Tainted Love: A High School Bully Romance: A Pacific High Novel

by Nichole Noel

  I call out for Kylo as I take the keys from the door. It’s a small house, but it’s not as small as the apartment my mom and I shared in California, so I’m taking it as an upgrade. I get my own room and my own bathroom, and that’s also a bonus. Boxes are everywhere and, after my run-in with Connor, I just don’t have the energy to pick at them.

  I’ll do it tomorrow… I think to myself because all I want to do right now was lay down and have a good cuddle with my cat and cry a little, which is exactly what I do. Fortunately for me, Kylo is in a cuddly mood and he purrs along as I cry into his fluffy tummy.

  “Why, Kylo? Why couldn’t he have moved? Or not seen me? Why did he have to see me?” I sniffle. Kylo, understandably, doesn’t reply, but his purrs are thoughtful and I appreciate his headbutts until a horrifying thought filters through my mind.

  What if he’s going to your school? God! I hadn’t even considered that Connor would be at the same high school as me. But no, there was no way. Bellingham wasn’t that small, was it?

  But as night settled in and I tried to sleep in my new room, in my new house, in an old-new town, I knew, with every fiber of my being, that this afternoon wasn’t going to be the last I’d see of Connor O’Brien.

  Chapter Two

  I manage to reconnect with my old friends, Sarah and Kennedy, which isn’t as awkward as I’m expecting it will be. After Connor betrayed me, they’d picked up the pieces, and we’d been friends ever since—even after moving away. To my surprise, they know all about Connor O’Brien because, as I feared, he is going to the same school as me.

  Kennedy rolls back onto her queen-sized bed and nearly gets lost in the pillows as she giggles, “He’s about as hot as hot gets, but a real prick if you get on his bad side—and lots do.” Her head pops up again and her blonde waves fall into her sandy-colored, heart-shaped face. Mouth working into a pretty pout as the continues, “But I wouldn’t mind getting on his good side, if you know what I mean.”

  “Not really and I’m not certain I want to,” I manage as I try to divert the conversation away from Connor, who is taking up even more of my time and he’s not even in the room!

  “Mmm, he sure does have a reputation!” Sarah chimes in. She’s sitting cross-legged on the floor in some oversized-cartoon themed pajamas, braiding her long, copper hair over her shoulder. She’s about as pale as I am, minus the freckles. In California, I was always getting burns, but I don’t expect to have the same problem here.

  “Yeah, and you would know! You worked with him,” Kennedy adds with a loaded look. “And you’ve seen him naked!”

  My eyes bug out as I stare at Sarah. “I would have never thought…”

  Sarah drops her hands from her hair and waves them out in front of her, expression horrified as she assures me, “It was once and it was an accident. He had to work at the same summer camp as me for a season and I accidentally walked in on him while he was changing.”

  “Tell her what you saw! Tell her what you saw!” Kennedy claps along, happily punctuating her words with the sound of her hands.

  Sarah blushes as she admits. “His dick.”

  “You saw his penis?” I make absolutely certain. And now we’re talking about Connor O’Brien’s penis. Just fucking fantastic. This is the last piece of information I’ll ever be needing and yet, the gossip in me wants to hear more while the cynic inside me begs for reason.

  “Mmhmm. And it was…,” she trails off and instead uses her hands to mime out the size of his—ahem—sizable asset.

  “Shit,” I curse.

  Sarah nods. “Lemme just say, he’s even better looking naked. I’m never going to be able to get the memory of him from my mind and, honestly, prick or not, I’d rather not forget how great he looked.

  Too bad he was the worst to work with. Obviously, him being there was some sort of punishment. But I hear his dad is really strict so that probably had something to do with it.”

  An involuntary shiver runs through me at the mention of Mr. O’Brien. Even as a kid, I’d been scared of him. He seemed to hate me and was always yelling at Connor to keep away from me, which he never did until that one, fateful day.

  I wonder what changed…?

  The conversation shifts away from Connor’s dick to the much more interesting topic of school. Okay, so I’m lying. School sucks as much as moving does and starting a new school for my final year is about as sucky as it can get. Fortunately, I have a few friends that I’ll be able to cling to as I get used to things.

  “Pacific High is… well, it’s really cliquey. But try not to worry about it. Just sit with us in the caf and try not to get on anyone’s bad side.”

  “Anyone in particular that I should avoid?” I ask, honestly wanting to know because I already feel like I’m going to have a target on my back with Connor and I sharing a school.

  “Anyone who’s not us?” Kennedy jokes, at least, I think she’s joking.

  “You should be fine if you hang with us. We kind of fly under the radar, or whatever,” Sarah adds.

  “What she means,” Kennedy cuts in, “is that we’re neither popular enough to make anyone jealous and also not weird enough to draw a lot of attention.”

  I laugh. “Sounds perfect. Things were pretty low key at my last school too.” That was an understatement. Whatever the opposite of popular was, that was me. I made a few friends in San Dimas, but with the move and summer vacation, I haven’t heard from them as much as I have from my Bellingham friends. At least I have that that going for me here.

  “At least we don’t have to spend as much money on clothes as all the popular people seem to have to—speaking of, have either of you done your back to school shopping yet?” Sarah asks.

  I crumple a little but try to keep my expression neutral. There isn’t going to be any back to school shopping for me, not with the move and mom just starting up with her new job at the dentist’s office.

  I’ll have to make do with what I’ve got, which isn’t much, but at least no one who lives here has seen me in my old winter clothes. With the weather being as warm as it is in California, my old clothes aren’t too badly worn through because I hadn’t needed to wear them much.

  I know they’re going to ask me to go shopping with them, so when they do, I lie and insist that I’ve got all my back to school clothes bought already.

  Kennedy pouts. “Too bad! We could have had fun shopping together. Why don’t you come along, anyway? You can hang out and help us pick new clothes.”

  I shrug. “Sounds fine to me. I want to see if anyone in the mall is hiring part-time, anyway.”

  There is no way I am going to be able to afford university tuition without saving up a hell of a lot of cash, and I need to get started. And, besides that, I need the money to help mom when she needs it—groceries, gas for the car, things like that.

  Sarah blinks at me. “You’re getting a job? I just finished camp, and I don’t even want to think of having to work another day in my life.”

  Kennedy rolls over and laughs. “I have bad news for you, Sare…”

  “Yeah, I know. Growing up is shitty. But I just want to stay a kid for a bit longer. All those responsibilities seem so shitty,” Sarah sighs.

  “Tell me about it,” Kennedy says before laying her head over the side of her bed. “I’m lucky that my parents have some money set aside for school, but I’ll probably still be looking for something during Christmas.”

  I smile at them both and definitely don’t tell them that getting a job is a necessity and not a choice for me. “I don’t mind. It’s nice to get out of the house and it’s an excuse not to get my homework done,” I joke as if that’s an option for me too.

  Generally, what happens is that I end up working late, get home, shower, and then do my homework until early in the morning. After that, I get as much sleep as I can before starting all over again.

  My last job was in a 24-hour retail store and the hours were absolute garbage. I’m hoping to get something that pays a little bette
r and lets me off at a decent time—or at least reserves the shitty schedules for the weekends.

  Kennedy squeals, surprising both Sarah and I as she accidentally falls off the side of her bed in a heap. She laughs while we scramble to ask her if she’s okay.

  “Yeah, just a klutz. But it’s a good time to get out of here, anyway. Let’s go binge some movies and eat popcorn and forget that school’s starting next week while we can!”

  “That sounds fucking amazing,” I admit and Kennedy laughs.

  “Oooh, foul-mouthed! I don’t remember you swearing when we were kids.”

  I laugh. “Well, I was like ten.”

  “Right, I guess that explains it then,” she says with a wink before lifting herself up off the floor and fixing her hair. “C’mon, we’ve got a lot of movies to watch and not as much time as I’d like.”

  Sarah and I follow Kennedy into her massive living room with the super amazing home theater system and I forget, just for a moment, that this is only temporary. School will be here soon enough, and that means potential run-ins with Connor but, for now, I can imagine that things aren’t weird, I’m not poor, and that I get to have fun and not worry about the future, just like my friends. It’s a nice dream.

  And as the movies play and we fall into fits of laughter or tears—intermittently, we watch a lot of different movies—I think that maybe things aren’t so bad after all.

  Famous last words, something in my mind warns me and I try to ignore the way my stomach drops as I know, I just know, things are never as easy as I want them to be, no matter how hard I wish for it to be otherwise.

  ******

  The mall is just as small as I remember. California gets a lot of things right and they have some of the best shopping ever, not that I ever had enough money to be able to take advantage of the epic shopping opportunities.

  But still, window shopping was nice. The mall here is busy now, but I get the sense that once school hits, it’s going to turn into a ghost town.

  Sarah, Kennedy, and I hit up all the usual suspects, though they seem to spend forever in the little boutiques and clothing retailers. I make a mental note to check back at one in particular, that’s pretty trendy, once I start getting a paycheck again because some of their sale prices are pretty affordable for someone like me.

  Sarah ends up with a bunch of clothes that are kind of subdued, which suits her personality well. And Kennedy is Kennedy—bright colors, lots of glitter, wild prints—basically all the stuff I’d look like shit in but, somehow, she makes it all look so effortlessly cool.

  “I can’t believe you can wear that and make it look good,” I marvel, not for the first time. The high-waisted jeans and oversized sweater would make me look like a grandma, but paired with her cute sneakers, she looks so cool and trendy, especially with her sunny hair and good looks.

  Kennedy shrugs. “I just grab the weirdest things I can find and then beat them into submission with sheer will.”

  I laugh, but I believe her. When we were little, I remember her being really shy and quiet, but she’s none of that now and I’m super impressed and more than a little jealous. I feel like I’m still the same awkward kid who’s never good enough, no matter how hard she tries.

  Not even good enough to keep Connor as a friend… my mind jabs, no matter how hard I try not to think about it. Whatever had happened between us, it must have been huge because the change was like night and day. One moment, we were two kids playing at recess and sharing lunches and then… he wouldn’t even look at me or, when he did, he was so cruel.

  I know I don’t deserve it, but I can’t shake the feeling that I did something wrong—that somehow the only thing I was good for was being hated. It was stupid, and I’d tried to talk to mom about it over the years, but she didn’t quite get it. And, besides, she’d never liked that I was friends with Connor either.

  I remember coming home after that first day, when everything had turned sour between Connor and me, I think her exact words to me were, “Good. You’re better off without him, sweetie.” And that, as they say, was that. Never did find out what Connor did to warrant my mom hating him so much, but I just added it to the pile of secrets that I didn’t have answers for.

  Sarah comes out of the changeroom in a cute jumper and does a little dance for both Kennedy and I. “What do you think? Are the boys going to love me now?” she drawls as we giggle.

  “Oh, definitely. Especially if you wiggle like that,” Kennedy offers. “Why? Do you have anyone in mind?”

  Sarah blushes, which means she definitely does have someone in mind, but she says, “Nah, not really. But just in case!”

  Kennedy and I both give her disbelieving looks, but we let it drop. Sarah’s pretty shy, so I don’t think either of us wants to make her feel bad about her secret crush.

  “Speaking of boys, what are the prospects at Pacific High like?” I ask and both girls roll their eyes, so I assume the prospects aren’t great. At my last school, the boys and girls were all so stupid beautiful that it felt a little unreal.

  Like, so out of my league that I didn’t even bother trying to date. And, from what I’ve seen of B’ham, there are a lot of gorgeous people here too, so I’m probably going to be alone forever.

  Finally, Kennedy offers, “Well, the people are pretty, but most don’t have personalities that fit their looks.”

  “Assholes?” I wonder.

  “Sports obsessed, or hipster, or weirdos—take your pick and, just so you know, Sarah and I generally fall into the weirdo category and it’s great.”

  “Okay, so I’ll keep my eyes open for likeminded, plain weirdos.”

  A curious expression crosses over Sarah’s face as she looks at me. “You know you’re not plain, right?”

  I laugh because I think she’s joking, but she’s not. Sarah continues, “Hey, like seriously. You’re plenty pretty and with a personality to boot. Anyone would be lucky to be your friend or date you.”

  Kennedy slides over and links arms with me. “I don’t know what things were like before, but here we don’t talk shit about ourselves, only assholes, okay? Positivity is key, and Sadie, you have every reason to be positive. You’re a stunner.”

  My cheeks feel hot because I’m embarrassed as hell. I’m not used to people being this nice to me without wanting something and, coming from a place with so many fake, plastic people, it’s strange to get some genuine emotions from people.

  “’Kay,” I mumble because I am definitely not good at talking about myself in a positive light. I always thought I was a pretty awkward kid, and I got teased for my hair—I was way more of a ginger when I was a kid—and my freckles are so pronounced, so I just assumed… forever… that there wasn’t much about me that was appealing to look at. Combine that with a shitty wardrobe, poverty, a little heartbreak, and you have a super fun mess of a person.

  “Things are going to be different here; okay, Sades?” Kennedy finishes. No one calls me ‘Sades’ except for my mom, so it means a lot to me to hear a friend use that nickname.

  “Thanks, guys,” I manage. “Means a lot.”

  “Good,” Sarah says before reaching over to give me a one-armed hug. “Now that that’s all settled, I have about fifty more outfits for you to critique, so let’s get at it!”

  We laugh and my friends get back to their shopping and, for the moment at least, I finally feel like things might be going my way.

  ******

  After a truly epic shopping excursion, Kennedy and Sarah decide that they’re super hungry, so we head to the food court. It’s predictably filled with junk food and fast food, and my stomach grumbles as we walk closer to the area.

  “We’re gonna go get a cinnamon bun, you wanna come along?” Kennedy asks.

  I shake my head. I don’t really have the money, so I’m just going to wait to eat until I get home. “I had a big breakfast,” I lie. “I’ll just wait for you guys on that bench.” I gesture at a free bench that’s within eyeshot of the Cinnamon Swirls pl
ace.

  “’Kay but I’m going to get an extra-large with extra frosting, so you better share with me,” Sarah threatens as I grin.

  “I’ll see what I can do, but no promises.” If she’s going to share with me, I’m definitely going to eat some, but I would hate for her to think that she had to share. Then again, I remember that friends are supposed to be there for each other and maybe, just maybe, she doesn’t mind sharing with me.

  There’s a bit of a line at the shop, so I head over and take a seat on the bench to wait. I slip my cell out of my pocket and poke around on Insta before a shrill laugh draws my attention. I look over and take in the couple that’s walking my way and my stomach drops.

  Shit, shit, shit! Why does he keep popping up everywhere I go?

  Walking towards me is Connor O’Brien and on his arm is what can only be described as a Greek goddess. I kind of duck into the bench and pray to God that they don’t see me, but evidently no one’s listening because Connor looks right at me and grins. It’s not a friendly look.

  I pretend to be super invested in my phone until he’s standing literally right in front of me. “Hey Princess,” his voice rumbles.

  I hate that he calls me that—that he still calls me that. It used to mean something that he called me that, but now it sounds like a sick taunt and it makes my stomach turn to hear it.

  “Ugh, go away,” I mumble rudely, hoping they’ll actually listen. Of course, they don’t.

  “Who’s this?” the girl says with a sniff. She obviously isn’t impressed with me at all, not that I care. She looks like some sort of Boho-Barbie. Tall, super blonde, leggy as fuck, perfect make up, probably models in her free time—you know the type. I don’t hold that against her, but I do hold what she says next against her. “She looks like a thrift store reject.”

  Okay, wow. Ouch. So, maybe I do shop at thrift stores because they’re the only place that I can afford. And maybe I look a little scruffier than usual because it’s laundry day and we don’t have our washer and drier hooked up yet, so I have to go to the laundromat and I don’t know where that is and…