My Dirty Little Secret

Chapter Thirty Eight

Chelsea's POV

It was Monday, and I was late for class again. I was in absolutely no rush to get to Math. I would have much preferred to walk into Brooke's free period that I knew she had, and we could make out for forty five minutes. But we'd promised not to do that anymore, and I had to do what was safe for her.

"You're late," I heard an all too familiar voice call at me from down the hall. "Just come off a quickie?"

I shook my head and rolled my eyes, shutting my locker. "Bite me, Tiffany. I'm not in the mood."

"Excuse me?" she said.

I threw my bag down on the ground as soon as she got in my face. "I'm sick of your shit," I said. "You don't scare me."

"Hm, someone's tough," she said condescendingly.

"Walk away," I warned. "I'm getting angry."

"Oh, I'm afraid," she said sarcastically. "What are you going to do, fuck someone else and get them after me?"

"God, you are such a bitch," I spit, absolutely stunned that she would talk to me like that.

"Yeah?" she said. "And you're a slut."

Before I knew what I was doing, I'd winded up and sent a fist swinging into her jaw. It obviously was stupid of me to start a physical fight in school, but my anger had gotten the best of me and she deserved it for running her mouth. At first she seemed stunned, bringing a hand immediately up to the spot where my hand had connected. But the fleeting shock disappeared soon, and turned itself into blind anger as she sent a fist back at me full force.

I pushed her away by the shoulders, but she'd drawn blood from my lip. She returned my push, and it only escalated. There was yelling, hair pulling, and fingernails. It was probably the most long winded fight I'd ever been in - not that I'd been in too many. There was no saying how long it could have kept going. Probably until one or both of us ended up in the hospital. In that respect, maybe it was a good thing when Brooke opened up her door looking utterly shocked as she attempted to break it up. "Chelsea!" she yelled, driving us apart. "Tiffany, what are you doing?"

"Someone wanted to run her mouth off," I said simply, glaring daggers into Tiffany Medlock's head.

"Someone wanted to get physical," she retorted mordantly. 

"Come with me," Brooke said, impressively calmly. "Both of you."

We followed her into her room and she sat us down next to each other, on the opposite side of her desk. 

"Okay," she said. "Now without both of you yelling at once, I want to know what happened."

"Can't you figure it out?" I asked angrily. "Tiffany went off on one of her tangents about how I had sex with you to become captain of the cheering squad."

"You're missing the part where you punched me in the face, Chelsea."

"God, will you shut up?"

"Do you guys know what they do when you start a fight in school? We're talking suspension. Expulsion." 

"Then maybe she shouldn't have hit me," Tiffany said.

"I'm not going to suspend you," she said, "Obviously. But you need to work this out. Chelsea, you need to apologize for starting a fight, and Tiffany, you need to let that whole thing go."

"Why should I?" Tiffany said stubbornly.

Brooke's expression changed, to one of shock and exasperation. "Are you trying to send me to prison?"

"God, you don't understand anything, do you?" Tiffany said, suddenly sounding frustrated and hurt instead of the whiny and generally aggravating voice she usually had.

"What are you talking about?"

"Do you really think I'd ever send you to prison?"

"Why else would you spread something like this around? You can only hurt me."

"I don't want to hurt you!" she spat, sounding truly distressed. "You're so far off! I love you. And I have since we met. That's why it bothers me so much that all you can ever see is her."

I don't think either Brooke nor I spoke for a good minute. We were obviously both dumbfounded. I was sure we'd both run the list of possible motives for her actions through our heads a million times, but I was positive neither of us had anticipated that Tiffany ever had feelings for Brooke.

The more I thought it over, the more it made sense in my mind. Everyone loved Brooke Chandler. She had a way of drawing people to her, the way she'd won me over, the way she'd won Kate over, the way she'd won our entire team over with her gentle kindness and lighthearted presence.

"But I just want you to be happy," Tiffany said sheepishly after a while. "So I hope you guys make it. And you don't have to worry about me telling. I won't."

After that, she dismissed herself and stood up to go. 

"Tiffany, wait," Brooke called, and I heard her heart breaking just in her voice. She had a talent for feeling empathy, even for the people that had screwed her over most, and this was living proof. I knew that she felt for Tiffany, no matter how much sleep the girl had cost her in the past weeks.

But of course, she didn't wait. And I can't say I didn't blame her. If I'd been in the opposite position, I wouldn't have wanted to stay any longer, watching Brooke with someone else, when I couldn't have her. Come to think of it, I couldn't even imagine a life that Brooke wasn't in. That was a pain I couldn't even bring myself to think of.

"Holy shit," Brooke said under her breath, summing up the events of the past few minutes in two words.

"I don't know what to say," I admitted.

"You?" she said, laughing slightly despite herself. We both laughed a little bit, but returned to seriousnness after that moment had passed. 

"I feel terrible," she said, reaching into a drawer in her desk and pulling a white box out of it. "I had no idea."

Putting the box on her desk, I noticed the red cross located on the underside.

"First aid?" I asked, somewhat incredulously.

She smiled, opening it and pulling out a piece of gauze, which she saturated with water from a bottle on the desk. "You never know."

"You're adorable," I said, charmed and endeared by the knowledge that she kept that just in case. 

She just laughed, using the gauze to gently wipe the blood that had collected and begun to dry at the corner of my mouth. She turned my head calmly, inspecting it from all angles. "She can really hit," she commented, probably at the bruise that I already felt forming on my cheek bone. "I'm suddenly regretting making her work out so much."

"Don't," I laughed. "I'm okay. And don't feel terrible for making someone fall in love with you. You do it way more than you realize."

"Even still," she said. "No one deserves to be hurt by love."

I looked into her eyes, realizing she had no idea how strong she really was. "But you turned out okay," I reminded her. "She'll be fine."

I saw on her face that she was thinking it over, recalling her own experiences in love, realizing that, at least for now, things were good for her. 

"I hope so," she said after a while. "I only wish everyone who got hurt could find a love like I did."