A/N.: This chapter ended up a lot more different than the original one I had in mind so just to let Team Marshall know, he's not really in this one. Sorry. I just didn't want to make things sound rushed. He will be in the next chapter though (for sure) so don't get mad okay?
Chapter 18: Him Or Us?
Hidden in the shadows, neither Tyler nor Austin had noticed me yet, and I took that as an advantage, turning back the way I came from to look for Marriah in our booth. No longer did the little stain on my jeans matter to me compared to the wreckage that was beating against my heart and head, and as soon as I saw Marriah’s bright purple streaks reflecting against the lights, I quickened my pace.
She saw me before I managed my way up to her, and quickly raised her eyebrows when she was close enough to observe the expression on my face. “Okay…” She groaned, uncertainty ringing in her voice. “Did something happen during the two seconds that you were gone?”
“I don’t know,” I said, shaking my head. “But we’ve got to go.”
Marriah stared back at me with a look of scrutiny, searching my eyes and sometimes behind my shoulder to see if she could figure something out, but with no luck whatsoever. I knew she wanted to know what had happened during the few minutes I had disappeared off to the washroom, but I didn’t know how to explain it to her. My entire body felt numb and high voltage lightning bolts seemed to rush through my veins, not blood. My lungs seemed to converge and I just wanted to get out of there. Desperately.
It took her a moment, but being the highly perceptive person that she was, Marriah grasped the situation enough to understand my need to leave, and inherently got out of her seat after giving me a nod. We walked out of the bowling alley silently, Marriah munching on her chocolate covered raisins as we continued down the sidewalk that led us out of the shopping plaza.
Guilt wasn’t something that usually pledged me no matter what the cause of the problem, but on this occasion – and having felt a bit better after a little fresh air – I felt a tiny shard of remorse for dragging her out; even more so after she went through the trouble of donning a dress that made her look like a vampire princess. Austin thought she was a freak, but I didn’t. For someone who was even shallower than a puddle of muddy water ten hours after the rain, he was the one that had the problem – him, not us.
“Well, home is this way.” Marriah turned and pointed down the road when we reached the end of the sidewalk and I nodded since I lived in a completely different area of the town than she did.
“Will you be okay? You don’t live far so I could walk you back if you want.”
A low, husky cackle flew out of her mouth. “Trust me Camila, I can handle myself.” She paused and then added, “and don’t beat yourself up about today. I had fun.” With that, she skipped off on her own leaving me standing on the corner of the sidewalk to watch her. It was a few minutes later, after we separated ways, that the devil appeared and started calling after me.
His voice sounded like drumbeats on a microphone against my eardrums and I started walking faster and faster until walking was no longer a solution and I needed to run. I wasn’t sure why I needed to; maybe it was the electricity in my veins, maybe it was the damp stain on my jeans, maybe it was because I could still go home and sneak in a complicated dance routine if I hurried fast enough, but whatever it was, I didn’t make it in time.
Tyler was built to be an athlete and within seconds caught up to me and took hold of my arm. The force he used to pull me into him threw me completely off balance and the smell of him – like honeysuckle and thunderstorms – met my nostrils as my face fell against his hard chest. With that one grip he held me in place, his gaze so penetrating that it forced me to look up and meet them. His lips were parted, heavy pants seething out of him as his eyes searched me wild and desperate. “What happened? When we came back, you guys already left!”
I ripped my arm away from him and gained some distance before crossing them in front of me like a protective barrier. It was a useless gesture in every sense and manner, but I felt more comfortable having it there than if my arms hung freely at my side. “I left because it was pathetic,” I said, staying reasonably calm. “The whole thing was a complete joke.”
“What are you talking about?” Confusion apprehended Tyler’s face before his eyes found the stain at the foot of my jeans. His gaze rested there, unmoving, before he looked back up at me. “When we came back,” he started, “there was a girl cleaning up a spilled drink at our table. She said that you guys both left after one of you came back from the washroom.”
Silence handicapped us after, but it wasn’t long before Tyler got the nerve to continue. “It was you, wasn’t it?” He muttered. “The girl that went to washroom. You were there. You heard us. You eavesdropped.”
“I did not!” I shouted, but one glare at him was enough for me to bite back the words in my mind. “I just… happened to be there.”
“How much did you hear?” He turned his head away from me and released a bitter chortle after, shaking his head side to side in disbelief. “Nevermind. If it freaked you out enough to make you run out like that then you heard the part you needed to hear.”
I opened my mouth, but couldn’t seem to form any words in my throat or in my head. All there was in my mind was the image of me rehearsing for my part in the production of Shakespeare’s Tempest tomorrow night at the theatre. Or maybe Diana would actually suspend me this time after I publicly punched Brooklynn’s face. Maybe my dad would think it’s so unfair that he’d finally break up with her. I didn’t know. I didn’t know. All I knew was I wanted to leave that place right then and there. “I have to go,” I told him, and with a quick turn of my heel, started off again.
“Whatever Mila,” I heard Tyler saying after me, straining not to shout. “You can run if you want and you can hide if you can, but what I said back there? I meant it.” He paused and I turned around to meet his eyes straight on. “Every bit of it,” he said. “I love you.”
Veins popped out on the side of my temple and I could feel them trembling against my head while I bit my lips to stop them from quivering. “Love?” I asked. “You love me? Love wouldn’t be my choice of word Tyler! You don’t love me.”
“Are you kidding me?” He shouted. “Who are you to tell me whether I love you or not! You have no say in that Camila! I love you!!! I love you from the tips of my hair to the ends of my toes! Every single pore in me, every breath, every heartbeat is screaming to me that I love you and you’re telling me that I don’t?! Who are you to tell me how I’m supposed to feel! What gives you the right to that?!”
“I don’t have any right to it!” I cried. “But I know for a fact that whatever sick reason you have for thinking that you love me is a lie!!”
“It’s not!! You have no right to accuse me of that!!”
“I have every reason to think that!” I screamed. “You abandoned me!”
“I protected you!”
“You used me!!” I shouted, and I stomped. I stomped and stomped at the ground until my cheeks were burning off my face and my throat was choking with the warning of tears. I willed the birds to shut up. I willed the world to stop. “That was all you ever did Tyler!” I shouted. “You used me! You used me again and again and again and AGAIN!”
Silence. Like the world had actually froze, like all the time had been sucked out of life, like what I wished had actually came true.
Tyler stood there immobilized, his expression filled with guilt that he couldn’t deny. It was the truth and I didn’t have to tell him how much of a coward he was for him to understand it.
Swallowing the hard lump of anger back down my throat, I took a deep breath and allowed the evening breeze to air out the heat on my face. Deep breaths. In. Out. In. Out. That was better. I straightened the ends of my shirt, fixed any tangles in my hair, and then lifted my chin forward, my eyes finally meeting his again. “Don’t talk to me at school,” I told him, and then I turned around and left. This time, for real.
Dad’s car was still missing from the driveway when I made it back home so the chance that he had made “discussion with the principal” into an ordinary date was highly possible. Normally, it would make my blood boil to know he was spending, yet again, more time with Diana, but today I was so worn out that I didn’t want him to see me like this.
Dead-beat, I made my way inside the house, dragging my feet up the stairs before I plopped down on my bed once I found it. I wanted to sing something to lighten up my mood, but I didn’t seem to have enough strength to even lift my eyelids. I just slept there, face down on my bed, eyes closed, but mind awake, listening to the neighbour’s stupid dog barking at whatever it was he was barking at that day.
I felt my phone buzz inside my pocket and took it out only to drop it over the edge of my bed accidently. Too lazy to pick it up, I rolled into a ball on my bed and pulled the covers over my ears. God, I was so utterly pathetic today.
When I woke up – meaning I must have somehow fallen asleep during the course of the evening – it was already half past nine. Dad’s car was still missing from the driveway and when I checked my phone, I found that he had called several times, but I had missed it because my phone had been set on vibrate. He had left a long voicemail though, muttering something about staying out late and that I should remember to eat and yadda-yadda, all that other maternal stuff he had taken on in the place of my mom.
I sighed, dragged myself downstairs to the kitchen, took out a container of salad he had prepared prior and ate a piece of lettuce. Then I threw the fork into the sink, shove the container back inside the fridge and made my way down to the basement so I could blow off some steam on the treadmill.
Besides my dad, there were also a few texts from Todd asking me about what happened with Brooklynn during lunch, and two from Marshall sent only a few minutes before, both completely illegible. It was Friday night, and I figured Marshall being Marshall was probably getting obliviously drunk and wasting his life away. It had nothing to do with me of course so I continued doing whatever I was doing right up until eleven o’clock that night.
I was already dressed in my PJ’s and about to hop in bed when my phone rang and led me to my desk where I had left it. The sound was turned back on just in case my dad would call again, but to my disdain, the caller ID read “Butthead” and I released a low groan. Marshall.
Of course it was Marshall that would call me late into the night. He was drunk at nine-thirty so he was probably lying in a ditch somewhere with lipstick marks all over his face by now. It tempted me to ignore his call actually, but at the same time, I felt a weird urge to take it.
I took it in the end, deciding that wasting a few more minutes of my time couldn’t possibly kill me. “Hello?”
“Where are you?” He asked, his words sounding slower than usual with a soft slur at the end. It wasn’t that bad actually. The drunken slur only made it seem like he had an accent, which was undeniably becoming and even flattering I might add.
“Home,” I said. “Why?”
“I miss you,” he sighed. “Come and see me. I’ve been thinking about you all damn night.”
I pressed my lips together and closed my eyes before heaving a long sigh of my own into the phone. “Marshall,” I said slowly. “Do you even know who this is?”
“Of course I do,” he shouted, suddenly sounded extremely offended.
“Oh yeah? Like who?”
“Uh… It’s… Je– Jessica.”
“I’m going to hang up now,” I told him.
“No! No wait! It’s… it’s… let me check my phone!” I waited for him, and when he returned to our conversation, he said, “Oh crap.”
“Sounds like you had a great night,” I muttered, but he responded with some gibberish about pigs chasing him and a bear out of a house – pathetic even for him. “I just want you to know that made no sense whatsoever.”
“Jere-Bear!” He said again, laughing. “You know Jere-Bear?”
“I know a Pedo-Bear,” I said.
“No,” he chuckled. “Just come to the water fountains by… by the you know, the bus stop.”
“Right. Because there’s only one bus stop in town.”
“The central one,” he groaned. “My mouth just doesn’t seem to listen.”
“Because that’s what your ears are for.”
“Oh god,” he groaned, completely annoyed that I was screwing around with him, but too drunk to hold a grudge. “Just come down okay?” He begged. “Oh… and uh… bring a shirt.”