This story is longer than the past few chapters and I tried my best not to make it all too cliche. Anyway, enjoy! *throws confetti*
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Chapter 7 - My Ankle and the Chairs || Cassidy's POV
I want this to be over.
"How many chairs, exactly, are we going to arrange?" I ask Laura, my voice isn't as happy as it was a while ago.
"You see those chairs? All of them." Laura smiles at me. She points at the three rooms filled with chairs.
"It's like two thousand of them," Connor complains. It doesn't look like two thousand... probably one.
"Or three thousand," Xavier adds. I think they exaggerate more than girls.
"It's not that bad," Laura assures us. "The earlier we start, the earlier we'll finish."
I saw Connor mimicking Laura behind her and I can't help but giggle. Laura turns around and gives us a curious look, but we just shrug and smile innocently at her.
We start grabbing three chairs at a time for the girls and five for the boys. We were all chatty and happy at first but after ten minutes, we got exhausted and agreed to remain quiet and let our energy focus on bringing all the chairs from the classroom to the gym, which is fifteen feet away.
"Ow!" I screech. "Owowowowow," I say as I massage my ankles. It was so painful that I had to say it out loud.
After a few seconds of murmuring to myself, another voice speaks. "What's wrong?" Xavier looks at me as if I was one of the girls being over dramatic. When he realized I was serious, he slowly walks to me after he left his twentieth batch of chairs in the corner.
"I-I got.... I bumped... I," I say stopping to take deep breaths before continuing.
"What?" Xavier asks, I can see that his eyes are filled with nervousness.
"This." I point at the chairs I grabbed and point back to my ankles, hoping Xavier would get the meaning since my ankles is too painful for me to explain.
"But... I'm... okay." I smile weakly at him, but deep inside I'm scared. I showed him my weakness, I shouldn't have done it.
"No, let me help you," Xavier says as he tries to massage my ankles. Is this why girls like him so much? He's mean to you then becomes caring, it's so confusing. He's like the typical boys I read on books.
I step back as soon as his fingers touch my ankles. "I said, I'm okay. You don't need to pity me anymore," I say coldly. I've been through a lot of fights so things like hurting and scars don't mean much to me, but I don't think I have ever experienced getting hit on by big chairs that probably contain gold inside.
"Just let me-" Xavier says, but I cut him off.
"Just don't touch me!" I exclaim, quite conscious of a guy touching any part of me.
I can see that Xavier is a bit taken aback by my unexpected respond to his offer. I feel kind of bad inside since I know that he just wants to help but I don't want any of their help, since they already got me into a lot of troubles. I don't want anything to do with them, let alone helping me.
"I just wanted to help you, look, I can see that your ankles are in a bad condition, if you just let me help you," he says more earnestly. He moves my ankles towards him so he can massage.
I'm shocked that he was still offering help to me because no guy has ever done to me this before. When I was a child, whenever I get hurt, my father was never home so Sasha, my nanny, always help me to get up and clean the mess I made. She's a girl and Xavier's a guy so I'm not used to guys helping me. Except for Reese, but he rarely helps me since I'm stubborn sometimes. Plus, I consider Reese as a baby boy, like my younger brother I never had.
Finally, after it seems like forever, I gave up because I'm tired like I always am because of this punishment the Principal gave us. I let him take my ankles, and bit my lip because of embarrassment. You know the feeling in the movie wherein the prince slips Cinderella's glass shoes and you're all happy and humble at the same time? Yeah, that's the total opposite of what I am feeling. I feel sad that I wasn't able to take care of myself and how stupid of me to get bumped by a chair that can't even attack me.
"Don't you dare make it worse," I warn. I try to lower my shorts, feeling too bare for Xavier to look or even touch at.
Xavier chuckles lowly and shakes his head. "No, I won't, my lady," he says sarcastically.
I know that being a basketball player, you should know the first aid. So I have to trust Xavier.
"See, it's fine." Xavier looks at me in the eyes and smiles sweetly. I can feel weird things like animals getting out of their cages in my stomach. It's weird.
"You know, you really don't have to do that --"
"But I want to help you," Xavier says, not meeting my eyes.
After a few minutes of silence, Xavier starts talking. "You know, I never thought a Cassidy Jones would be as clumsy as what you did a while ago." Xavier smirkes at me. I rolled my eyes at his comment. I knew at that moment that he was back to his own self.
I can hear Laura and Connor's voices and I looked at Xavier widely and we started going back to our own business, "Thanks." and "No problem." was said.
By the time Connor saw us, we were back to our own selves and I am grabbing the chairs while Xavier is walking faster than I am.
It was as if nothing ever happened.
I can feel myself sweating as I remember that I am wearing two shorts and this inevitable heat I have been feeling since I started moving chairs for the past hour. To add, my ankles is still hurting a little.
I look at my watch and it says 4:59pm. Just one more hour and a minute to go.
As I move my latest batch of chairs to its proper places, I see Jack and Asher busy with the ruffles. I can hear Fallilah, the Student Council Vice-President, shouting at them to stop playing the ruffles and go back to work. I shake my head and just smile at how I thought they are really serious on working.
I walk back to the classroom and I see Laura sitting at the chair, resting. I smile at her when I walk in and join her.
"Is it hard being a leader and doing all these works while you have a lot of stuffs to handle including homework?" I ask her curiously.
"Well, I'm used to being a leader since I am always elected as the president in the class before. It's just time management," she says humbly. From her smile, you can see the tiny wrinkles in her eyes that show how much effort she put to be where she is now.
I give her an impressive look at how she can handle lots of stuffs while most of my classmates are all about studying and studying and nothing else matters, they seem to be occupied. Except for some people who just plays around the school and still get high grades.
She grabs her water and drink it. I think I can see dripping waters landing on her white pants. Or maybe my brain was just playing with me because I'm tired. Suddenly, I hear her curse and I quickly grab the water away from her and place it at the table.
"It's dripping, shi--" she says, but I cut her off.
"Sorry, I'm so sorry. I thought I was just having illusions a while ago when I saw little droplets from the end of the bottle, I'm so sorry, really," I say, looking for a way to help her but I got nothing. I feel guilty, at some reason.
"It's alright. I just got panicked and all. Don't be sorry," she says calmly while she looks her wet white pants.
Knowing that when it's wet, it's see-through, both of us panic. Any time now the boys would be coming and Laura would be embarrassed. I start thinking while locking the door knob. I walk around the room, like a supervisor.
Suddenly, I remember that I'm wearing two shorts. Before I could think of anything else, I shout Laura's name out of excitement and start removing my shorts.
"Cassidy-, what a-are you doing? Do-Don't strip in here!" Laura exclaims, looking at me as if I lost my mind. For the first time, she got a name right.
When she sees that I am wearing another short inside, her eyes relaxes and is now replace with curiosity.
"It's a long story. Here, I forgot I was wearing two shorts." I give her my volleyball short, revealing my green short shorts.
I forgot at how I hated my shorts that's why I grabbed my volleyball shorts, but now I know it's too late, there's no coming back now and I know that Laura needs it more. I feel the air touching my thighs and I push my shorts down to make it longer.
"Is it alright for you? I don't really mind wearing my pants-" she says but I just nod at her and give her an assuring smile.
"I can wear the one you're wearing if you're more comfortable with this longer one."
I just shake my head and tell her to change quickly before the guys come.
Laura changes quickly, removing her white pants and wearing my shorts as I turn around. After she fixes herself, I can hear the boys knocking the door and give us weird looks on why we locked the door. I ignore them and go back to work.
I saw Connor smirking at me and looking at my legs. When I passed him, I pinch his arm as hard as I could master. He yelp and I just give myself a trophy smile.
I hear the boys asking Laura what happened and why we locked the door. It's a good thing the boys didn't asked me that because I don't know what to answer. I think I even heard them asking why Laura changed into shorts but I didn't get to hear her answer.
I receive more whistles as I enter the gym. Even Josh and Nick on the other side looking at me with amusing eyes. I walked faster, not wanting to give them a show.
"Stop being perverts and go back to work," I scold them even though I'm not the boss here. I turn around and walk faster towards the classroom since running with this pink low cut tank top make me feel uncomfortable.
I learned the scheme that the guys did after a few batch of chairs I brought to the gym. I learned that they would give out whistles to each other whenever I am coming, which I guess so that they could see my neon green shorts. Once, I quietly went to the gym, making myself invisible and going to other paths unlike I usually go so they won't find me. I see Jack looking at the path I usually go and goes back to working. He then starts looking at it again. When Ash saw me, he whistles and all eyes are on me. Again.
Is this another way of irritating me? Because it is working.
I go back to the classroom for the nth time and sits down. I wiped my sweat on my forehead and stands up for another batch of chairs.
As I grab another three piled-up chairs, I see Connor taking my batch of chairs away from me.
"What are you doing?" I ask, confused at why he would steal mine. I'm not pathetic you know, I want to say I exercise every single day.
"I'll deal with this, you can take a rest. I know you're already tired." He smiles at me. Am I hearing this correctly? Why are the boys being nice to me? Is it because I have something against them? Huh, maybe. Or because of my outfit.
"No, I can handle it," I say firmly. But clearly, he's not agreeing with me.
"Let me," he insists.
"No. I really can-"
"Just sit and I can -"
"Seriously, I really -"
"No, really-"
"I said I can do it!" I say at last, tired of us cutting each other. I can feel my breath getting shorter as my head gets hotter.
"Then why's your face filled with tiredness and your voice sounds so irritated?" he points out.
"First, you don't really know me so this facial expression means nothing to you," I say as I point out my whole face. "And, I am irritated because you won't let me do my job. It doesn't mean because I'm a girl, I'm like any other who just sits down and do nothing because of a little work. I don't have manicured nails," I exclaim.
He takes a deep breath before saying, "Well, I'm sorry if I'm concerned and I'm even sorrier that you can't accept offers of a gentleman. If you're all prejudice about girls giving up quickly and not knowing the reasons why, maybe they have asthma or something and they just want to help out, well then I'm sorry," he says and turns away from me. He grabs five chairs and walks out.
"Guys can be gentleman with girls sometimes if you're not hypocrite like you already are," he murmurs quietly. He obviously didn'twanting me to hear it but it's a quiet classroom so even every breath we take can be heard.
I stand there, not moving, trying to engulf the thick atmosphere made by us. This day is worse than I imagined.
As my watch alarmed that it's 6:10pm, I haven't been happier in my life. I'm finally out! I'm free from this prison! We finished the chairs and I can see the accomplishment the boys did on the ruffles on the sides. They look nice, with the blend of pink, blue, purple, and yellow, the color of our school.
I can see the sun setting and remembered that I've seen better. Suddenly, I heard someone clapping and saw that it was Fallilah when I turned around.
"Great job, everyone. Thank you for helping us, it means a lot to us," Fallilah says. The other seniors are talking between themselves and just said their goodbye's to Fallilah.
"No problem," Nick says and winks at her. I almost barf in disgust.
We all said our goodbyes and I start walking out. I text Clarissa to pick me up.
I was half way through my text when I heard Xavier behind me.
"Hey." He ran his hand at the back of his head. I look at him suspiciously on why he would want to talk to me.
"Hey?" I say unsurely.
"Do you... want to... let me .. drive you ,uhm, home?" he asks while looking at the ground. He probably saw my eyes got wide so he continued, "Because you know, your ankles got hurt and probably you're not comfortable at walking yet." It's like a deja vu when Connor asked me the same question last time.
I am about to say that I already have a ride when I remembered that I am quite not comfortable walking and I don't want to explain all the events that happened today to Clarissa just yet.
I think about it deeply; it sounds like a dilemma to me.
If I go with Clarissa, I will have to explain the whole story to her. she will probably smile in victory on how she embarrassed me with her idea of wearing my shorts.
If I go with Xavier, it will not only be embarrassing but humiliating to the max level. I don't think I want to tell Clarissa another story of going home with another guy after Connor.
Speaking of the devil, I see Connor walking out and his eyes are filled with irritation when he saw me. I look down, not meeting his eyes, when I realized that I had an argument with him a while ago about him helping me.
"So ...?" Xavier asks, making me go back to the topic of him helping me. It's hard to believe that it's even real. Why are the guys helping me? And why am I not hating them like I'm supposed to?
"Uhm ... Okay," I say absentmindedly, still thinking about what Connor did.
I start following Xavier and I didn't realize what I did until I can feel Xavier's hand on my right shoulder. I stop on my track and look at him, giving him a glare. He drops his hand immediately and walks past me like nothing happened.
I am starting to think that guys are being kinder to me since I wore my short shorts. I make a mental reminder that I will kill Clarissa tomorrow morning.
I follow Xavier to his car and stop. I gape at his beautiful car. I realize that Connor's car is really nothing to Xavier's. Xavier's car is bigger and it's gold. It has big wheels and the car is shining. I look at Xavier then back to the car, trying to understand how he can afford this expensive, luxurious car.
Xavier open his car and sits down, when I realize he didn't notice me gaping at his car, I hop inside and sit at the passenger seat beside him.
"After this incident, pretend this never happened," I tell him straight away. Before I had the chance to lock my seatbelt, the car started running fast.
"Slow down! I'm not ready to die yet!" I scream at him.
He probably noticed me not yet ready and slowed down. When I finally prepared myself, I hold the handle on top of the car for safety.
He chuckles and I hear him saying, "Slow poke."
"What did you just called me?" I question, I can feel my jaws grinding to each other.
"Where to?" he asks, changing the subject. Knowing that I have no choice but to follow his rules since it's his car and he can do whatever he wants. If I make a wrong move, he might even throw me out of the car and leave me there forever. I'm dramatic, I know.
I shiver at that thought and tell him my address, not wanting to have a long conversation about directions and make Xavier just drive his own shortcuts towards my home.
I start panicking when I realized that he wasn't going on the road I usually pass through my house, which Clarissa and Connor and every other people I know use to pass to my house.
"Wh-where are w-we?" I say nervously. Xavier's not the type of guy who would do bad things, right? I mean, I haven't heard any rumors about him -
"Don't worry, I know where I am going. I'm not going to do anything to you," he say, not removing his eyes from the road.
I sit back relaxingly, making myself to trust him. "Unless you want to," he adds and winks at me.
"Eyes on the road!" I say, pointing at the cat staring at us on the road. I screamed when the car halted.
"That was close." Xavier sighs. I take deep breaths. Well, Xavier is worse than Connor at driving.
"Why did you take your eyes off the road?" I lecture him, not caring about the whole he-owns-the-car-so-I-should-follow-his-rules.
"I can do whatever I want. It's my car," he says coolly. "And that's payback for embarrassing me at the Values Ed. class last time."
"I would name my autobiography of my life How I Embarrassed the School's Playboy." I say with a smirk on my face, looking directly at Xavier.
I cross my arms and mimick him. He also insulted me at that same class, but I'm not going to say anything since I'm tired. Nowadays, I'm just always tired from school. I don't even think it's healthy.
I see him smiling a little. I turn on the radio, not wanting to hear anything else but the music.
I jump in surprise when I heard a rock and roll song that blasted max volume. I lower the volume but I don't know how and I can hear Xavier laughing at me and he takes the control of the radio.
"I know how to lower the volume," I mutter.
He changes the radio station into a better one and lowers the volume. "Yeah right," he says proudly.
I could have just shut it off and none of this could have happen. A lot of things could not happen like letting Clarissa taking over my closet. Or telling Mr. Ricarpo that I want all of this out. I close my eyes and relax. After how many minutes, I think I was relaxing too much that I drifted off from the real world.
I think I even heard someone saying, "You're such a ..." but I didn't care what it is because my lala land is waiting for me.
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a u t h o r ' s n o t e :
So so so so? :) What do you think of Xavier and Cassidy moment(s)??
The photo above is a cover made by nebula_21. Isn't it AMAZING?
Anyway, go ahead and vote and comment your thoughts, let them be heard!
P.S. SMILE :)
"It only takes a split second to smile and forget, yet to someone that needed it, it can last a lifetime." ― Steve Maraboli, Life, the Truth, and Being Free.