Chapter 7 #2
“I’m not a Baird,” I remind, irritated that she’s already using her maiden name again. “I’m a Lawrence.”
She offers me a temporarily displeased expression. “You’re a Baird, more than you know.”
“I am not.”
Mom leans in with a devious smirk. “From what the news says about you, you're more like me than you’d like to admit.”
“I am nothing like you,” I sneer.
“Of course you are darling,” she counters. “That’s exactly why you don’t have a boyfriend.”
“I have standards.”
A wicked grin creeps across her face. “It’s nice to see you’ve got your standards at a younger age than I did.”
“I’m not like you,” I say through gritted teeth.
“Dei,” I hear my father’s voice faintly call in the distance.
It might be too late. I can feel that I’ve already started to unravel and don’t care.
“Yes, you are,” she baits.
“No, I’m not, nor will I ever be like you. I’m not a cold hearted bitch who cheated on her first husband with his boss, only to do the same fucking thing to that guy and then another.”
“Why do you think you bounce from man to man? Huh? You’re just like me,” she states heatedly.
“Fuck off!” I shout, reaching my breaking point sooner than I’d like.
“Dei,” I hear someone call, but I ignore them.
“You know nothing about me. You’ve known nothing about me long before you fucked around on Dad.”
Commotion and chatter are bouncing around, but I don’t hear any of it as the blood in my veins boils at the woman standing in front of me.
I’m not sure what else escapes my lips from this point on as my body and brain go into a trance.
It’s not until pain in my stomach rises that I realize how she’s being pulled away.
My eyes look down and I see the ground moving under me—someone is carrying me away.
“Put me the fuck down,” I order.
Two seconds later, my body is lowered, and a door closing echoes in my ears.
“What the fuck,” I say trying to break free.
Warm hands firmly, but gently, surround my face as a pair of lips cover mine. My eyes stay open for a few more seconds until my heartbeat begins to slow and my brain shuts off. His lips break from mine temporarily, only to connect with them again, this time softer and even slower.
My body relaxes instantly. I allow myself to revel in the sensations swirling through me. “You’re making this a habit,” I mumble, keeping my eyes closed.
“A habit implies a regular occurrence.” His breath tickles my cheek. “It’s been eleven years.”
I open my eyes and stare at him—Luke.
“It worked then as well as the time before that,” he replies with a smirk, still holding my face and not moving away.
“It’s not a way a girl would expect her first kiss to ever happen,” I tease.
The memory surfaces as if it happened just five minutes ago.
“I would have thought you’d kissed other boys before me,” Luke says.
“Not when every guy just saw Mike’s annoying little sister.”
“Was it that bad?”
“No,” I sigh. “Not for that kind of a first kiss.”
“What?” Luke’s brows furrow.
“There’s a kiss, like the one you just gave me, and then there’s a kiss. ”
“What’s the difference?” he asks.
“Dei?” Mandy’s voice calls from behind the door.
Reality sets in and my brain catches up to what just happened. I can feel my body starting to shake from the adrenaline coursing through my veins.
“You can show me the difference some other time,” Luke suggests.
A nervous giggle escapes my lips at the absurdity of what I allowed to occur—all of it.
I feel tears pooling in my eyes, but I fight to keep control.
Mandy bangs on the door, calling my name again.
I slip out from between the wall and Luke, ducking into a stall, needing to get away.
I can’t have him, or anyone, see me break any further.
“Dei?” Mandy’s voice calls again, this time from inside the bathroom. “Dei, hon. Let me in.” She jiggles the door, trying to get into the stall.
“No,” I whimper.
“It’s just me.”
My head shakes, but not a word comes out.
“Don’t make me crawl under the door. You know how I don’t like to get my dresses dirty at parties.”
“Unless it’s because of a cute guy,” I snort. Getting down off the back of the toilet, I unlock the door.
“Hey,” she greets with a smile.
“Hey,” I mumble.
“You okay?”
My head shakes.
“It’s okay, babe.” Mandy wraps her arms around me. “Wanna talk about it?”
I sniff back the few tears that have fallen. “No.”
Mandy hands me some toilet paper. “Come on.”
“She just knows how to push buttons.”
“What did she say?” she asks.
“I don’t want to talk about it. Not here.”
“Do you want to go? I can get Vix from your dad and call Tony to pull the car around,” she offers.
My head bobs. “Yeah.”
“Okay. Do you want to stay here while I get Vix?”
“Yeah,” I sigh. “Thanks.”
“Of course,” she replies. “I’ll be right back. Are you going to be okay without me?”
“As long as the bitch doesn’t come in here, I’ll be fine,” I state.
“Okay.”
Once I hear the bathroom door close, I let myself out of the stall to check my face. There’s no need to let anyone see the mess I am currently. My body jumps when I catch a glimpse of a person to my right in the bathroom.
“What the fuck are you doing in here?”
“I wasn’t going to leave you,” Luke states.
I look away. “Mandy was with me.”
“She’s not in here at the moment.”
“I’m fine,” I lie, wiping my cheeks.
“Dei,” Luke calls sweetly as he moves closer.
“Don’t.”
“You can talk to me…just like before,” he coaxes.
“I’m fine.”
“You’re not fine, Dei. You can’t lie to me about this shit.”
“Just drop it,” I insist.
“Not going to happen, Tyson .”
A small chuckle rises in my throat at his nickname for me. “I can’t believe you remember.”
Luke chuckles. “How could I not?”
I smile to myself and do my best to stop shaking.
“Hey, you ready?” Mandy inquires, popping back into the bathroom.
“Yeah.”
“Nope,” Mandy objects, approaching me. “We need your face to be a little more convincing.”
“Gee, thanks,” I scoff playfully.
She dabs a piece of towel on my face. “That’s why you love me.”
“What are you doing?” I snap as I see Luke take my phone from my purse.
Mandy doesn’t bother to stop him.
“Nothing,” he lies.
“Luke!”
“Just in case you want to talk,” he claims.
A sound beeps. Luke pulls out his phone from his pants pocket.
“What the fuck did you just do? How did you unlock it?”
“You messed with your phone a bit last night,” he states with a shrug. “Knowing you, it wasn’t hard to figure out your passcode. Now you’ve got my number when you need to talk. And I’ll know it’s you calling.”
“Smooth,” Mandy says.
“Not smooth,” I object. “What the fuck?!”
Luke smiles and returns my phone. “Goodnight, ladies.”
“Goodnight,” Mandy replies happily. As soon as Luke leaves the bathroom, Mandy looks back at me. “What was that all about?”
“Nothing,” I lie.
“You have to admit that was smooth,” she insists.
“It wasn’t smooth. Besides, that’s just Luke.”
Mandy giggles. “He’s got the hots for you.”
“No, he doesn’t. He’s just a friend.”
“Uh…he’s one of Mike’s friends,” she challenges.
“Most of his friends were my friends…kind of.”
“I know what you told me, but at that age, you were probably annoying to them,” she says.
A snort slips out of me, knowing that I was.
Mandy elbows me, prompting me to share.
“Luke was like Mike…I could talk to him. Actually, I used to be able to talk to all of them.”
Her head tips towards the door. “Looks like you had a bigger connection with Luke.”
“Not really.”
“So, did you and Luke ever hook up?” she asks.
“What?! No!”
There’s no need to share the past with Mandy. That’s where it’s supposed to be, right—in the past?
She bites back a smile. “You never snuck a kiss with him or any of the other boys?”
“No. They all saw me as an annoying sister.”