Bad Taste (Part I) // Colby Brock

199 - Rebecca

"Um, no, I don't think I am," I replied snappily, frowning.

She rolled her eyes. "The Woods help every time—it's tradition."

"Fuck tradition. What am I even going to do?"

"Ah, I'm glad you asked." Angela took one of my hands now to drag me to the door but I wasn't having it, snatching my wrist back. She turned to me with a sigh. "Rebecca, it's not much."

"I don't care."

"You're announcing your leave from the community, right? That means you have to write a speech, and if you have to do a speech, you need to fit in with the scheduling, and how do you know the scheduling and pick the best place to have your own speech?" She left it open for me to answer but I was silent. "You do the scheduling yourself. Mom always says something and so will I, so you'll go..." She took a moment to think, during which I slid away from her to go back to Colby. "I think you'll go first."

"Still don't care," I murmured, leaning against Colby's chest. He'd accepted me onto his lap instantly and wrapped me up in his arms already. I could feel his calm now, rather than his rage, and it was more pleasing than I wanted to admit.

Angela stared at me in my comfy position, glanced at Colby, then turned to Aryia. "Can you take me to my place for two seconds? I need to grab the planning stuff. As she refuses to leave, we'll do it here."

I rolled my eyes but she was too busy getting picked up by Aryia. They disappeared and I got comfier, sliding more to lie down. She could plan whatever she wanted, I wasn't going to take part in any of it.

At least, that's what I thought. I was close to falling asleep, somehow, when Aryia and Angela reappeared. She held two binders in her arms—one old and tattered, and the other brand new. She dropped them both on the floor before sinking to sit down and looking at me. I made no move, so she sighed and shoved the old binder across the floor. Aryia flicked it open before he zipped to his place on the couch.

"That's from the last time I was heavily involved in the Gala. It's got pretty much everything I had control over, but Mom's become more important since then. Whatever I don't plan for, someone else will, meaning I have all the control aside from that. Mom's leaving this to me—I don't think you were listening when she told me. However much you help, you get to have control of, too. Offer's open."

Angela waited, still staring at me. I could feel her judgement hidden behind patience. She still thought I wanted anything to do with her and Mom after all the shit they'd put me through and she was wrong, but this whole planning thing was mildly interesting me as a leader-type. I enjoyed the idea of controlling parts of this big event.

"You realise letting me choose anything is a bad idea?" I questioned as I lifted my head from Colby's chest.

"You're helping to choose, you aren't choosing."

"Mhm," I murmured, exchanging a look with Colby. We both knew I wasn't going to be that easy.

"Are you coming down here or not? I can work alone for a few hours."

"Hours," I repeated through a groan. Angela didn't say anything before flicking over the new binder, which was filled with blanks instead of all the notes and photos in the older. It did seem... interesting.

Ugh.

Without a word, I placed a kiss on Colby's cheek then slid off of him to sit as far from Angela as I could whilst still having access to the binder. I felt like a kindergarten kid awaiting instructions sitting on the floor like this, but Angela was quick to distract me.

She brainstormed aloud and let me tell her when something was shit—most of the time—then accepted when I was being genuinely criticising. It was hard to tell, considering I only ever spoke in sarcastic comments, but she'd managed to figure me out. Katrina slid down to help us after a short while, too, with Xepher pitching in whenever she felt strongly about something.

I was an organised leader. I liked things to be in order—binders, dividers, labels, all of that—but aside from the binder, Angela was far from it. She continually shoved pieces of paper in random places, leaving me to go along cleaning up her shit while she brainstormed more with Katrina.

"Rebecca, a clean freak? Who knew?" Jake said in amusement as I sorted through a number of random sheets of notes and sketches made by Angela in the midst of her brainstorming.

I didn't look up at Jake as I placed close to the last paper into a divider in the binder—Angela wasn't even in the room to do this herself.

"I knew," I heard Colby mutter, a smile in his voice. I grabbed the nearest pencil and threw it at him without looking, though I heard him catch it. After placing the last piece of paper away, I looked up at him expectantly. He threw the pencil back.

"Tell them one more thing about me, and I'll stake you with the pencil next time," I promised when I met his eyes.

He clearly didn't find my threat very threatening as he close to grinned back at me. I despised the cockiness in his voice when he muttered, "Okay, cheerleader."

Before I could get up to throttle him, Angela returned. She had food—somehow my favourite, and it distracted me completely from my obnoxious boyfriend.

I sent a glare at Colby to keep his mouth shut before accepting the small tray from my sister. She sat down beside me, the look on her face as clear as day: she knew it was my favourite.

"You never change, huh?" she asked, smiling.

"Say a word and I'll end you, Angela. I'm perfectly capable of fighting two battles at once... especially when one of them has told me just about everything about them." My eyes found Colby's again, but he broke the contact quickly. He knew what he'd told me—a million embarrassing, funny, and personal stories, any of which he'd kill me for ever telling anyone. That wasn't mentioning the things he told me about the others and his own feelings toward me or what was going on right now in life. He was a softie and any number of the stories I could tell about him proved that.

Angela and I "worked" on the plans for only another hour after that. Anything I had been responsible for was completely figured out since I was an efficient worker, whilst Angela had jumped around the binder deciding and brainstorming random bits. She'd have a job figuring out the rest the next time she did this, but I'd definitely made her life easier by organising it all for now. She didn't say anything about it, though, in fear of me undoing all the work I'd done.

She closed both binders and left the room with them. Colby appeared next to me a second later to help me up from the floor—I'd been there a while and my ass was starting to hurt—before he moved us both in a blur to his chair. He was laid across it now with me over him, which I certainly wasn't going to complain about. I chose to lie down, the exhaustion of actually doing shit today getting to me for the first time.

By the time Angela was back in the room and settled, my head and hand was resting on Colby's chest, and my eyes were starting to drift already. The light circles being drawn on my back didn't help, either, in keeping away the sleep, so I didn't bother fighting it off.

Some battles just weren't worth losing.