Crush: A YA Romance Collection

by Lavinia Leigh

  “Don't touch me, not now, not ever.” I tried to shrug out of his grasp, but his grip only tightened as he pulled me close to him. He hugged me, tucking his head into the hollow space between my shoulder and neck.

  “Violet, please give me another chance. It's always been you. I'm an idiot. I love you.” His warm breath sent chills down my numb body.

  “You're right.”

  “I am?” he asked, sounding shocked.

  “Yeah, you are an idiot.” My throat felt like it was trying to close as the next words formed on my tongue. “I hate you.”

  Blake's arms loosened, and I took advantage of the situation, shoving him away from me, and turning to walk away. I didn't know how to face him, after I just told him that I hate deceitful people, and then I lied and said that I hated him when I feel the exact opposite. It scared me how he was able to hurt me so badly and yet when he held me, I didn't want him to ever let me go again. So naturally I did the one thing that I could think to do; I ran. I ran as fast as my legs would carry me. In a crisis, scientists say that the human body naturally has one of two reactions; fight or flight. Apparently I'm a flighter because I ran, and not once did I look back.

  Forrest Gump has nothing on me.

  Chapter 25

  I ran as fast as my feet would carry me; ignoring the burn in my lungs and the ache in the pit of my stomach. I didn't know where I was going, but I knew that Blake wasn't chasing after me. He's not that kind of person. He's the type to wait until you're ready to talk, and then he's there for you. I wasn't sure if I'd ever be ready to talk to him again though, not with the way that my heart was clenching and unclenching; the pain seeming to burn a hole in my chest.

  Tears streamed down my cheeks, freezing my face when the wind hit against them. I wanted more than anything to curl up in my bed and cry while my mom stroked my hair like she used to do when I was younger, but I knew that wasn't going to happen. If I went home right now I would be forced to talk about what happened, and there isn't a snowballs chance in hell that I was ready to spill my guts to my mom. I had to go somewhere else.

  It was times like this that made me really wish that I had more friends. Blake was my closest friend for the longest time. Whenever I need someone to talk to, or just help me forget about my problems, I would go to him. I almost laughed at the thought. Not only did I just lose my boyfriend, but I also lost my best friend too.

  Slowing down, I came to stop, crouching down until my head was tucked into my knees. Oddly, it was the first time that I felt sheltered all day. Crouched down like this, folded into myself, I finally felt closed off from the world around me. The vulnerable mess that I've seemed to turn into lately had finally had enough. In the past I had been my own friend, but now I couldn't believe that I was relying on Blake for everything. Maybe he was right, I had been suffocating him. Not that that gave him a right to disrespect me, and hurt me the way he did.

  The sound of a car engine caught my attention, and I felt the vibrations on the ground as it passed by. I bet I looked crazy curled up here on the sidewalk in the cold. Sighing, I wiped my cheeks on my knees and pushed myself up slowly. Pulling my coat tighter around my torso, I looked around me for a moment, trying to find out where I was, and where I was going. My phone vibrated in my back pocket, and my hand slid down to pull it out. A picture of me laughing and Blake kissing my cheek flashed across the screen as my phone lit up, and I immediately made a mental note to change my screen-saver.

  The name “Mom” floated in the middle of the picture in bold letters. Giving myself a moment to compose myself, I sniffled, wiped my eyes again for good measure, and pressed answer.

  “Hello,” I spoke softly into the phone, trying to avoid a potential voice crack.

  “Violet, thank god. Where are you? I thought you were coming straight home after school. You had me worried sick.”

  “Mom, school only let yet an hour ago.”

  “Well, a lot can happen in an hour, Violet. For all I know you could have missed your bus, gone to walk home, and then gotten kidnapped.”

  A breathy laugh came from my mouth. Sometimes my mom worries so much that it's funny. I was actually kind of relieved that she called, because I needed her to make me smile. “Well, I have good news. I wasn't kidnapped. Yet,” I added just to mess with her.

  Then she had to go and ruin the smile that she had just unknowingly placed on my face. “Violet, the Richardson's are coming for dinner tonight, so I need you home soon.”

  I groaned automatically. I couldn't deal with Brianna right now. “Is Brianna coming too?” I asked, silently hoping that there was a chance that she had come down with the flu and was forced the stay home alone while her parents came to visit.”

  My mom sighed before saying, “Of course she is, Violet. She is a member of the Richardson family, isn't she?”

  Thinking on my feet, I quickly said, “I was hoping that I could eat dinner at Blake's house tonight though. His mom says that I don't come over enough.” I don't know what had possessed me to say Blake's house, but it was too late to take it back now.

  “Violet, the whole family needs to be here. We are having a family dinner with our family friends. You are a part of this family so you need to be here too.”

  “Please mom.”

  “If you eat at Blake's house, how will you get home?”

  “I'll ask his mom to bring me home.”

  “I don't know Violet. I'll think about it.”

  Groaning, I started walking, gripping the phone tightly in my hand as I mumbled, “Mom please, I'll be home before eight o'clock. Blake's going to help me with my math homework while I'm there.”

  I heard her sigh into the phone. “Fine, Violet, but you better be home before eight.”

  “Thanks mom. I will be, don't worry.”

  “You're welcome honey. I love you.”

  Mumbling I said, “I love you too,” before I hung up and tucked the phone back into my butt pocket.

  Now that that was over, I realized that I had five hours before I had to be home. Five long hours to forget about what happened with Blake, and move on.

  My feet padded against the ground, following an unknown path. It was as if my feet had a mind of their own.

  I walked for ten minutes before I finally recognized where I was. I had ended up in front of Lena's house. I hadn't recognized the neighborhood, because I had walked in a different direction than I was used to. A large gust of wind blew at my face, lifting my hair into the air and causing it to blow around like a mini tornado.

  I stared up at the driveway, wondering for a moment if I should keep walking or go talk to Lena about what Blake said. After I decided that I didn't care about having to face Ella, and realizing that I had nowhere else to go, I went and rang the doorbell.

  I only had to wait a few moments before the door opened to reveal Lena standing in a pair of pajama bottoms and a blue tank top. Her hair was piled up at the top of her head in a messy bun, and a curious look crossed onto her face when she saw me.

  “Violet?”

  “Can I come in?”

  Lena nodded and waved her arm, gesturing for me to come in. “Of course you can.”

  I stepped into Lena's house, hoping it wasn't obvious that I had been crying. From the way that her eyes were scrutinizing me, my hopes were futile.

  Lena and I walked into the living room where she turned the TV off, and grabbed a plate of Oreo cookies off of the couch. “Let's go to my room,” she suggested as she walked toward the staircase.

  Once inside Lena's room, and the door was shut, Lena and I sprawled across her bed lazily. Grabbing a cookie, she held it near her mouth as she asked, “So I'm assuming things didn't go well with Blake?” Before she stuffed the chocolate cookie in her braces clad mouth.

  Shaking my head, I answered, “He basically told me that he had feelings for Ella, and that he cheated on me. The funny thing is though, I'm not even angry at Ella. I'm angrier with Blake and Brianna.”

  “Why?
After all, Brianna didn't kiss your boyfriend.”

  “But she could have told me about it instead of using it as blackmail. I understand that the two of us don't get along, but does she really hate me that much?”

  Lena bit down into another cookie while shaking her head. “I love Gabriella, but what she did is completely fucked up.”

  “Well, according to Blake's story, she didn't know that he had a girlfriend when she kissed him.”

  Widening her eyes, Lena raised a perfectly arched eyebrow at me. “So his talk didn’t fix anything? You’re still broken up?”

  I nodded in response to her last question, chewing on my bottom lip.

  “Thank god. I was hoping that he wouldn't convince you to stay with him or some bull shit like that. I've seen too many girls take guys back so easily after they cheat on them. It's sickening. If any guy ever cheats on me, he better beware. I know karate.” Lena finished by shoving another cookie into her open mouth, and chewing angrily.

  My lips curved upwards into a smile. “Yeah, that's if you aren't slowed down by all those cookies.”

  “I'm powered by sugar.” She shrugged, smacking her belly playfully.

  I nodded. “I can see that.”

  Lena smirked, before her face turned solemn. “So what are you going to do about Blake?”

  “I haven't decided yet.”

  “Well, you know what I think you should do?”

  Shrugging, I guessed, “Eat some cookies?”

  “No, I want you to stand up for yourself. Get revenge.”

  “On Blake?”

  Lena rolled her eyes. “Hell yeah on Blake!”

  “That's childish.”

  “Then get Brianna back for all the shit she's ever done to you. Show her that you're a force to be reckoned with.”

  I furrowed my brows. “And how do you propose I do that?”

  “I don't know. Shave her head or something.”

  A bark of laughter escaped my lips. “Shave her head?” I repeated.

  “Yep,” she said popping the 'p'. “Show the bitch that when you play in the Forrest, you get hit in the head by a few branches.” Lena tilted her head to the side. “That sounded so much better in my head.”

  Chapter 26

  Lena bit her lip in thought as she twirled a lock of orange hair around her finger. School had just let out less than an hour ago, and without wasting anytime, the two of us practically speed walked to my house. We could have gotten home sooner if I was willing to have ridden the bus, but I wasn’t completely ready to face Blake yet. I thought it would be easy to ignore him, but I was wrong.

  All day I had been randomly bumping into him around school. In gym class I got stuck behind him in line to use the water fountain, and later on in math our teachers had decided that working with the higher level class would be a “fun learning experience”, and I was forced to sit two rows behind Blake as he helped a small Asian girl with her worksheet. Adding those moments, with all of the times that I just happened to come across him in the hallway was enough torture. I didn’t need to see him on the bus as well. How do you get over someone when they’re everywhere?

  He’s like a bad case of herpes. Showing up randomly, and hard to get rid of.

  Thinking that revenge on Brianna was the only solution to my relationship problems, Lena was hunched over a spiral notebook trying to think of good revenge schemes. The top of the page was labeled, “Ways to get revenge on Brianna,” and to top it all off, the ‘I’ in Brianna was dotted with a frowning face.

  “Isn’t that a little too obvious?” I questioned, referring to the title.

  Tilting her head upwards, Lena peered at me questioningly. “Huh?”

  Tapping my finger on the title, I repeated myself. “Don’t you think this is a little too obvious? What if someone sees it?”

  “Don’t worry. No one will see it. It’ll be safely hidden in my room.”

  “May I just point out that you live with public enemy number 2?”

  Lena rolled her eyes dramatically. “Gabriella wouldn’t dare to step foot in my room. Especially not right now. Our house is like a war zone at the moment. Dad and Mom are fighting, Ella and I are fighting; it’s crazy. Whenever this happens, we all just do our bests to avoid each other since everyone’s pissed at someone.”

  “Well dang, that sucks. My parents only really argue when she catches him sneaking unhealthy food into the house.”

  “Your parents are…” she paused in search of a word to describe my very unique parental figures.

  “Weird? Strange? Odd?” I offered.

  “Interesting,” she said slowly, stretching out the word’s syllables. “They’re interesting. That’s what they are.” Lena skillfully flipped the pen in her hand between her fingers. “So what are some specific things that we need to target? I say her hair needs to go.”

  “Lena, we aren’t shaving her head. I don’t hate her that much.”

  “We don’t have to shave her head, but we can change the color. Make her a red head. She’d hate that.”

  An idea slipped into my head. “Or, we can make her hair black. Then it’d take her a long time to go back to blonde, and if she bleaches it, it’ll damage her hair.”

  Lena shrugged, “Well, it’s an idea,” she said as she scribbled it down on the paper. “Where else can we hit her that will hurt?”

  “Her car.”

  Lena’s eyes twinkled. “Hell yeah, Forrester. I’ve always wanted to slash some tires. It’s on my bucket list. We could even break a window and make it look like a car robbery or something.”

  Frowning, I stared at Lena with my eyebrows furrowed, but I couldn’t help the amused smirk that formed on my lips. “That’s not what I meant. We could get into serious trouble for that. I was thinking that we could put raw meat in her car or something. We can put it under the seats and hide some in the dash compartment.”

  She nodded, running her chin. “That’s smart because then it’ll take a while for the meat to rot and the smell would progressively get worse.”

  I smiled, glad that I had been able to come up with a good idea, as Lena scribbled it down on the paper.

  “Oh my gosh, okay, what if we spread a rumor about her?” she bursted out suddenly. Her eyes were wide in excitement at the idea of possibly dragging Brianna’s reputation through the mud.

  “Doesn’t that seem a little catty?”

  “No, it sounds funny to me.”

  Resting my head in my palm, I gave her a bemused expression. If she wanted me to go along with this idea, then she needed to give me something more to go off of. “What would the rumor be about?”

  She shrugged, tapping the pen on the paper. “I don’t know. We could say that she has a venereal disease or something. That wouldn’t be too hard to believe considering how big of a whore she is.”

  “That’s been done before,” I countered. I wanted to be original. “Last year some girls spread a rumor that this guy on the football team had chlamydia, but in reality he had mono and had passed that to each of the girls.”

  “That’s disgusting,” she murmured, pinching up her nose and lips in disgust.

  “They don’t call it the kissing disease for nothing.”

  Lena shook her head at my words, and then continued with a new idea. “Okay, then how about we say she’s pregnant. I can get a positive pregnancy stick and plant it in her room or something. I’ll put it in a place where one of her friends is bound to come across it.” Lena smirked slightly as she jotted the idea down.

  “And how do you plan on doing that?”

  “What? Get a positive pregnancy stick, or plant it in her house?”

  “Both.”

  Lena pursed her lips. “My dad donates blood every two months, and he’s going again next week. That place is swarming with pregnant woman. All I’d have to do is bribe one of them to pee on a pregnancy stick for me. I’m sure they’d be willing to do it for like twenty bucks or so. Then I can climb the tree outside her house, and go
in through her window. Easy.”

  I knew that breaking into Brianna’s house could get us into trouble if we got caught, but I didn’t care. She needed to go down, and if that’s what we needed to do in order to make it happen, then I was in. “All right, that would be hilarious.”

  She smiled as she scribbled down her idea. Then, looking up at me with a sinister look in her eyes, she said, “We could also stick a snickers bar in her gas tank. I hear that really fucks up the engine.”

  My eyes widened at her words, and I shook my head instantly. “No we cannot do that. That would be going overboard. Besides, it’s not like she’s the one who pays for the car anyway, you know?”

  Lena opened her mouth to reply, but the chiming of the doorbell cut her off. Sliding off the bed, I yelled, “I’ll get it!” I ran down the hallway and pattered down the stairs, hearing Lena’s slow footsteps behind me.

  The doorbell chimed again as I pulled the door open to reveal a sour faced Ella. Her hair was pulled up into a messy ponytail, with wispy strands hanging down around her face. She hesitantly pulled her thin lips up into a smile as I stared at her in utter confusion. She was probably smiling from the obvious shock that I knew lined my face.

  “Um, hello,” I said, my words sounding more like a question than a greeting.

  Ella reached a perfectly manicured hand up and scratched the side of her neck awkwardly. “Can I come in?”

  I heard Lena come up behind me just as I pulled the door open wider. “Sure, follow me I guess.”

  I waited for Ella to step inside before I pushed the door closed, and led her into the living room where I gestured for her to take a seat on the couch. Lena plopped down in the armchair, tucking her feet beneath her neatly, and staring at her sister as she took a seat on the couch. Slowly, I sat down on the couch across from Ella, and tilted my head to the side in confusion.

  “So, what brings you to the Forrester household?” Lena questioned, sounding as if she lived here herself. The slight glare in her eyes was evident as she crossed her arms over her chest, and fixed her eyes on her little sister.