Inevitable (Book One)

Chapter 25

Lyla

The start of my week flies by. All of Monday I spend in class followed by track then working on new assignments. I message with Shawn throughout the day, but he has practice and we don't get to see each other. Tuesday rolls around and I'm soon at track practice once again, annoyed to have to deal with seeing Erica for two hours. It must be my lucky day because Tyler is here too. I haven't seen him since his apology and lets be friends chat. He smiles at me and waves as I make my way onto the track I offer a small wave back but start to run my warm up laps. When I finish my laps, I find a spot on the outside of the track to start stretching. Erica and her two gremlins are stretching in a small group about ten feet away and when I look over they all snicker as they look away from me and whisper things to each other. I roll my eyes and turn back to face opposite them as I continue stretching.

"Just ignore them," I hear Tyler's voice from behind me as he approaches and sits on the track in front of me stretching his legs out. "They've got nothing going on in their own lives to talk about so they need to start gossip about other people to keep their lives exciting." He offers me a sincere smile and I smile back actually appreciating his comforting words.

"They remind me of the hyenas from Lion King," I mumble out and Tyler bursts into laughter startling me and I look around as other runners on the track are looking over confused at Tyler's outburst.

"Sorry," he says as he starts to get his laughter under control. "I haven't seen that movie since I was like five, but you're totally right. That's the perfect comparison." He chuckles again as he gets to his feet. "I'm helping with long jump today, have a great practice." He jogs off towards the long jump pits.

I'm left confused by the interaction, he actually seemed normal. He was kind and actually kind of helpful. I decide not to think too much into it and I join my group as we start running through exercises with the coach. The hour and a half passes in no time and we are dismissed by our couch for the day. I head to the locker room to hit the showers. I'm standing back at my locker and getting dressed when Erica approaches me.

"Hey, can you give this shirt back to Shawn for me? He let me borrow it after I stayed at his place the other night," she says snidely as she smirks at me and dangles one of Shawn's t-shirts out in front of me. She must have taken it when she left the house. This fucking bitch. She's staring at me with a smug smile on her face and I look around the locker room to see a few other girls are watching our interaction, their jaws hanging open.

"Thanks," I say ripping the t-shirt out of her hand, "and the next time you want to pathetically throw yourself at my boyfriend just to be shot down, know that I'll be there and won't hesitate to give you a black eye." I hear a few gasps from girls in the locker room as my gaze stays locked on Erica as I stare her down. Her smug smile leaves her face and she looks pissed that I called her out in front of everyone.

"He'll come back to me soon, you'll see," she says trying to gain the upper hand in the confrontation again.

"No he won't," I say as I shake my head at her. "And you know that. After what you did to him, you know that you fucked up the best thing you could have had and now you have to live with that. How you could ever have done that to him I will never understand, but I do have to thank you because I have him now. And there isn't a damn thing I would ever do to hurt him." I finish and watch as I see Erica's eyes start to water and she turns around and quickly walks away and disappears behind a row of lockers. I glance around at the audience we had and everyone turns to face their lockers quickly as I finish getting dressed and grab my bag to get the hell out of here.

When I get back to my dorm room I fall back onto my bed and lay there replaying my confrontation with Erica in my head. I am brought out of my thoughts by my phone ringing and I see it's my mom calling as I answer.