Chapter Five-
That whole day was spent alternating between extreme anger and even more extreme anger. I felt so angry that I didn't even know what to do with myself—not a feeling I was used to.
I wished I had never met Derek Noble.
I might not truly wish him dead, but I certainly wished I would’ve never laid eyes on him. I wished Alex wouldn't have moved back to town. He could have easily found another girlfriend in... well, I didn't even know where he had lived, because my mom had never cared to mention that fact, but I knew it was a couple hours away. No one would have known my story, I could have had a somewhat normal life, and most importantly, I never would have met Derek Noble.
The next day, however, my temper had cooled enough for me to realize that I didn't have to just sit back and watch his attempts to taunt me by rubbing Kayla in my face. Two could play that game.
So I didn't allow him to exile me at lunch that day. Instead, I waited for Andy, and walked into lunch with him, smiling at whatever story he was telling me, pretending the story of his grandmother camping wasn't boring me to death. Oh, I doted on him, all right, and then I picked the table right in front of Derek's, that way he would have a front row seat.
I wondered later if Andy was suspicious that I was suddenly so affectionate, touching him, resting my head on his shoulder, whispering in his ear and giving him a little kiss. I did lose myself in the game for a moment, so intent on making sure I gave Derek a good show that I didn't even consider what Andy was going to think, and at one point I even lightly bit his ear.
Andy looked over at me in shock, never having seen that side of me before, and I did have the grace to blush a little. He was blushing, too, which annoyed me for some reason. If I would have nipped Derek's ear, he wouldn't have blushed, he would have returned a heated look and done something to indicate his interest.
Yes, chimed a little voice in my head, then he would fuck the hell out of you and leave you lying in bed by yourself, feeling like a two dollar whore.
Oh, right.
Still, I couldn't help feeling a little more than satisfied when I heard someone noisily stand up behind me, then I saw Derek, looking quite annoyed, leaving the lunch room in a huff, muttering something about "whores" making him lose his appetite.
May as well act like a whore if he's going to make me feel like one, I thought sourly.
My interest in Andy waned once I knew I no longer had an audience to nauseate, but I think Andy was relieved, because he didn't know what to do with me when I was being affectionate. When he had tried to take my hand under the table after Derek left, I neatly avoided it by finally taking an interest in my food.
Derek and I continued this little game all week. He never called me, never asked or demanded that I pay another "payment," and every moment that we were near each other, we were doing everything we could to make the other person mad, using any and every weapon at our disposal.
Stephanie noticed that my moods were always bad, but I blamed it on school, saying I just had a lot going on and I was worried about my grades.
Andy noticed, too, but his idea of cheering me up would always include touching me, even innocently, and his touch, innocent or otherwise, was only welcome if Derek might be able to see.
Strangely, even Alex noticed that I was in a sour mood most of the time, one time remarking, "What crawled up your ass?"
I ignored him and his girlfriend and just went to my room to get lost in a book.
On Friday, Stephanie got a bright idea to cheer me up. Since neither of us worked that night, she decided we should go to the football game. I was immediately opposed to the idea, especially once she told me that Derek and Kayla were going. I stubbornly refused, too, until she innocently added, "And if it's Derek you're worried about, I already told him and Kayla I was inviting you to come with me, he even thought it was a great idea."
Of course he did, I thought sullenly.
But I couldn't very well say no, because Derek would be convinced I was sitting at home instead of going to the game because of him.
Instead, I called Andy and asked him to go with me. At least if I had to sit there, I was going to have a protective shield with me.
It did occur to me that I was simply using Andy, and not only was that wrong since I was his girlfriend, but it was wrong even as his friend. Andy was the first person to ignore my past and befriend me, and I repaid him by using him?
But when my conscience would try to speak up, my hatred for Derek would always override it.
When we showed up at the game, I had an arm wrapped around Andy and a smile on my face.
Throughout the game, I paid very little attention to what was going on out on the field. For some reason that I didn't quite understand, Kayla seemed to take as much pleasure as Derek did in tormenting me, and when he would do, say or whisper something to make her giggle, she would playfully swat him, saying stupidly, "You're so bad!" and then she would look at me like the cat that got the cream.
Talk about confusing.
Not that I sat there prudishly. Not by any means. I was so far up Andy's ass it wasn't even funny, giggling at things he said, hanging adoringly on his arm, stealing kisses here and there. That time when he wrapped an arm around me, pulling me close and saying, "I love you," I forced myself to say, "I love you, too."
I was so caught up in the game I was playing with Derek that I didn't even have the decency to feel bad about it.
However, I could only take so much, and by the time the game was almost over, Kayla was actually sitting in Derek's lap, much more concerned with snuggling than football. Seeing him with his arms around her made me irrationally angry, thinking he could cuddle with her, but not me. What made her so much better than me?
"Excuse me," I finally said, making up some excuse about having to use the restroom.
Instead of using the bathroom, I just walked toward them, then made my way up under the bleachers, not wanting to be around anyone, not wanting to fake it with Andy anymore.
I felt so angry that I was beginning to feel sad, and that made me even angrier. I didn't know why I was feeling sad, but I assumed all the anger was just taking its toll on me. My lack of proper sleep probably wasn't helping. I kept having absurd dreams at night, dreams of stupid things like Derek and Kayla. In one of my less reasonable dreams, I didn't seem to hate Derek. Quite the opposite, I seemed to like him. And I remember in the first part of the dream he was kissing me at that park, and I was feeling uncharacteristically girly, practically head over heels for him. He was wearing a jean jacket, and he kissed me like he cared. Then, in the next flash, Derek was sitting in some sort of small room with a few lockers, a chair and a table, and he was saying, "I'm sorry, I didn't mean for this to happen." I remember feeling devastated, I remember him looking so sorry that I just wanted to hold him and cry, and I remember asking, "So you're back together?"
"I guess," he replied in my dream.
"Do you love her?" I asked him.
He just sat there, staring blankly at his shoes, which, I remember, had yellow laces.
"Do you?" I asked again. "Or are you just with her because of the baby?"
I no more than said that and I jerked myself out of the dream, feeling panicked and disoriented. I felt that way for a full minute before I started sorting the dream out, and realized that I had jumbled everything together. That was –at least partially—the conversation my mother had with Mike when they found out Sarah was pregnant with Derek. I had recast everybody, but in the dream I truly felt like it was me, and I felt strangely heartbroken, like I could hardly breathe.
I wouldn't go back to sleep that night, and it wasn't the last of my bad dreams, so I hadn't been sleeping very much at all that week.
I was so busy thinking about my dreams and how tired I was that I didn't even realize anyone was approaching me until Derek was practically right in front of my face.
My guard went up, I put my fight face on, and I crossed my arms across my chest.
"What do you want?" I asked.
"What, no kiss?" he asked rhetorically, looking wounded.
"Definitely not," I responded. "I don't like to kiss the spawn of Satan."
"Well, apparently I do," he said, catching me off guard by leaning in and kissing me.
I instantly shoved his face away, surprising him, and said, "Too damn bad."
“What’s your problem?” he asked, as if he didn’t already know.
“You’re my problem. You’re an asshole.”
"That's not very nice," he said, easily capturing my hands.
Instantly enraged, I struggled with all my might, trying to hit him, but unable to as he kept holding onto me, easily restraining me even though I was using every ounce of my strength.
"I hate you," I spat, throwing my weight into him one more time before giving up and going still.
He appeared slightly thoughtful, but not overly concerned, and he simply pushed me up against the beam, greeting my glare with a smile.
"Someone's grumpy," he remarked. "What's wrong, not being sexually satisfied? I'm sure your little choir boy wouldn't even know what to do with you."
"Oh, that's where you're wrong," I lied with so much confidence that I almost believed I had slept with Andy. "Actually, he's very good at fulfilling all my needs."
He lost his smile. "Don't lie to me, Nikki. I don't like being lied to."
"Who's lying?" I replied smugly, copying Kayla's cat-that-got-the-cream look.
This did seem to piss him off, although I wasn't sure why, since at the very beginning of our agreement he had granted me permission to "do" anyone else I wanted.
"Huh," he remarked casually, controlling his anger except for the hard look in his eye, "looks like I turned you into a little whore, after all."
"Yep," I replied nastily. "Thanks, by the way. It's pretty damn satisfying. You should see the things he does to me." I shook my head. "I thought you were wild in bed, but he makes you look pretty damn boring, to be perfectly honest. Those quiet ones, you know," I said knowingly, raising an eyebrow.
I was feeling pretty cocky for a minute there, pretty satisfied that I was getting under his skin, wounding his ego, telling him a good little church-going choir boy was better in bed than he was. Then some of smugness fell away when he pushed my arms up over my head, holding them there with one hand –a favorite position of his, I gathered—and he used the other hand to unbutton and unzip my pants.
"What are you doing?" I demanded, my gaze whipping around to make sure no one was around, struggling in earnest to free my hands.
"Taking what's mine," he replied, running his hand down my side.
"I'm not yours!” I stated, struggling against him. “Let me go.”
"But we had an agreement," he said, his fingers warm on my skin as his hand pushed past the open fly of my jeans.
"I haven't seen the video," I said, trying to squeeze my legs together in case that was where he was heading.
Derek wedged his knee between my legs, releasing me just long enough to hoist me up so that I was straddling his knee. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a CD, holding it up in front of my face.
"It's just a copy, so feel free to destroy it when you're done watching it."
I glared at him, but took the damn thing anyway.
Derek pressed his weight into me, pinning me against the beam and said, "Let's make one thing very clear, Nikki. You are mine, whether you admit it or not, and until I decide I don't want you anymore, you will continue to be mine."
Well, I wasn't going to just accept that.
"No, Derek, you listen to me. I will never be yours, and I don't care if you want me or not, because I don't want you. I hate you. I hate you more than anything in the whole world, and to be perfectly honest, I don't care if you and Kayla make spectacles of yourself every single day for the rest of your pathetic lives, so you can stop thinking that you bother me. You don't."
He smirked, saying, "Now Nikki, what did I say about lying?"
"Let me down," I said, not wanting to sit on his knee.
Surprisingly, he listened, letting me down, but he kept hold of my hands. "Let's make one more thing clear," he said.
"Oh joy," I deadpanned, rolling my eyes.
"I could have taken you right here under the bleachers and had you begging me for it in less than three minutes."
Oh, I hated him and his arrogance. "I don’t think so."
He raised an eyebrow, tilting his head just slightly to the side. "Really? You don't think so? Want to go back to my car and see what we can do in three minutes?"
I stood there stubbornly, refusing to say a word.
"Our arrangement isn't over, Nikki. Not by a long shot."
"We'll see about that," I stated, full of bravado.
He smirked. "Yeah, I guess we will," he said, finally releasing my hands.
I hit him as hard as I could in the chest, but I think I hurt my hand more than I hurt him—not that I would ever let him know that.
His eyes just twinkled, making me hate him even more, and then he walked back out from under the bleachers.
I stayed there, grumbling about how much I hated him as I stared at the dreaded disc.
Well, there it was. Whatever was actually on that disk was responsible for all the bullshit I was experiencing. Part of me couldn't wait to see what was on it, while another part, the part that had been hoping he was lying, reasoned that if he handed it over like that, whatever he taped must have been bad enough that he felt confident I wouldn't want anyone to see it.