Rage

Chapter 2

Chapter Two

Calista

February 2020

“ K eep your hands up and block your faces, ladies!” the self defense instructor reminds us for the fourth time this lesson. She’s a retired police officer, and based on what I’ve heard from the other women in the class, her bite is worse than her bark. It’s why we signed up for her class and not the one taught by the personal trainer.

In the four years since I graduated high school and started studying business law at Paramount University, I’ve managed to leave behind the quiet outsider I was there. In her place is a viscerally angry woman who doesn’t take shit from any man. I haven’t just changed my mentality either. I grew out my chin length, blonde hair and started coloring it onyx black. I joined a gym off campus and turned my flabby body into a tight, curvy piece of art. I couldn’t do anything about my wide hips or big ass, and I still have a bit of a belly pouch. But I’ve learned to love and accept my body.

Sweat pours down my back and soaks the band of my sports bra as I move through the various self defense positions. Every so often my eyes drift from the instructor to the wall of mirrors at the front, and I can’t help but flash myself a smile every time I see how my hard work over the past few years has paid off.

“Alright ladies, it’s time to start cooling down.”

A collective sigh can be felt through the large room as we all drop our hands and begin stretching our muscles. The ache in my arms and legs is exquisite.

After I’ve finished stretching every possible muscle group, I pick my water bottle up off the floor and take several big drinks of the cool liquid. I pour a bit on the top of my head and shiver as it runs down my back. I desperately need a shower, and from the looks of the rest of the class, I’m going to have to wait until I get back to my dorm.

I make my way outside to my car. The secondhand hybrid was my father’s graduation gift to me, so that he wouldn’t need to send his driver with me to university. Sadly, he’s just as emotionally neglectful now as he’s always been. He pays for my degree, which I’m grateful for, because I wouldn’t have been able to afford his alma mater otherwise. But it was a struggle to get him to even help with that. He wanted me to study law, but I wanted to study business. After arguing back and forth for half of my senior year, we finally compromised on business law and he was happy enough to pay.

I start the quiet car, and wait a few minutes for it to warm up. Mid-February in Indiana is no joke. I’d kill to live someplace where the air doesn’t hurt my face. Which is ironic, considering I’ve killed several men with pieces of winter. They all deserved their deaths. They were shitstains who thought putting their hands on women was okay. I pull my beanie further down my head before putting the car in gear and backing out of my parking space.

The drive from the gym to Paramount doesn't take me very long at all. It's barely long enough to listen to two songs from my metal playlist, and Lzzy Hale has barely started singing "Love Bites" when I pull up to my building. I park, but stay in my car until the end of the song. Once her powerful voice fades, I finally shut off my car. Grabbing my gym bag from the passenger seat, I open my door and step back out into the bitter winter air. Avoiding ice, I walk at a brisk pace until I'm inside my residence hall.

Three floors later, I make it to my private room. Another stipulation from my father. He didn't want me to share a room with anyone because apparently, "roommates are distractions” and he's “not paying for parties or gossiping." His exact words. Eye fucking roll. I drop my bag by the closet before hanging my winter coat up. As I walk into my en suite, I peel my workout clothes off my body and turn on my shower, cranking it as hot as I can handle.

I scrub every sweaty inch of my body, double shampoo, then deep condition my long hair. The exhaustion hits me right around the time I wrap a fluffy towel around my body, and I fight to keep my eyes open long enough to blow dry my hair before dropping into bed. I somehow manage to pull the towel off myself, then burrow down into the bed, pulling my thick comforter up to my chin. I'm out as soon as my eyes close.

The obnoxious sound of my five a.m. alarm wakes me up far sooner than I'm prepared for. Not for the first time, I curse myself for signing up for a seven a.m. class. Scratch that, I audibly curse admin for deciding that my necessary Business Negotiations 303 needed to be early as fuck on a Thursday. I take my time getting dressed in a pair of thick leggings and a fuzzy sweater dress. This professor is a stickler for his students being dressed in business casual, no matter what time of year it is, and I’m not in the mood to be chewed out today.

I run the straightener through my hair once, then put on a coat of both mascara and lip gloss. At the last minute, I also decide to add a simple winged liner. I put on my wool coat and pick up my messenger back from where I'd hung it yesterday after my last class. I'm out of my door with enough time to stop at the coffee shop on campus and grab a muffin and a coffee before class. Feeling proud for leaving with enough time to stop and grab breakfast, I give myself a mental pat on the back.

I devour my double chocolate muffin in record time, and still have half my large cup of coffee as I walk into the lecture hall. There are far more people here than there should be, and I only recognize a handful of them. I double back to the doors to make sure that I didn't walk into the wrong building while on auto-pilot.

Seeing that it is the correct place, I head back into the auditorium-like room and take a seat near the top, beside one of the few people I recognize. I think her name is Ginnifer? I lean toward her and whisper, "What's with all the extra people?" But she just shrugs, and I can't push it because that's when the professor walks in from his personal entrance off to the right of his heavy wooden desk.

I pull my laptop out of my messenger bag and boot it up. Opening the syllabus for this week's lesson, I hope to see why there are extra bodies in class today. But I have no such luck, there isn't any recently added information for this week. I groan softly, then sit back and get as comfortable as I'm able in the unforgiving seat.

"Put your computers away. You won't be needing them this week. As you can see, there are students in attendance today that aren't a part of this class." The professor waves a hand in the direction of the fifteen or so people occupying the two front rows. "Their usual professor has taken an unexpected sabbatical for the rest of the year, so his classes are being merged with mine. In the spirit of business negotiations, I'm pairing everyone up and giving each pair a topic. You will each come up with a theoretical business, and you need to be able to negotiate a fair merger with one another. When I call your name, grab your things and come to the front to greet your partner."

I've never been a fan of group projects in any capacity. I almost always end up doing ninety percent of the work and only getting half the credit, no matter who I'm working with. The professor calls names from my class in alphabetical order, and the other class in reverse alphabetical order. I get the shock of my life, and my heart rate triples when I hear, "C. Yarrow, and A. Covington."

My heart stops. There's no fucking way that Alistair Covington, my biggest bully from my prep school days, is a student here at Paramount, right? My fears are confirmed when the devil himself stands and makes his way to the front. I numbly grab my stuff and let my legs carry me the short distance between us, until I'm standing in front of Alistair. He holds out his hand for me to shake, and when I look at his face, he gives me a genuine smile.

"I'm Alistair."

He doesn't recognize me? I don't think I've changed that much, have I? I briefly debate between telling him my first name or my middle name. I could pretend to be someone else, someone other than the girl he treated as his punching bag for two years. Or I could own up to who I truly am and show him that I’m not the scared little girl I was back then.

My mouth moves before my head can decide, and I find myself saying, "I'm Lynette." I shake his hand as he gives me a confused nod, and I clarify, "I go by my middle name. I haven't used my first name in years."

"Ah. Well, Lynette, it's a pleasure to meet you."

He finally releases my hand, and our professor speaks again. "Each pair needs to find somewhere on campus to work on this assignment. It'll be due next week. You're dismissed." He shoos us all out, leaving me simultaneously grateful for not having to sit through one of his three hour lectures, and horrified about who I've been paired up with.

"Should we go to the library?" Alistair asks, pulling my attention back to himself.

"Huh? Oh, yeah." On the off chance he realizes who I am, I’m not willing to take any chances. I refuse to go anywhere private with this man, so the library sounds like the perfect place. It's well lit, always full of students studying, and it's quiet.

We walk silently to the university library. As we step inside, I take a deep breath to calm my nerves. He hasn't attempted any sort of small talk, and for that I'm grateful. If he asks where I'm from, I have no idea what I'll tell him. Maybe my mom's hometown?

Neither of us speaks until we find an unoccupied table and get situated. Alistair turns a chair backwards, and plops down onto it before dropping his bag onto the floor beside his chair. As I pull my laptop back out of my bag and plug it in, I notice him scrolling through something on his phone. I open up my email and see that the professor has already sent out the list of theoretical businesses for everyone. I open a new word document and stare at the flashing cursor for a few moments.

"So..." My head snaps up, and I realize Alistair is staring at my tits over the top of my laptop screen. I want to scoff and cross my arms in front of my chest, but I realize at the last second, that's what the old Calista would have done. This Calista though? She toys with stupid men like Alistair. This Calista plots the unexpected deaths of assholes like Alistair. So instead, I give him a coy smile and twirl a lock of my hair, pretending to be a vapid girl that has no idea the kind of person he truly is.

I smile and nod the entire time he lays out his basic ass idea for the project, not really hearing a fucking thing he says. He just assumes that because I'm a pretty girl, I'll go along with whatever his plan is. I barely manage to keep myself from snorting and rolling my eyes. He doesn't even try to hide the fact that he's flirting, and I pretend like I'm totally into it. I twirl my hair and bat my eyelashes at all the right moments. I don't even have to speak at all. Not that he gives me a chance. He really enjoys the sound of his own voice.

His hand reaches across the table, and one of his fingers strokes along the sleeve of my sweater. I have to force myself not to cringe at his touch. If it weren't for the years of therapy I’ve had since the day he and his friends beat me and left me on the side of the road, I'd be triggered as fuck by him touching me. He continues talking, oblivious to my disgust, and I force myself to keep my eyes on his face. Even I have to admit, he is attractive, at least on the outside. His forehead is smooth, his eyebrows are perfectly trimmed and maintained. His crystal blue eyes are still trained on my tits, and I'm lucky he doesn't have laser vision. Otherwise I'd have two extra holes in my sweater. His roman nose looks like it's been broken once or twice, and his short, thick beard accentuates his sharp jawline.

When he finally stops speaking, I surreptitiously glance at the time on my laptop screen and see that we've been in the library for two hours. There's an email notification flashing in the corner, so I click on it. The email opens, and I see that it's an entire outline from Alistair. My brows furrow as I wonder how the hell he got my email address. More importantly, when the hell did he manage to write this outline with all the talking he was doing?

He must notice my confusion, because he says, "I hope you don't mind, I pulled your email address from the professor's email."

At least he has the decency to pretend to look ashamed. I relax my face and paste a plastic smile onto my lips. "I don't mind at all, Ali." I throw in another hair twirl and he shoots me a cocky grin. Gag me with a huge wooden spoon.

"Can I walk you to your next lecture?" Again, gag me.

"I don't have another class until this afternoon. I really appreciate the offer though." Another fake smile.

"Can I get your number? That way we can make plans to meet up again in a day or so," Alistair says as he holds out his phone.

Every part of me screams no, but I take it, enter my number, and save it under my middle name, deciding to throw in a flirty emoji with it. I exit the phone app, then hesitate. "Do you mind if I send myself a text so that I have yours too, Ali?" My voice is sugary sweet, and very much not me. Alistair eats it up though, and practically drools as he nods. So I shoot myself a text before passing him his phone back.

Shutting down my computer, I pack it back into my bag before standing from my chair. My ass is numb from sitting in the same position for hours. I force myself to remain at the table as he packs up, otherwise my distaste would be obvious, even to him. For now, I need him to believe that I'm into him. At least until I've planned his death. No matter how I do it, I'll make sure he knows that it was me who took his pathetic life.

Once he finally stands from the table, he walks up to me. He leans in as if to kiss me, and I turn my face at the last minute so that his lips meet my cheek. I can feel myself turning red with anger, but he must think I'm embarrassed because he strokes a thumb along the cheek he kissed. I suppress a full body shudder at his touch.

"I'll text you later, beautiful." He winks at me, then walks away. I wait several moments before I leave the table, rushing to my dorm room, and nearly slipping on patches of ice, twice. When I finally make it into my room, I drop my bag onto my bed, my wool coat on top of it, and run into my bathroom. I scrub my face clean several times.

When I finally feel like my face is free of his touch, I strip out of my sweater dress and throw it across the floor. I refuse to wear it the rest of the day. My leggings follow next, and I open my closet, digging through for a comfortable outfit. My afternoon professor doesn't give a shit how we dress for her class, so more often than not I tend to wear a hoodie and leggings.

Going back into my bathroom, I remove my contacts and put my glasses on, throwing my hair up into a messy bun. Feeling more like myself, I grab a bag of chips from my mini-kitchen —another perk of my father's money— and refill my water glass. I sit at my desk with my laptop and catch up on the reading for my afternoon class. I also begin planning Alistair's death.