Chapter 13
Chapter Thirteen
Jamie
During the Christmas break, my relationship with Shannon suffers.
Right after Cece kissed me I avoided Shannon because I didn’t know what to say or if I should tell her the truth.
But now, she’s the one avoiding me. No matter how much I push, she pulls away.
We have spent little time alone. Even when I stop by her chapter house, she talks to me for a few minutes and then makes an excuse that she has to go.
Has she seen the pictures of Cece and me? Does she hate my guts over something I can’t control? She hasn’t said a word… at least she hasn’t yet.
I run across campus after stopping to see Shannon. Tucker waits for me outside the auditorium.
“How did it go?” he asks.
“Not great,” I mutter. “She’s acting weird.”
“She knows,” he shoots back.
“Yeah. I think she wants to break up, but she hasn’t outright said it.”
“She probably wants you to make the first move.”
“But I want to be with her. I don’t want Cece.”
“She doesn’t know that,” Tucker points out.
“Maybe I should say something.”
Tucker shrugs as we enter the classroom. “I’m not having much luck with women lately, so I might not be the best person to ask for relationship advice.”
I laugh at his comment. “You’re the last person I would ask.”
Instead of taking our usual seats in the back row, he strolls down the center aisle toward the professor. He never interacts with professors unless he’s begging for a handout. It’s the first day of class, so he has no reason to grovel so soon.
Tuck barely passes his classes. Somehow he conned enough girls and professors into help him over the years. Last semester, he roped Trent into his mess and got both of them suspended for two games. I’m sure this semester he thinks he’ll cheat off me… if I let him.
Tucker exchanges a few words with the blonde who must be the teaching assistant. She looks familiar. I think I’ve seen her on campus before. After she hands him our syllabus, he passes a paper to me, and we head back to our usual row.
Once we’re seated, I elbow him in the side. “Do you know the TA?”
Uncrossing his arms from my chest, he lowers his legs to the floor and snaps his head in my direction. “Yeah, she’s the girl who wouldn’t tutor me last semester.”
I laugh. “You fucked your teacher.”
“Teaching assistant,” he corrects.
“Same difference. She’s the one who’s grading our tests and assignments. You better hope she doesn’t take her anger out on you.”
His nose wrinkles in disgust. “I doubt she’ll do that.”
My cell phone dings with a message from Shannon. Staring down at the screen, I type back a response. “I hope not.”
I’m in the middle of talking to Shannon when a few cell phones in the room beep at the same time. I know the sound all too well. Everyone knows what it means.
The Queen is back.
Tucker removes his phone from his pocket and sucks in a deep breath. He’s been the prime target of The Queen. Last month, she called out Drake for sending dick pics to girls on campus, which took the focus off the rest of us. But with January comes a new month and a new year of humiliation.
“Wow,” Tucker mutters. He shoves his phone in front of my face for me to read. “You need to see this.”
Dethroned
January Edition
New Year’s resolutions… everyone makes them, and few people stick to them. Take Jamie O’Connor’s promise to be faithful, for example. He’s been playing house with his Kappa Delta sorostitute for the last two months, and yet I spotted him with another girl.
The newspapers don’t lie, Jamie. Fess up and tell her what you did, you dirty boy. A picture is worth a thousand words…
XO,
The Queen
Irritated, I take the phone from his hand, reading it several times in horror. Shannon will kill me. She may never speak to me again.
Letting out the breath of air I hadn’t realized I was holding, I hand the phone back to Tucker. “I have to narrow down her location. The signal is somewhere in the city, but that doesn’t help. She could be anyone working from anywhere.”
“You’ll find her,” he says, more confident than me. “Or maybe we need to give her a new target.”
I shake my head. “We need to shut her down, not feed her ego. She wants power over us. We have to take it away from her.”
“How do you suggest we do that?”
“I’ll find out who she is, and when I do, we’re taking her down.”
He smirks. “I like the way you think.”
I wink and then go back to texting Shannon, hoping she’ll meet me later for coffee. I have to explain this post before she breaks up with me. Nothing happened with Cece. But the pictures on the Dethroned website prove otherwise.
Me: Meet me at Broad Street Beans at 4
Shannon: Not sure if I can leave the chapter house. We’re working on decorations for the date party.
Me: I need to tell you something
Shannon: Tell me
Me: In person
A few minutes pass without a response from Shannon, and then the message bubble appears on my screen.
Shannon: Why would you do this to me?
I stare at the picture, wondering how I will talk my way out of this situation.
“Fuck,” I mutter.
“What’s up?” Tucker asks, leaning over the arm of my chair.
“Shannon just sent me the picture of Cece kissing me over Christmas break.”
“Fuck…” he whispers. “What are you going to do?”
I roll my shoulders against the wooden chair. “Hell if I know. She has a pic of me kissing another woman. What can I say?”
“She kissed you,” Tucker challenges. “Not the other way around. Just explain to Shannon that Cece’s a jealous bitch, and that she has nothing to worry about.”
“Shannon won’t see it that way.”
My phone buzzes in my hand, and I’m afraid to look at the message from Shannon. But I do. Because I need to salvage our relationship and repair whatever damage Cece has done.
Shannon: You have a lot of explaining to do…
Me: Give me 5 mins. Meet me at Broad Street Beans. Please.
Shannon: Fine. Don’t be late.
I snicker at her text. When am I ever late for anything? Five minutes isn’t enough to state my case, but I have to try. I don’t want to lose Shannon. Not when I finally found someone who’s good for my life. Someone I’m starting not to want to live without.