the After Party, things got a little intense.
As with most parties, there was always someone with an older brother or sister who was over eighteen and could get alcohol for everyone. This party was on a property in Emu Plains, and there was a keg of beer as well as tubs filled with ice, and those vodka mixes that the girls are so fond of.
So of course, we got drunk – everyone did. A band had been set up on one side of the property, and everyone was dancing and having a great time. Katrina had been by my side all night, and we were having a blast, dancing and laughing together.
“Alright, I think I need some water. My head is spinning a bit too much.” Katrina told me after a while.
I nodded, and we went and found a tub filled with bottles of water.
“Who the hell’s party is this anyway?” I asked.
“I have no idea. Everyone just got dropped off here. Let’s go sit down for a bit.”
“Sure,” I said, following her over to a tree with a trunk so thick that I think it would take two of me to wrap my arms around it.
“Here, sit on this,” I said laying my jacket on the ground, so she didn’t ruin her dress with the dirt.
“Oh David! You’re such a gentleman,” she laughed as we both sat down.
“Have you had a good night?”
“The best. Thank you.”
; “Why? What did I do?”
“I’m sure you had a whole bunch of girls you could have hung out with tonight, but you decided to stay with me. Thank you.” She smiled, turning her head back towards the dancing mob.
“Trina,” I said, using my finger on her chin to turn her head to me. “I wanted to be with you tonight. There’s not one other girl I want to spend my time with.”
In that moment, we locked eyes. Slowly, the distance between us grew smaller and smaller, until it was no longer there, and we were but a hair’s breadth away from each other. I blame the alcohol, but I know it was me who brushed our lips together first.
Letting out a tiny moan, she parted her lips, inviting me in. I laced my fingers through her hair and brought her closer so our mouths had nowhere else to go.
Every inch of my body was buzzing as I moved my tongue against hers, and every little whimper she made just caused the buzz to grow more intense. Trina got up on her knees and climbed onto my lap, pressing her body against mine as she kissed me feverishly.
Not once did I wonder what I was doing, everything about that moment felt so right to me, and I didn’t want it to end.
“David, you fucking liar!”
Instantly, we broke our mouths apart and turned toward the interruption. It was Cassie, with her hands on her hips and her eyes wide with anger while she was flanked by two of her cronies who were shaking their heads and titching, spouting ‘how could you’s at me.
“You told me she was just a close friend David. That looks a little too close to me.”
“What?!" I sputtered, getting up, so I could stand in front of her.
“I’m pregnant, with your child, and you’re here making out with your ‘best friend’” she spat. “You make me sick.”
Holding up my hands, I took a step back. “Cassie, seriously, you need help. You and I haven’t been together for months. You need to stop this shit and just accept that I don’t want you,” I yelled.
The Beauty in Between: Too Close (A Beautiful Series Novella) Page 4