Backstreet Boy

|Chapter 18: Saved and Delirious|

Isabella

"What on earth are you playing at?!" Lizzie screeched. "You've been acting odd all day and I don't care what you've done – I want to know why."

After perceiving my peculiar behaviour and adamant to get me spilling my guts out, Lizzie had dragged me off to the girls' toilets again for a ritual of ours, if you'd like to think of it that way. Preferably, I'd rather discuss this somewhere where girls – the biggest gossipers known to man, probably – could just amble into the room at any time they please.

I sighed. "It's quite formidable what I've done," I disclosed, rubbing my face with my palms.

"And you're about to tell me," she prompted.

Mercifully, the bathroom was empty so to avoid intrusion and disturbance halfway through my story and having Lizzie freak out whilst she endeavours to retain vital information that others couldn't acknowledge, I mustered up the courage and sprang straight into the story.

"Jason and I – Jason from The District, yes," I mentioned, "weren't meant to see one another again because we'd have no need to but then I saw him at the mall here in The Valley on Saturday and later that night at home when I went to dinner, I came back to my room and there was a note on my desk."

Lizzie gasped. "Someone got through onto the roof outside your room and planted the note on your desk?"

"Presumably. Anyway, it entailed a game just starting and everything before – the money and whatnot – was just the warm-up lap basically. It also asked where Jason was but it gave the hint he was tied up. So the next morning we saw one another. He was toying with me, Lizzie."

She bit her lip. "How? I don't get what you mean? The note was from Jason?"

The story wasn't doing much well in the chronology front but at least Lizzie was getting the gist of it all. As well as just acquiring a job as a waitress downtown, her number one profession would always be biggest gossiper and most prying friend. Still, my story telling capability weren't doing so well, either. This must be a lesson for me, I comprehend now.

"Oh, no, the note was from one of Jackson's minions. They also tied up Jason. Jackson asked him to join them but he said no. Then he just got let go. But Jason was adamant that there'd be some sort of consequence. And while I was there, he was being all flirty and then he pretended to kiss me but didn't and he took his top off."

Lizzie closed her eyes. "Dear God tell me he's fat or something."

Regretfully I said, "Toned. Ripped. Muscular. Abs. Flexing biceps. What more do you want me to say, Lizzie?"

Her eyes open. "One, I must congratulate you for locating a very dreamy guy. But two, I must also discourage you from seeing him again. Your mother would have a fit. And he seems like a street guy, too. Almost like a...."

"Backstreet boy," I finished for her. "A downtown guy."

"Yeah, and you're the uptown girl."

"Anyway," I said, heaving in a sigh, "we're getting off topic and we've been fortunate enough for no one to wander in yet. Then Jackson turned up at the door and the only way to get him to leave was to kiss Jason... properly. As in avidly make out with this guy."

A pause, and then, "Was he still topless?"

My shoulders dropped mechanically by her dim-witted and moronic question. This is a serious, severe predicament I'm stuck in the middle of and all she cares about if he's topless or not when I'm kissing him? Or perhaps she's thinking she's kissing him.... I wonder if I say "Matt" to her, it'll knock her out of her reverie.