Chapter 2

A twisted love story between a very strange girl and three very different guys with very big egos. A very novice book, in the process.

Chapter Two

Damion Drake Rize

          “I mean if you’re not going to date her somebody else is going to end up with her you know. A girl like that isn’t just going to be ignored by all the guys in this school. You will be lucky if she stays single for at least a week. She has a lot of options and no offense but it’s not like you were the best guy here. She can’t be that heartbroken over you.” I waited for the punch after that one but looked over to see that Nathaniel wasn’t even there anymore. I turned around quickly looking up and down the hall but there was no sign of him. I was slightly relieved that he hadn’t heard what I just said. Not seeing him while walking backwards I whipped around to face front. Caught up in my thoughts I turned a corner and ran right into someone. I must have hit them pretty hard because all of their books went flying.

          “Sorry!” I exclaimed and bent down to help pick up the scattered books. It was a girl and as she turned to look at me I realized it was Elly. Her giant green eyes stared straight into mine.

          “It’s okay.” She sighed and continued to gather her things. I wanted to apologize again when suddenly the bell rang and I realized I was going to be late to class. Without a second thought I dashed off sliding into my classroom and sitting in my seat before the teacher could notice. Feeling rather awesome I remembered Elly, and then I didn’t feel so awesome. What kind of jerk does that? As bad as I felt about the situation it didn’t take me very long to forget it.

          Everything was far from my mind at football practice. In full pads and helmets we were having a blast hitting each other. It was getting close to the playoff game so we practiced our plays over and over again. Once the alternates went in I started to get restless after a quick break. Looking around I could see that my fellow starters were too. It started out just passing the ball around but then we seriously started messing around with each other. With the theme song of my life in my head I was running, running so fast that nothing could catch me. I had the ball tucked underneath my arm as if it was a bomb I had to get out of the building.  My teammates jokingly fell to the ground when I barely touched them and I jumped over each body as if it was a hurdle in an Olympic race. Suddenly I was face to face with the biggest kid on the team and I wasn’t moving! Running faster and faster I started to jump just as he went down for the tackle acting like I was going to leap over his head. He barely hit me compared to how he usually does and I dramatically flew several feet to the left off the field. Pulling off my helmet I assured everyone that I was okay, I thought that it was hilarious and harmless until I realized that I had hit someone else.

          “Oh… OH my god I am so sorry. Holy… Are you okay? Can you talk? Are you dead?” I jumped up trying to pick up the tiny cheerleader I had landed on.

          “I am fine. Just let me go.” She looked up at me and once again it was Elly. “Running into me once wasn’t enough for you?” She laughed. I caught a glimpse in the corner of my eye of Nathaniel beginning to run over and then stopping, as if remembering that they weren’t together anymore.

          “Can you stand up?” I asked her. Hoping I hadn’t seriously hurt her. With all the pads and the helmet I was wearing it was surprising that I hadn’t broken one of her bones or something.  

          “No.” Was the only response and the worried look on my face made her quickly say more. “I could. Nothing is broken I don’t think. It just hurts… I would rather not stand up is what I mean.” She said smiling to provide further evidence that she was okay. I looked down at her legs and saw what she meant. There weren’t any bones poking out or anything but there was giant scrapes going down them. Blood seeped down her legs and some of the other cheerleaders were becoming faint from the sight of it. After a few moments she began to get up ignoring the protests from the cheer coach. After it was assured there were no broken bones the football coach had wandered away, unwilling to waste precious practice time on a cheerleader.

          “I’m okay, promise. I am just going to go inside and clean up a little bit. Is that okay?” The cheer coach nodded and Elly began to teeter off. I decided to follow. Coach wouldn’t miss me for a few minutes. “I don’t need a chaperone” she said once she noticed I was following her.

          “I could have just killed you, I’m going to make sure you’re okay, you don’t have a say about it.” She raised one of her eyebrows. “Stop over reacting, girls are made of more then just sugar and spice.” Right at that moment one of her knees gave out and she did a strange hop type step. “Do you need any help...?” I asked slowly. She shook her head and bravely continued. I was right next to her when both of her knees gave out at the same time and she lurched forward almost falling on her face. “That’s it” I laughed walking over to her. Without asking for permission I picked her up and started walking.

          “Put me down.” She protested and tried to wriggle free. Holding her tighter I denied her request and started the walk back to the school. “Will you please put me down?” She asked quietly.

          “I don’t feel too up to watching you try to grandma your way to the school. Just sit back and enjoy the pampering. I don’t do this very often you know.” I jokingly replied. Once we made it to the school I set her down and got out the first aid kit that the nurse left when school got out. When I was cleaning all the scrapes (I wouldn’t let her do anything herself) I realized just how bad some of them were. After I had finished her arms and legs I saw blood stains forming on the right side of her shirt. “I’m going to go get your coach…” I said looking at her shirt and indicating why.

          “Wait no… She won’t let me cheer for the playoff game. Please don’t. It’s not even that bad I promise. I will clean it, its fine.” Something in her eyes was telling me that it wasn’t fine.

          “You can either let me go get your coach to look at it, or you can let me look at it, which do you prefer?” Staring at me stubbornly for a moment she stood up and lifted the side of her shirt to the edge of her ribs. A deep gash went diagonally up her right side like something had pushed her shirt up halfway. “What caused that??” I asked pulling away. She pulled me closer and then pointed to the sharp piece of plastic protruding from my shoulder pads. Oops. Taking in a breath I started to clean the ridiculously large cut making under the breath comments about how she needed to go tho the doctors. I put some gauze over it just to keep it from staining her shirt any further. I smoothed it down to make sure it was secure and received a sharp intake of breath when I reached the end near her ribs. Pushing gently on it again I received the same response. Elly immediately turned her head away when I looked up at her. Turning her face back towards me with my hand I looked at her with disbelief. Tears were dripping one by one out of her eyes and I could tell she was holding in a lot more.

“Your rib is bruised. How did you put up with that much pain?” She just bit her lip and suddenly all I wanted to do was kiss her. “You have to go to the hospital right now. This is serious.” I tried to ignore my strange urge.

“No I don’t. I will be fine I promise!” She tried to turn her whole body away but froze in pain. Her legs had started to get shaky again so I gently lifted her up and sat her on top of the table. I looked up and her face was directly level with mine. Her lips were inches away from mine and without thinking I kissed her. I like to think timed slowed down. I laid my hand on the back of her neck then gently pulled her face towards mine as I leaned it. My lips met hers and I felt the soft warm shape of them as I tasted the salty tears. The kiss was amazing but within seconds she pulled away.

“What’s the problem, still upset about Nathaniel? You guys like just broke up right?” I saw the look in her eyes change and knew I had said the wrong thing. She covered her face with her hands and was quiet. “I’m sorry, I didn’t think, I was just…” She just shook her head, signaling me to be quiet. Not knowing what else to do I put my arms around her shoulders and pulled her into a hug. I heard the door open and I looked over to see none other then Nathaniel. His face turned stone cold blank, but I had caught the glimpse that said that this was not okay. All I could do was shrug my shoulders at him. Elly tried to look but I pulled her closer, I was not about to let her feel worse. Nathaniel turned and headed straight back out the door and I knew I would hear about this later. I loosened my grip on Elly. “How can I help?” I asked quietly. She was silent for a moment before she looked up at me. “Could you take me home…?” I left her there and quickly changed out of my practice uniform into my regular clothes. I pulled my truck up to the front door of the school and then ignoring her protests helped Elly into the front seat.

Later that night I started thinking about her. A million questions started to flood my mind. Was she okay? Did her rib hurt? Was she thinking of me? Had she decided to go get her rib checked out? Was she all alone right now? Would she get back with Nathaniel? Would she date me..? This last question shocked me. I had never thought of Elly like that before, maybe because she had been dating my best friend. It would be a bad move to date her now right when they had broken up. Her lips came to my mind. I touched my mouth softly, remembering how the kiss had felt... It was as I was drifting off to sleep that I had one last thought. Would I ever get to kiss her again?

 

Nathaniel Zachary Shores

        All I could feel was frustration. There was a terrible urge inside of me to just hunt Damion down and kill him. He shouldn’t have been messing around in the first place. It just showed how unfocused and immature he was. I really didn’t care if he was one of the best players on the team, when he landed on Elly my respect for him went down a few notches. What if he had seriously hurt her?!? Just a slight change in her position and he probably would of broken her neck. Partially what was bothering me was that I didn’t even get to check and see if she was okay. Maybe she did have a broken bone. What if she was internally bleeding to death right now? All of these thoughts were ridiculous and I knew that Elly had escaped with just a few scrapes but deep down inside I wanted to call Elly right now, go to her house, and find out if she is okay.

No matter how much I want to call Elly right now I can’t. The only way I am going to be able to stay away from her is if I convince her that I don’t care about her whatsoever. If she was hurt though I could never forgive myself for not being there. I contemplated my options while I lay on my bed. I could call Damion if I really wanted to; he had walked Elly back to the school. Then he would think I still wanted to be with her. Crap crap crap! I would just have to wait until school tomorrow and see if she looked okay.  

My decision didn’t help get rid of my worries so I picked up my cell and scrolled down to Elly’s number. I hesitated for a moment on the send button. At the last minute I changed my mind and called the number above hers. It was Eliah which wasn’t too bad of a decision. He was a good friend but honestly didn’t give a crap about if I was with Elly or not.

“Hey man what’s up?” He answered calmly as always.

“What you up to dude? I am crazy bored right now.” I flopped down on my bed.

“I know there is nothing going on right now. I finished my homework like hours ago. Why aren’t you with your girl right now? Don’t you guys usually hang out all the time?”

“Yeah well she’s not my girl anymore” I really hadn’t wanted this to come up.

“Oh… Do you want to talk about it?” He said it in a way only us guys could. We didn’t really care about each other’s problems but would listen if it came up.

“Naw… Not really Eliah. I think I’m just going to try to get some sleep. Catch you in school tomorrow.” After a “later dude” from Eliah I hung up, completely disappointed by my attempt to distract myself from the “Elly situation”. Surprisingly it didn’t take me long to fall asleep.

I turned over in my bed and listened to the sound of rain on my window. It was a soft pitter-patter at first but it quickly changed into a furious down pour. Usually I loved the sound of the rain but this time the sound was daunting and I tossed and turned before drifting back off to sleep with a deep sense that something was very wrong.