MASON (Fallen Crest #0.5)

9

9

MARISSA AND THE PROMISE TO TATE

It had been three months since we threw Tate out of the house. She apologized to Logan for the first week, but he ignored every message and every apology. She was nothing to him now. Then she began with me, but she only apologized a few times. I warned her to get the f**k away from me. She heeded the warning and had kept a safe distance since. Neither Logan nor I talked about what happened, but everyone knew he and Tate had a nasty ending. Like sensing a weaker prey, Kate turned on her. Her friends all tormented Tate, who took it for a while before she started fighting back.

Getting to class late one day, I stopped in the doorway and saw my usual seat was filled. The guy in it saw me looking at him, but turned away. His neck grew red as I continued to stare at him. The teacher stopped writing on the board. “Mr. Kade, you weren’t here when I had everyone pick their new seat for the rest of the year.”

I frowned. “We’re in the middle of a semester.”

“Your point?”

“I don’t have a great attitude, but I’m never late and I’m not a bad student.” I gestured around the room, ignoring how everyone was staring. They always stared. “Did you do this because I was late this one time?”

He barked out a laugh and shook his head. “Mason Kade. Of course, this whole thing was about you.” He rolled his eyes. “I like when my students are confident, but you’re to the point of arrogant. No, this had nothing to do with you.” He sent a pointed look to the back where Kate was sitting. She flashed him a smile and flicked her hair back, behind her shoulder. Then he sighed and looked in the opposite corner, to the front of the room. Tate lowered her head and slumped down in her seat. He continued, “Due to the history of heated exchanges these past few months, these are the seats you will have for the rest of the year and there will be no talking amongst the tables.”

I saw the open seat. It was in the front row, but on the opposite side of Tate with a table between us.

The teacher pointed to it and said, “You will be sitting with Miss Hooper for the year. Be nice, Mason. She’s the only one you can talk to for the rest of the year.”

As she was named, my table mate glanced up. I recognized her from other classes, and remembered we had been assigned to work on a different project at the beginning of the year. She hadn’t been excited to deal with me then either, but I hadn’t cared. I hadn’t paid her any attention. I did now, though, considering the circumstances. Then I tensed. Kate was always jealous when I spoke to other girls. I glanced back at her, but she wasn’t paying attention. Then I gritted my teeth. She needed to stop acting like my girlfriend and I needed to stop caring.

As I sat next to her, she scooted her chair back. Her eyes were filled with fear and awe. She was tiny with dark hair that was pulled in a ponytail. I scanned her over, but there wasn’t much to her. When I nodded hello, she jerked her head away and hunched over her notebook.

I frowned. s**t. I knew I was scary, but I didn’t know I was that scary. “Relax. I only screw with people who f**k me over.”

She made a choking sound, but she didn’t look up.

“Don’t f**k me over and we’ll be fine.”

“Mr. Kade,” the teacher glared at me, “I told you to be nice to Marissa.”

“I am. I’m laying the ground rules.” I leaned back in my chair and gestured for him to continue. “You can keep teaching. I won’t interrupt anymore.”

He pinched the top of his nose and looked in pain. Shaking his head as he turned back to the board, he muttered to himself, “I retire in five years. Five years. I have to get through five more years.”

I frowned. I didn’t think I deserved that reaction. My table mate slid a piece of paper to me. She gave me a shy smile and said softly, “He wants us to start working on these.”

I nodded. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

Her eyes got big again and she retracted her hand as if she’d been burned. The slight smile vanished. Then she jerked her head in a nod. “I know. I...you’re a lot.”

I narrowed my eyes. I knew what she meant, but this wasn’t a girl that I was used to dealing with. Taking the worksheet, I saw she had started on the first question. When I began to fill out the second question, I said to her, “We worked together before. Do you remember that?” She didn’t answer so I added, “You’re not a normal chick, are you?”

“Oh god.” Her cheeks turned red and she closed her eyes for a moment. “Do you know the answer to question three? I couldn’t find that one.”

She was one of those girls that hugged the wall. I saw them in the hallways. They stayed by their locker or their friends’ lockers and never said anything. When I walked by, they watched me, but they never said a word. I had never dealt with one up close and personal. I was used to girls coming onto me. “Do you date?”

“Um.” She was biting her lip and her hands slid from the table to her lap. She grabbed fistfuls of her pants and held onto it. Her head hung down.

“Relax. I’m not asking if you want to date me. I don’t date girls like you.” I didn’t date at all, but she looked ready to pee her pants and sit in it even if it formed a puddle on the floor. “You’re not like other girls I deal with. I’m curious, that’s all.”

She began counting to herself.

What the f**k? She’d been more normal the first time we worked together.

“Mr. Kade.”

I glanced to the teacher. “Yeah?” He was frowning at us.

“Maybe less talking with Miss Hooper. You can hand in the worksheet on your own.”

I shrugged. “Fine with me.” As I opened my textbook, I looked back over at her. She had stopped counting, but a look of relief was evident on her face. We didn’t talk for the rest of the day. After class, the teacher called me to his desk, and I was instructed not to talk to that girl. He added, “Maybe I should change the assigned seating.”

“She’ll be fine. I’ll back off.”

He gave me a dirty look then and said, “Do not touch that girl, Mason. She’s not like you. She’s innocent.”

I smirked at that, but replied, “I’m not planning on it. She’s a refreshing break from the rest of the chicks.”

Kate popped her head in the doorway at that moment. She stared at us, then jerked her head to the hallway. “I need to talk to you.”

Whatever. “Meet me in the south stairs.” She nodded and disappeared. I turned to the teacher. “The assigned seat is fine. Trust me.” I gestured to where Kate had gone. “I have to deal with her. My new table mate is like getting cake during class. I doubt I’ll have to deal with any drama from her.”

He shook his head. “You’re perplexing. Are you aware of that?”

“Do I care? That’s the question you should be asking and no, I don’t.” When I left, I headed to my locker and saw Logan was already there. He was leaning against my neighbor’s locker with his arms crossed. A few girls were watching him from across the hall. As I got there, he flashed them a grin and a few of them began laughing.

I stopped. s**t. He was flirting with them.

He saw my reaction and tensed. “What?”

“Nothing.”

“What?”

“You’re flirting.” He hadn’t flirted in months.

“Yeah. I’m a dude.”

I frowned at him. “You haven’t flirted in a long time.”

“What are you talking about? You were lecturing me this morning on not becoming a man whore.”

“Hooking up and flirting are different.” It was easy to grab a girl and have s*x with her. It took work to flirt. I didn’t flirt. Girls got the wrong idea then, but Logan was doing it again. That meant he was getting better.

“So what? Maybe I like flirting?”

I narrowed my eyes at him. “Just don’t get a girlfriend right now.”

“Maybe I want regular s*x? Is something wrong with that?”

“You get regular s*x already. You don’t need a girlfriend for that.”

“What’s your problem?”

What was my problem? I was on edge and then I glanced at the girls beside us. It was them. It was their games, even now I felt it. They had moved closer to listen in. “I’m sick of this shit.” Gesturing to them and around the hallway. “If I want them, I’ll pick one at a party, but they cling during the day. They’re annoying. They think they’re funny when they’re not and they try to manipulate you, like if I say hi to them, then that means I want them. I don’t. I might’ve said hi because, for once, I didn’t feel like being an ass.”

I didn’t want another one to hurt Logan. Studying him now, I saw it happening. He wanted to cover the pain up. So far he had only used s*x to do it, but he was considering dating again. I saw it in his eyes. It wouldn’t work. I knew my brother too well. He had loved Tate and she had shattered him. I didn’t want him to depend on another girl, be used, and get hurt all over again.

The entire group of girls was now listening to us, not just the few who’d been flirting with Logan. They all wanted something. I could feel it. I always felt it. The more my status grew in school, the worse it got. I said to them, “Yes, I know I’m being an ass again, but it’s true. You all just want something from us. You want to be our girlfriends. You want the attention we can give you. You want to be powerful and popular.” They were like pigeons, just waiting to see if I would throw them some breadcrumbs. “Go away. Find me at a party and I’ll be nicer, but not in school. I don’t have the patience in school to deal with this.”

I skimmed over Logan. He’d been flirting, maybe I shouldn’t stop that? f**k. I didn’t know what to do. He couldn’t get hurt again. All I knew was that enough damage had been done.

Ethan came down the hallway and pointed at me. As he went past us, he said, “Supposed to tell you that Kate’s waiting for you.”

“See. That shit.” I shook my head. “I’m not her boyfriend. I don’t come when she barks.”

Logan asked, “Does she want a quickie?”

“Who the f**k knows.” I grabbed my bag from the locker, then shut it. The girls were still there. They didn’t go away. They would scatter at times, but they never went far. “I’m not in the mood.”

He asked, “Are you going?”

“No.” I gestured to the parking lot. They weren’t leaving so we’d have to go. “Let’s get some food before practice. We got an hour to wait and I don’t want to deal with Kate.” She’d come looking. She would want something, demand something, and I’d have to be an asshole yet again to get her to back off. It was tiring.

Logan laughed and as we headed for our cars, I saw Marissa at her locker. She was different and perplexing. She didn’t want anything from me. She didn’t even want me to sit with her. She wasn’t like the rest. Even now, she stood out from the others. There were cliques all around her. Girls were giggling, whispering together, but she wasn’t. She stood alone with her back turned to us. She wasn’t even paying attention to us. She was focused on a book she was holding, but she wasn’t putting it in the locker. She wasn’t reading it. She was staring at it with her head down.

Logan saw her too. “Who’s that?”

“Mr. Rooney assigned seats today.” I pointed at her. “She’s my table mate, but I’m not supposed to talk to her.”

He snorted. “You were talking? To a stranger?”

“She’s different.”

As we headed farther down the hallway, we glanced back. She saw us, then gasped, turned red, and whipped back around. Her head hit her opened locker door, but she didn’t do anything. She buried her head inside her locker as if she hadn’t hit it. Then we turned the corner and Logan nodded at me. “Yep, she is. That’s for sure.”

I was okay with that. When we were almost to the door, we saw Tate was coming back in. Her path came across us and she stopped. The blood drained from her face, and she jerked back as if she’d been hit. We stopped and I glanced at Logan. Pain flashed over his face. I’d been right. He was covering it up. He looked away and walked around her. Nothing was said. The encounter was filled with tension and hurt. At seeing that, at seeing how much it still hurt him just to see her, I gritted my teeth. She had hurt my brother. It was time for her to know.

She spoke first. “What do you want, Mason?”

“He loved you.”

She flinched again and turned away. “Yeah, well—”

“You don’t get to talk right now.”

She flushed, but she didn’t leave.

I added, “You’re like all the other girls. You used my brother and you wanted to use me too.”

“It wasn’t like that.”

I snorted. “Yes, it was. You were friends with Kate. I saw you guys. You’re the popular girls in our grade and what? You wanted more, didn’t you? You didn’t even like me, Tate. You wanted the power that I could give you, but you didn’t think it through.”

“MASON!”

Hearing Kate yelling my name, I turned to make sure she couldn’t see me. I wasn’t hiding, but I didn’t want to hear her crap at that moment. I told Tate, “Logan asked me today if I sicced Kate and her friends on you.” She met my gaze then, waiting for the answer. “I didn’t, but I’m glad they’re making your life hell.” Logan acted normal today. He was getting better, but it had taken months. “When Kate is done with you, that’s when I’ll start. I will break you just like you broke him.”