Mercedes
I WAS LIVING PROOF that shame didn’t actually kill a person. If it did, I would have died on the spot last night. Amelia walking in on me and Rourke making out on his bed had to be the most embarrassing moment of my life.
Never mind had to be; it was the most embarrassing moment of my life.
There was something very wrong with me.
Had I left all of my scruples and morals back in Kansas?
I must have.
Having come very close to falling into bed with Rourke last night, I was seriously beginning to question my sanity.
Was I one of those masochistic girls who loved a bad boy that treated her like shit?
I never would have thought so, but since coming to this godawful town, I wasn’t so sure.
He was wrong for me, so incredibly wrong.
Boys like Rourke Owens were dangerous. I wasn’t a fool. I’d grown up around a different jackass every month. I knew a player when I saw one – kissed one…
Whatever sick and twisted game Rourke and I had been playing with each other, I was ending it now. Before I got hurt, or worse, fell so deep I couldn’t back out.
Locking my bedroom door and not answering his soft knocking last night was the first sensible thing I had done since I got here.
I needed to cut him off. Break away from this twisted connection that seemed to be growing between us. Rourke had a hold on me I was determined to break.
I vowed to give all of my attention to school and cling to Molly like the pathetic, friendless person I was. Monday and Tuesday had passed in a new-kid-at-school-trying-to-find-her-feet sort of way. It wasn’t an unfamiliar feeling to me.
By lunchtime on Wednesday, I was feeling settled. I knew it probably took other new students a hell of lot longer to feel that way, but three days was long enough for me.
Taking a bite of my pasta salad, I listened to Molly as she rambled on and on about the Falcon’s first game of the season tomorrow night – and the fact that she was hosting the after party.
“You don’t have to throw the stupid party, you know,” I informed her when she began to hyperventilate for the third time during lunch. “It was just a joke.”
“A joke?” Molly squeezed out, wide eyed. “Daryl agreed to come over!”
“So?” I shrugged. “If it’s making you feel this uncomfortable then cancel.”
“I can’t just cancel,” she spluttered, like the thought alone was lunacy. “Daryl King agreed to come to my party.”
“Your imaginary party,” I chimed in between bites of my lunch. “And so what? I thought you said you didn’t care about those guys?” I specifically remembered Molly telling me she didn’t give a shit about the prestigious it crowd. I scoffed at the thought. “They’re a bunch of jackasses.”
“Cute jackasses,” she countered with a grin. “You’re going to come, right?”
“Yeah.” I nodded and speared a pasta noodle with my fork. “I’ll come by for an hour.”
“And the game?” she added. “You’re coming with me, right? It’s the Falcon’s first game of the season.”
Swallowing a mouthful of pasta, I dropped my fork on my plate and leaned back in my seat. “I don’t think so, Molls. I’m not big on football.” I was trying to avoid Rourke as much as humanly possible. I hadn’t told Molly anything about our encounter last night, and I had no plans to, but going to a football game he was playing in didn’t sound like a good idea. “And anyways, don’t high school football games usually take place on Friday nights?” I asked. At least that’s what I remembered from my previous school.
“They do,” Molly confirmed. “But every so often the game has to be switched to a Thursday or a Saturday. Oh come on, Mercy!” Molly begged. “Please say you’ll come? I need you to come with me.”
I frowned. “Why?”
“You don’t get it, Merc,” she explained in a pained voice. “For two years, I’ve been invisible to Daryl King and his friends. Two years! Now, he’s interested in coming to my party? At my house?” Molly sighed heavily. “I’m not dumb enough to believe Daryl’s sudden interest has anything to do with me.”
“What are you saying?”
“I’m saying, you’re the common denominator here, Mercy. The boys want to go to my party because of you.”
“And I told you, I’ll come to the party –”
“It’s not enough,” she blurted out, cutting me off. “What if, when they don’t see me with you after the game, they decide to go somewhere else?”
On a Thursday night? “Do you even care?”
“I shouldn’t,” she muttered. “But I do.”
“Fine,” I replied in defeat. I didn’t understand Molly’s need to feel accepted by these rich pricks, but I liked her. “If you really feel that way, then I’ll come with you to the stupid game.”
“Thank you! Oh, you’re going to have such a great time,” Molly said enthusiastically. “Our boys are so good to watch, Mercy. The Ocean Bay Falcon’s kick ass almost every game.”
“I doubt it, considering I don’t even like football,” I made the mistake of saying.
“Are you serious?” Molly squeezed out, wide eyed. “You don’t like football!”
I shrugged. “Not really.” I didn’t understand the game and I didn’t care to learn. Life was short and I didn’t plan on wasting a second of it learning useless facets of information I would never need. “Football. Soccer. Basketball. Lacrosse?” I gestured with my hand. “They’re all the same to me.”
“Omigod,” she spluttered. “What planet did you come from?”
“The real world,” I chimed in between bites of my lunch. “You know, the one where being on the football team won’t pay your bills and being a cheerleader doesn’t put food on the table.”
Molly flinched. “That sounds…terrible.”
I bit back a chuckle. “Not really. I actually sort of miss it.”
She looked at me like I had spoken a foreign language. “Why?”
I sighed, but didn’t bother replying. I loved Molly. She was sweet, good-natured, and my only friend in this town, but she was rich. Just like every other kid at this school, Molly had been born into wealth. She would never understand my feelings, so I didn’t bother voicing them.
“Did you understand a word of what Mr. Trimble said in Trig this morning?” I asked, deftly changing the subject.
“I don’t think Mr. Trimble knows what he’s saying half the time,” Molly shot back, happy to move on to a new subject. “That man is the worst. If I pass Trig this semester, it will be a miracle.”
Content, I listened to Molly as she rambled on and on about the different subjects she was taking for the duration of lunch.
When the bell rang, signaling the end of break, we were deep in conversation, discussing whether or not Miss Black, my biology teacher, was having an affair with Coach Joe.
I didn’t really care if they were banging or not, but I was glad to have something to think about. It helped me to ignore the pair of blue eyes boring into the side of my face.
Yeah, it hadn’t passed my attention that Rourke had never once taken his eyes off me during lunch.