It Had to Be You

Chapter 6 : Hey Nosebleed

Wes' POV

Find a girl, romance her enough to be my wife, and get married within a year.

One year.

That's all I had was one blooming year. Good Lord, why was that all I had?

Madness, clearly Gigi had been taken by madness at the end. Her mind turned to Swiss cheese thanks to cancer and the chemo—

No, no. I was being unkind. My grandmother had been of sound mind when she'd recorded that tape. If she'd been incapable, then I doubted Mr. Ferris would have allowed her to record herself as thus, which meant—which meant a lot of things apparently. And none of them were good for the family.

They'd turned on each other almost immediately.

I'd always known my uncles and aunts were more…ambitious than my father, perhaps not as much as my mother, Evette. No one was more ambitious than the Goddess of R&B and Pop. Still, even knowing this about my family, I hadn't expected them to…harass me as they did. They were already acting as if I'd failed like I couldn't be bothered with doing such a simple task.

If finding the love of your life within a year was simple.

I pinched my nose, fighting the urge to scream. A group of co-eds crossed in front of me—cute in that girl-next-door type of way, when it hit me. Eva—I had to find Eva!

She was already perfect (I hated the way she hogged the bed), pretty (but it was all artificial), smart (she'd cheated on every assignment ever given to her), and rich (her father was the head of Apollo Films, the company that had made my grandmother a star. She was an heiress in her own right, so I know she didn't want me for the money).

Besides, it was what I deserved. Eva had her issues, but I had my own. We got each other enough to look the other way and to hell with anyone that thought differently. There wasn't going to be anyone else who would give me the time of day with the record I had, and there wasn't going to be any I trusted not to take my money. Eva was the perfect—and only—candidate for marriage within a year.

I was not going to f**k up my family for the second time.

I was done being a f**k up.

“Is that…whom I think it is?"

Cameron had followed me under the guise of emotional support, but I still wasn't sure if he was just a glorified spy for his crazy drunk of a mother Josefina. He did seem genuine when we talked in the car about handling grief. And he was…sad in a way that Gigi hadn't thought to distribute the wealth evenly between all the grandkids.

The tape continued for some time after the big reveal, goodbyes to each individual Mondego. Some stayed for such goodbyes. Others, the less noble and more power-hungry, had left the moment they believed they weren't owed anything. Cameron had been the former.

I looked at my cousin, mind frazzled on how to win Eva back. She'd be a b***h to convince to pick up the relationship again if she'd found a passerby. She liked making me jealous, picking men who were bigger than me but lacked the intelligence or the class to be permanent.

In turn, I liked to torment her with models that she envied or admired. It wasn't nice of either one of us, but that was the game between us—who would break first?

Regrettably, I had a losing streak in that regard. Maybe I could give Whatsherface another spin? Bring her down to campus enough times that the rumor mill would spin and give Eva a taste. Then I could negotiate with the standard f**k-and-make-up?

God…

“Who?" I asked, trying to figure out what name was Whatherface on my phone. Did she ever text me? How the f**k was I supposed to “keep in touch"?

“The fat goth girl from Princeton Prep." That got my attention. “Don't give me that look! You know…"

“No, I don't know." I scanned the crowd for anyone who looked like they'd listened to Manny's music and came up short. Just the usual types. “Who the hell am I looking for? You got a name?"

“Aw s**t, you know how I am with names…" Cameron titled his head, AirPods loud enough that I could hear the tiny tinkling of indie rock strumming along. “f**k, what was her name? It was something weird. Like old fashioned but not. Gertrude? Olive? Winona?"

The crowd thinned, most of the students at BrockU either heading for the cafeteria or back to their dorms. Only a handful of students were left in the parking lot. Oh, that's odd, a late entry?

“No, no, it definitely had a D in it. Dorothy? Dahlia? Delia?"

“Bye Deidre! We love you!"

I paused mid-step, Cameron smacking into my back with a muffled, “What the s**t?"

Oh no…oh f**k no. It couldn't have been her.

But no, the same long dark hair always in two braids, those comic book villain eyebrows, thick lips, button nose—she'd thinned out since last I saw her, put on some muscle, but that was her—Deidre “call me Dee" Rayburn. The girl I'd bullied since the fifth grade.

But…it could not be her. She had a common-ish face. Besides, wasn't she like some MIT-bound super genius? What was she doing at BrockU? It was a good school, but it wasn't the best, and the Nosebleed I knew had wanted to be the best.

Fuck it, only one way to find out.

“Hey, Nosebleed!"

Deidre whirled around, fists already curled, and—s**t—it really was her.

And just like that, every shitty thing I'd ever done to the girl came flooding back.

**

“I heard your mom's a w***e!"

I didn't need to be that loud, but I wanted to be heard in those days. Besides, it bothered me that she was Ms. Cunnigham's favorite in the class. It didn't make sense. I was a Mondego; I was everyone's favorite. Or, so I believed in those days. Or maybe that hadn't been the reason. Maybe the reason I'd picked on Dee was that I liked it when she looked at me. Something about the fire in her eyes…

Maybe I'd always been a glutton for punishment. It probably had nothing to do with her personally. Just my young mind trying to make sense of things I preferred later.

It hardly mattered the reasons why. Dee was small, smaller than any of the other girls in our grade. Gemma Chen hadn't moved to Westbrooke yet. She wouldn't for at least another four years and so Dee was everyone's punching bag in those days. But mine especially.

“I don't know what that means." She didn't grow up in Westbrooke so she didn't know bad words like that. Her household, from what I'd heard of it, was nice if poor. She didn't have rich kid problems or a rich kid mouth. But, she'd learn.

“It means your mom is nasty and dirty." Cameron and I had been in each other's grades since pre-K. Another bond between us, but purer compared to now. “It means she sucks."

It was juvenile of us—not to mention just plain untrue—but the arrow stuck home. Dee's eyes welled with tears and she lunged at me and I—

“You take it back!" She'd hit me, hard enough to hurt. “You do it right now or I'll—"

“Or you'll do what?" I'd shoved her with everything I had. “You'll cry? Tell Ms. Cunnigham? Maybe I'll just make you shut up."

I grabbed one of her braids, pulled it like a rope, and she squirmed away, wailing. I hadn't seen the Lego brick behind her foot. She slid back, and I rode her down, panicked.

“Wes…" Cameron said horrified. “What did you do?"

I…I hadn't meant to, I'd only meant to shove her, I didn't mean to.

Blood poured out of Dee's nose like a twin red river, broken thanks to an accidental elbow to the face. Her gray skirt—uniforms we all wore thanks to Princeton Prep—had torn wide open, little pink panties on display.

“LOOK!" I hadn't known Lola James for long, her family had moved to California right before middle school, but if I was Dee's number one enemy, she was a close second. “Dee's naked!"

She wasn't, but the damage had been done. She'd run away crying to the nurse with her bloody nose and, with some collaboration from Cameron and the fear of punishment, we'd created a lie that got us a time-out but no call from the headmaster's office.

And Dee, she'd gone home for the day and hadn't returned until that Monday. She came back different, and colder. I think that's where the guilt began. I'm ashamed to say it didn't stop me from picking on her though.

**

“Westley Mondego." Her words were so cold that I was surprised Cameron's glasses hadn't fogged over. “What the f**k are you doing here?"

“I could say the same thing." No, I could make this right. I wasn't the same Westley as I'd been since the accident. I could be kinder. I'd changed. “Look, I'm—"

“Spare me whatever bullshit is going to come out of your mouth next." She picked up her backpack, one of those across-the-shoulder ones that artists liked so much, and tried to move past me. “Look, I've had a very long day and I'd rather not have it turn to s**t because of the likes of you. How about this: you stay out of my way and you keep your teeth. That easy enough for your pea-brain to comprehend?"

I bristled.

“Perfectly," I said between clenched teeth. Don't get mad, be the bigger person. “Of course, I'm surprised that someone like you was let into a place like this."

“Excuse me?" f**k, be nice! Be nice, you asshole—

“Yeah," I tipped my head back so I could look down at her. Not that it was hard, she was the size of a f*****g hamster at 5'3". “You're so worried about me getting in here, but I'd be more worried about you. I wasn't aware that they had welfare in this place. Food stamps."

Her right hand curled back into a fist.

“There's no way you're affording this on your own, even with help. So what," I leaned down to whisper in her ear. Something…electric passed between us for a moment as our eyes met. Before anger clouded her vision. “Did perfect little darling Dee stoop to sugar-babying it or was Daddy really the cut-throat gangster that the news painted him as? You pay this with Mob money?"

Dee dropped her backpack, loud enough to make me jump a little.

“That's it!"

And the next thing I knew, the knuckles of her bony fist were kissing my lips.