Chapter 18
“DADDY LESSONS” BY BEYONCE
Lunch notes were meaningful to Olivia’s stepfather, Webster Webster. There was never a day the man let his daughter leave the house without some form of encouragement from him. It was cute, and I was forever jealous of my tall friend.
Today, she was surprised with a small heart drawn on top of her Gatorade and a fortune cookie the man most likely grabbed during their last takeout night. Olivia’s parents were some of the sweetest people I’d ever met.
“What’d Mr. Web leave you today?” Christian asked as he sat his tray down between Olivia and Erica.
Erica scowled at him. She shot me a sharp glare before spinning back around on the boy.
“What are you doing here?” she asked, motioning to his tray. “We don’t sit together Monday through Friday.”
Christian gaped at Erica’s words. He looked around the cafeteria and made a face down his sandwich.
“That would mean we never sit together,” he uttered, his brows screwed together.
“Oh?” Erica placed a hand on her chest. “Well, it was nice seeing you, Chris.”
Christian sat on the lunch table stool for a moment longer and waited for Erica to change her mind. His eyes trailed over to me, but I sipped my Sprite in silence. Not even Olivia had argued about kicking him out of our table.
It didn’t take long for Erica’s shooing to embarrass Christian. He wasn’t the type who handled other students in his business well, including when the girl he was sleeping with didn’t want anything to do with him.
“Liv, what did Webster leave you?” Erica asked.
Olivia unraveled her fortune cookie and giggled, glancing between Erica and me. She turned the slip of paper around and shrugged.
“A rainbow always emerges after a rain shower,” she read out loud.
Erica’s nose crinkled.
“That’s the fortune he left you?” she asked. “Where is he shopping for fortune cookies?”
I rolled my eyes and spied around the cafeteria. I still hadn’t come up with a solution to my Spy Kid problem. Olivia and Erica fell into their own conversation as I gave another half-assed attempt at paying attention, lost in my thoughts.
Quinntessa was fun to tease, but she wasn’t taking the bait of my flirting.
We’d talked now and then. Occasionally, I caught her eye in the hallways.
Something continued to hold her back from falling into every well-placed trap I set.
I’d give her five bones, and she’d take three and a tip.
She was nice, but I didn’t want nice. I wanted a girl who could give me a flavor of both worlds.
I tugged my lip between my teeth and watched as Quinntessa shook out her long hair across the room. Her fingers raked through it, easing out the tension from her shoulders with small rolls.
She still looked tired, even after taking such a deep power nap before classes.
Mustang was cute when she slept. When she wasn’t throwing an attitude back at me, she was much more tolerable.
In the mornings, if I arrived early enough, I might have watched her sleep from the parking spot beside hers.
She deserved it, after all. Those nightmares must have been keeping her up at night to make her increasingly irritable this past week.
“Miss Battles!” a stern voice boomed from my right over the overlapping conversations of students.
I turned my head and felt dread build in my stomach when three officers hovered close to the lunch table I sat at with friends. I stuffed my lighter in my pocket and gave the man my attention.
“Mr. Stanley?” I raised my brows.
“Grab your bag,” the man insisted. “The front office needs to see you.”
He was a shorter man with a briar bush-like appearance. His face was scratchy from the patch work technique he used to keep himself presentable.
“Is she in trouble again?” Olivia pouted.
“What’s this about?” Erica asked, glancing nervously in my direction.
We shared a knowing glance. I could see in her eyes she was as worried as I was when they hadn’t mentioned a reason why I needed to disturb my lunch.
“If your friend wants to tell you later, she can, Miss Kane,” Mr. Stanley suggested.
At that, I rose and watched the school safety officers hovering nearby as I accepted whatever fate Mr. Stanley had for me.
My boots thudded loudly against the basketball court as I stalked into the gymnasium in search of Duke. I could hear Coach Kylie following behind me since I left A Building and searched for the class this tiny dick asshole would be in.
Obviously, he would be in gym class. He was an idiot who skipped one too many classes freshman year, leaving him in the gymnasium and health rotation for his final senior year.
I had escaped the surprise intervention from my principal and teachers. I should have known when Mr. Evers stepped out of his precious choir class that something was up. The band and choir teacher only ever approached me once prior to this, both times about joining the Spirit Hunters.
“Daniel!” I shouted.
Duke turned around with a wide grin, dribbling a ball easily. His smiled fumbled the second he spotted me closing in, his ball following suit. It bounced away as he froze, too stupid to figure out if he should move or not.
He should have.
A loud, ear-splitting whistle sounded across the gymnasium as my golden knuckles struck Duke straight across the face. The crack of his jaw, then his large six-foot self falling to the floor, gathered every eye in the room.
“What the hell, Q?” Duke groaned in pain and covered his face, pushing up to try to defend himself.
“What the fuck did you do?” I shouted, wrenching my boot up and striking him in the side. He shouted out in pain, falling back down. “You told them I drugged those kids, didn’t you?! You fucking?—”
Arms wrapped around my body, pinning my arms down at my sides and lifting me off the ground. I growled loudly and tried to reach him again, but Coach Kylie wouldn’t budge her grip. She coached teenage girls too often to not know how to stop a fight.
“I didn’t do shit!” Duke scoffed.
“You fucking wait! I am not done with you!” I shouted as my old coach dragged me backward.
Duke was pulled up by a few of his friends. He dabbed at his mouth, blood flowing freely from his nose.
“This is why I don’t have a girlfriend,” Zachari snorted from the sidelines. He winced when I shot him a glare.
Beside him, Noah raised their head from their sketchbook with a confused twist of their face. It wasn’t a face I saw much, since we weren’t that close of friends, but all the classes I had with Noah over the years had left them bewildered.
Not that they were confused with anything to do with class. Noah was extremely smart. They never truly understood why most people said things that didn’t make sense to them or weren’t truthful.
“I-I-I thought it was because you liked to look at pictures of penises,” Noah exhaled out all in one breath, turning back to their drawing.
Zachari’s face turned bright pink, a soft wheeze escaping him. I would have laughed if I didn’t want to rip Duke’s face off for getting me stuck with the Spirit Hunters.
“Can’t you ever put her first?!” I kicked in the air, angry teas falling down my face. I didn’t want his wide-eyed panicked crap. He knew. He knew how much this could affect me getting her back. “What kind of man are you?”
“He’s not one,” Coach Kylie hissed, tossing me in front of her. She rolled her eyes as I reared back and tried to run at Duke, and she grabbed my upper arm, dragging me after her. “Let’s go, Q!”
“Let go of me!” I tried to twirl out of her grip, but the woman didn’t let up.
She guided me out of the gym and straight into her office around the corner. I stumbled inside, grunting as her arm extended sharply.
“Sit down!” Coach Kylie snapped, yanking a folding chair from where it leaned against the wall and dropping it between us. “Quincy, sit down.”
“He’s lying!” I threw a hand to the door and paced the length of her office. “He came to me for stuff, and I didn’t give him anything. I’ve been clean besides weed and—you know this could ruin my chances with Estelle!”
Coach Kylie crossed her arms. She stared at me with her lips in a tight line, letting her eyes fall to the metal chair between us.
“I can’t help you unless you calm down, Quinn,” she said, nodding to the chair again. “Unless you want me to believe his word, put your ass in this chair.”
I eyed her warily.
Truth was, I never really enjoyed Coach Kylie while I was a cheerleader.
It got worse when I became captain. She was the one you wanted to be seen by, and most days, she was the only one who saw me.
Most of my time with her was spent being told how much better I could be, how far I could go, and all the sappy bullcrap stuff I didn’t need.
Her entire life was cheerleading. We were nothing alike, yet she somehow saw herself in me.
When she told me all the great outcomes waiting for me outside of Indiana at colleges and the NFL, I stupidly believed her for a while.
It was the worst thing I had ever done. My father never wanted me to go to college.
He only wanted me to play the part. College wasn’t for me, nor was cheerleading, and it pissed me off hearing her talk about how much talent I had locked up in my cage of a heart.
We got into fights frequently after I got pregnant. I was hormonal, and she knew something was wrong after how many practices I missed and stunts I fell from. I was the strongest flier, the top of the pyramid, and I spent most of my time holding my chin high above everyone else.
I quite literally fell from the top of the pyramid to the ditch I laid in now.
When word got out I was pregnant, I sat in that same chair and struggled not to cry as I lost my captain position.
It was my choice to leave the team after that.
Coach Kylie had offered me a position as manager, but from that moment forward, I knew I couldn’t stand on the sidelines and watch Erica move into my position.