“Fine, you win. Tarryn Norma-Jeane Monroe.” She sucked down her last few bites of food and patted her bloated stomach. “I’m not going home yet though.”
“And why not?” I questioned, amused by the way she was running her finger across her sticky plate and then licking. “You can’t eat the plate. Just FYI.”
Defiantly, she ran two fingers instead of one across the plate and then stuck them fully in her mouth whilst crossing her eyes. When she was done acting like an idiot, we both laughed. “Okay, I’m not leaving yet. I’m not leaving because you and me,” she waved a hand between us, “are going to bag us a Castleton. I can’t imagine a more entertaining senior year project. The eternal playboy, bully boy extraordinaire, womanizer to the max. It gets my little feminist heart just-a pounding.”
###
Payback was a three-fold plan.
I’d fall for him. Or so he’d think.
I’d kiss him. Moon over him. Pull him into my world until he was so badly tethered to the possibility of being with me that he’d never see it coming.
And then I’d ruin him. I’d give him a taste of his own medicine.
Because I couldn’t fall for him.
I refused to fall for such a pretentious bully who used girls up and then left them in the cold.
I listened to Sasha make the points, ticking them off on her fingers. She spoke for me, but my feelings felt cold coming from her mouth. It wasn’t that I didn’t feel used and hurt, but having someone else say it and then in same the breath plot payback felt… uglier than anything Drake did to me.
“I don’t know… doesn’t jerking him along make me just as bad as him? That’s not who I am.” I bit my lower lip, thinking about Drake.
He was… dangerous. It wasn’t just that I didn’t want to become what he was. No, I’d seen the way he’d beaten-up Aiden. It was like he was going in for the kill, like he couldn’t stop himself. If I hadn’t called his name and distracted him, I wondered how much worse the fight could have been.
“Just text him. Right now.”
“Sasha…”
“Come on, Tarryn. Think about what he did to you. He’s a manipulative, lying, sociopath. It would do him some freaking good to get a taste of his own medicine.” She was back on my bed, lying on her stomach with chin perched against her fists. Her green eyes were alive with excitement.
“What he did was shitty.”
“Really, really shitty,” she emphasized.
“And I’m still mad.”
“You should be,” she nodded.
“But if I do anything, it has to be me. Okay? Not you. So don’t pressure me.”
She frowned. “I didn’t mean to pressure you. I’ve just known this guy almost my entire life. Did I ever tell you he’s one of the reasons Andy left for boarding school? Drake was such a bag of fermented pig guts to him. I guess I got a little carried away with the possibility that I could help torment my best friend’s tormentor.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t know.” I crossed my arms against my chest. If I’d felt pressured before… this revelation didn’t help. “I just don’t want to act like he does. He’s got something… something broken inside, Sash. The way he lost it at the dance was awful. I’ve seen guys fight, but that was—”
Sasha interrupted me. “Some UFC-style shit.” Sitting up on the bed, she nodded. “Okay, I get it. You’re right.” The sun was setting outside, the sky quickly darkening. “On that note, I guess I should head home.”
She stood, and I followed suit—walking her downstairs. When I opened the door to let her out, she hovered over the threshold. “If you change your mind, you better keep me in the loop.”
“I will. Promise. Any anti-Drake activity and you’re my first call.” I held up three fingers in a Scout’s promise, not that I was ever a girl scout.
“Fair warning—break that promise and you’re going to be Tay-tay forever. Tayyyyy-tayyyyyy.” She dragged out the terrible nickname for effect.
I pushed her gently out of the door. “You’re awful. We can’t be friends anymore.”
She titled her head back and laughed heartily. “Too late for that, bae. You’re stuck with me.”
I watched Sasha drive away before closing the door. For a moment, I just stood there in the hallway. I’d thought about giving Drake a dose of the pain he’d caused me. Part of me wanted to. But what would it cost me?
“Tarryn!” Mom’s voice broke into my thoughts. “You left your phone in the kitchen, honey. It looks like Drake’s trying to call you. Such a nice young man. Though, I still don’t understand why he didn’t drive you home from the dance.”
I padded into the kitchen and grabbed my phone from the counter. Drake had messaged twice more and he’d just tried to call. He wasn’t going to stop it seemed. So maybe… maybe Sasha was right.
Why waste the opportunity?
8.
T A R R Y N
Drake: I can’t keep apologizing for the fight. It’s exhausting.
So stop apologizing, Drake.
Drake: If I stop, then this is over. I don’t want it to be over.
But I do want it to be over. Don’t you understand? You’re an abusive person.
Drake: I’m not. Not really.
Oh, really?
Drake: I know I’m fucked up. I’m a circle in a goddamn square world.
Don’t start with the square stuff again. You ruined that.
Drake: I’m sorry, Tarry. For everything. You’re the most terrifying… irritating… beautiful fucking girl I’ve ever met.
Okay, Darcy. Way to butter up a girl with pretty words. Do you find my family low class as well?
Drake: I said you were beautiful.
And terrifying and irritating.
Drake: Tell me what I can do to make it up to you.
There’s nothing you can do. Unless you magically buy a country estate in Lambton to go with your holier-than-thou attitude.
Drake: Derbyshire an option?
Stop joking.
Drake: I’m not the one bringing up a fictional town.
I’m shutting off my phone now.
Drake: Tarryn, you make me feel things. I’ve never been this way about a girl. Never. Please give me another chance.
I opened my sock drawer and stuffed the cell phone inside to give me a break from the conversation. Sasha was right… Drake Castleton was hooked. I hadn’t been in town a very, very long time… but I knew that Mr. Money himself texting me like this and wanting to be forgiven was unheard of.
My phone was vibrating and pinging in the drawer.
I flopped onto my bed face down and screamed into my pillow.
###
“You look like hell,” Sasha pulled me down to where she was sitting on the green lawn in front of school. “Not that I blame you. Mondays, am I right?” She was dressed like herself once again—fire engine nails, black lipstick, sleek hair pulled up in a high knot to reveal an edgy undercut.
“He texted me all night.”
“Ohhhhhhh,” Sasha pulled off her sunglasses and perched them atop her head. “And you texted back? What did you talk about?”
“He just kept apologizing over and over again, trying to be witty. I started ignoring him around eleven. And he kept texting, even if I wasn’t freaking responding.” I pulled off my backpack and placed it against my lap, then leaned my head back against the tree. “I swear though… he surprises me. I made an offhand reference to Jane Austen and he knew what I was talking about.”
“Drake Castleton, book nerd,” Sasha breathed out appreciatively. “Who’d have thought.”
“It makes sense… since it was always him and not Aiden texting with me before. And on the first day of school, he recognized my book. Literally no one knows Abbott like I do. It’s too obscure. But he…” I let my voice trail off.
“He did.” Sasha gave me a searching look, her mouth quirking. “Do you like Drake?”
“No!” I nearly shouted, causing nearby students to pee
r over at us. “No,” I said again, more quietly. “He’s an asshole. I want him to pay for what he did.” Even to myself, my words sounded forced and halfhearted.
“Okay,” she nodded slowly at me, a smile spreading her face. “So, he kept texting even after you stopped responding?”
“Yes. All. Freaking. Night.”
“So, does this mean you’re on the revenge train?” Her face looked hopeful.
“I don’t know, Sasha. Maybe.”
“That’s good,” she waggled her eyebrows. “Really, really good. Keep it up and we’ll move to the next phase of ‘give the Castleton cock a taste of spermicide with a side of emasculation’!”
“Lord, Sasha. You really do have a way with words.” I laughed.
“Liberation of the loins!” She whisper-shouted, holding her fist in the air. “Vagina Vengeance!” She continued. “Behold the preternatural power of the pussy!”
“Oh my god. Stop!” We fell against each other, bodies shaking and tears building in our eyes. “The… preternatural… power… of the… pussy…” I forced out as I gasped for air.
“What are you two laughing about?” A familiar voice halted our laughter and I looked up to find a puffy-faced Aiden staring down at us. He tried to smile, but the expression died before it could be fully-born. “Hi, Tarryn,” he mumbled awkwardly.
“Hi,” said back, clearly and pointedly. “Your face looks worse.”
“Sorry you have to look at it,” he said quickly, his words tumbling together like Jack and Jill down the hill with that pail of water that… had some sort of purpose.
I snorted. “If you’d said sorry for anything else, I’d have to kick your butt.”
“I’ve had enough butt-kicking to last me… at least a month.” Aiden rocked back and forth on his heels, not taking his eyes off me.
Sasha stood then, sizing up Aiden. “You did a bad thing, Aiden. We’re not friends I guess, but if you treat her like shit again, we’ll be enemies real fast. Taking up with Castleton? Dumbass move.”
Aiden’s gaze finally left me and focused on Sasha. “I know it was. Really. I tried to give him the money back this weekend, but he refused.”
“He wouldn’t take the money back?” My brow furrowed.
“No, he said keep it for college.” Aiden held out his hands, wanting me to believe him. “He said giving the money up wouldn’t absolve either of us. Wouldn’t change what we did. He sounded…”
When Aiden didn’t finish the sentence, Sasha prompted him. “How did he sound?”
“Messed-up.” Aiden relented.
I wanted to know more. Why did Drake tell Aiden to keep the money? Why didn’t he take it back? It’s not like he needed it back, idiot. He’s rich. But Aiden said he’d sounded broken.
I’d seen him broken to match.
After the fight, when the realization of what had happened had dawned in his eyes, he’d almost been childlike. Confused, remorseful. He’d looked at his blood-spattered hands and been incoherent, trying to make sense of his actions, asking why Aiden had to hit him.
The bell rang before I could interrogate Aiden further. Standing up, I threaded on my backpack and started walking with Sasha and Aiden. I paused as we reached the crowded steps, something making me turn around.
I found him leaning against his car in the parking lot.
We stared at each other across that distance, and our separation seemed terribly great and far too near all at once.
“Tarryn, hurry up.” Sasha’s voice called me forward.
My cell phone vibrated in my pocket as I passed over the threshold into school. I couldn’t stop the small smile that followed. I knew how it was.
Sasha would say something like ‘hook, line, and sinker’…something wittier and more feminist than that actually, but at that moment… I couldn’t say who was the one dangling from the fishing pole. Me or Drake.
Some people are cut out to be bullies. Other people played the prey. I didn’t know if I could change my nature.
When I was sitting in class, I pulled my phone out discretely.
Drake: Let me take you out.
I bit my lower lip, thinking. Sasha said I should keep ignoring and refusing him for a while, make him sweat.
Because that worked out so well last time.
Drake: Everything about last time was wrong. Let me make it right.
It wasn’t all bad. Well, you clean up well at least.
Drake: Armani
Of course it was.
Drake: Okay. You. Me. We’ll go out of town. Somewhere no one knows me. No pretenses, no Castleton name. Just us.
I don’t know, Drake… I don’t think it’s a good idea.
Drake: Isn’t there a little part of you that wants to know what I’m like, without all the games?
Class was starting, hints about the bonus question on Wednesday’s test flowing from my teacher’s mouth, and all I could do was stare at his question.
‘Without all the games’. Those words felt ugly to me. Not because of what he’d done to me, but because of what I was trying to do to him.
That wasn’t who I was.
Sasha was going to be upset with me. I mean, I’d told her if I did anything that it had to be on my own terms, but she was one hundred percent anti-Drake and had a voracious appetite for anything that might lead to Castleton discomfort.
But it wasn’t who I was.
People are born bullies. Or they’re born prey.
And sometimes, those opposites come together as two sides of the hunt…exactly as nature intended them to.
9.
D R A K E
Tarryn: Okay.
Is that ‘okay, I’ll go out with you’?
Tarryn: Yes.
I stared at the phone, surprised she’d said yes. She couldn’t have forgiven me this quickly. I knew enough about her to know how relentlessly stubborn Tarryn Monroe was. She had four sides to her, and each one was the exact same length and wanted the exact same thing and you could turn her over and over and you’d find that she’d not changed one bit.
It’s funny, most of the girls I’d known had also been stubborn in their own ways—stubbornly stupid, always falling for pretty words, spreading for a chance at the Castleton charm.
Tarryn was the first girl in a long time that I’d wanted to get to know and sex wasn’t the priority. Sure, I hoped for that eventually, but all I wanted right now was for her to look at me and not… not hate me.
Drake: Friday or Saturday?
… …
Her response came slower and it made me nervous. She was going to change her mind. She’d be smart to change her mind.
I looked down at my hands holding the phone, at the bruises on them from the fight. Though the blood was gone, the marks were a reminder that she’d seen the brutality under the designer clothes.
Tarryn: Friday at seven. Don’t be late.
I smiled at how she took control. Not for the first time, it dawned on me that any other girl trying that crap would be taught a lesson. With Tarryn, god fucking help me, I found it endearing.
I won’t be late.
… …
The little dots popped up and disappeared. Popped up and disappeared again. She never sent another message during class. Which is where I should be—in the same room as her, our schedules nearly identical—but instead I was outside in the convertible. I’m sure my dad would get a call from Mrs. Boyles. Fuck him though. And fuck her too for being a goddamn spy.
She’d been keeping an eye on me my entire high school career and the scrutiny had worsened ever since Ms. Angeles the summer after sophomore year. She wasn’t my first sexual experience… my first authority figure though. We’d kept it a secret successfully all through the spring semester. Three weeks into summer break, Mrs. Boyles had seen us together.
When I thought of Ms. Angeles… she stuck in my head for a while until something stronger shook her from my conscious mind. For a woman in her early thirties, she’d been a damn stunn
er. Taller than average, curves that could make Gandhi blush, copper hair down to her ass and goddamn eyes that glowed nearly emerald in sunlight.
I’d wanted her the second I’d walked into biology. She was a new hire, blouse buttoned to the very top, a circle of lace trailing around her neck. High waist skirt fitting her hips like a glove. Her hair had been pulled up in a sleek librarian-style bun. It should have been severe, but she made modest look like a call-to-action.
It had started with accidentally touching her hand when I gave her an assignment.
Then it was letting her catch me watching her, and acting like I was shy.
The narrative flipped quickly, with her finding excuses to keep me after class to talk about one thing or another.
A month after her arrival, we were stealing moments in the supply closet.
Two months after her arrival, we were driving to the next town over where she lived. It was safer that way, fewer people to notice us.
Her house had been isolated, only a few other places around. Perfect for our needs.
She’d divorced a guy who beat her, moved as far as she could afford, and taken the new job for a fresh start. I was her fresh start. And she was my first taste of what it meant to care for someone. Really care.
There was one Saturday morning that was the clearest of my memories with her. We hadn’t slept at all; the sun wasn’t up yet. Dad thought I’d spent the night at Steve’s house. We’d only fucked once, which was unusual for us.
###
“What we’re doing is wrong. You know that right?” Lane was lying in the crook of my arm, the fingers of her left hand threaded with the fingers of my right. She moved our arms back and forth, studying the way my tanned skin looked against her paleness.
“It’s only wrong if we feel wrong about it,” I said soothingly, using my free hand to brush her hair gently.
“You always say such pretty things, Drake. It’s funny that someone your age is more mature than my ex.” Her face fell and she backtracked. “Sorry, I hate talking about him.”
“He’s part of you. It’s okay to talk about him.”
Brat: A High School Bully Romance (The King of Castleton High Book 2) Page 6