His Redemption

CHAPTER 2

It's the last period and thankfully, I haven't seen Nathan again. I enter History and drop my bag on the bench beside which my best friend Thea is sitting, with a loud obnoxious thud. Thea looks up. "There you are, Matthews! I have been looking for you everywhere." She perks up. 

"What's going on?" I ask, wryly. 

"Oh my god, the whole school's been talking about how you slapped Nathan Bradley on the face. What the hell happened, bitch? Give me the gossip." Her eyes widen with excitement. 

I sigh. Well, that was faster than I expected. "I made the huge mistake of asking Nathan Bradley for a favour. Jeez you should have looked at him. First he asked me to beg him for it then when I said no, he kept pestering me about it and pushing me against lockers and...well I just lost it."

Thea's eyes widen in surprise as she listens to me ranting. "Nathan Bradley? The Nathan Bradley? The captain of the basketball team? The guy who gets all the girls and parties on the weekends? You asked him for help? Are you insane? I'd already figure he'd be a giant dick about it. Why didn't you come to me?" She asks with a pout.  

I smile. "Babe, if I could I would. As for that one moment of insanity...It's stupid but I thought he actually would because of our history," I reply, sourly. 

She narrows her eyes in confusion. "Wait. What history?" 

Oh, right. I sometimes forget that I've only known Thea for a year and she doesn't know about my past, at all. 

I sigh. "Me and Nathan, we used be really good friends once. Like those annoying people who only ever hung out with each other and nobody else. We were inseparable." 

Her eyes go wide. "You and Nathan? Damn. What the hell happened?" 

I look at her, trying to block the onslaught the memories. I decide to give her a part of the truth, the part which I tell everyone who's ever asked me about me and Nathan. "He turned popular which is also a code word for an asshole" I shrug. "We just drifted apart then, I guess." 

"Damn," she exhales, sitting back on her chair. "I didn't know that, Matthews. So wait, you're telling me that Bradley, who has a new girl in his arm every week," I clench my teeth at the reminder, "and is for sure a dick to all of them, actually used to be nice at some point in his life?" She asks, incredulously. 

I snort. "Hard to believe, I know." 

"Aren't people really full of surprises," she mutters. 

"Anyway," I say, shaking my head. "I'm pretty sure Nathan hates my guts right now. I kneed him and slapped him on the face in the interval of less than 2 minutes. So if I wanna stay alive, I'm gonna have to run really quickly as soon as school ends." 

Thea starts laughing again, almost losing it completely. "Oh my God, you kneed him in the nuts and slapped him on the face? I would've loved to be a fly on the wall to witness that."  

I smirk. "It was very satisfying." 

Thea nods in agreement, clearly amused with the mental image of me beating up Nathan.

"Oh yeah, I totally bet it was. That man's ego definitely took a huge hit after that. I would almost feel sorry for him, but he deserved it, didn't he?" 

"Definitely." 

Soon, bell rings. I pack up my things, quickly, ready to run out. "You go ahead, I'll catch up with you in a moment," Thea calls out as I run. 

"Bye", I call out to her. Springing through the hallway, somehow avoiding the hordes of teenagers everywhere, I get to the parking lot. I scan the area, looking to see if there are any signs of the one person I'm looking to avoid. 

As luck would have it, no one stops me and I reach my car without any problems. I turn on the engine but just as I reach to put on my seatbelt, a voice rings out behind me. "Going somewhere, princess?"  

"Fucking shitballs," I curse.  

Nathan appears behind my window and laughs, a satisfied smirk on his face. He leans against my BMW, arms crossed. "Watch that little mouth of yours, princess. You're gonna get us both in trouble with that language." 

I raise my eyebrows at him. "I thought you liked my little mouth," I say with a smirk. 

Nathan laughs, suddenly, as if in surprise. I hate how I still think it sounds like music to my ears. "Oh, I definitely like that little mouth of yours. But I don't think all our innocent schoolmates would appreciate the dirty words that fall from it." 

"Tell that to someone who cares," I mutter, clicking my seatbelt. 

Nathan just chuckles. "Still feisty as ever, huh? That's a dangerous attitude to have around me, princess." 

I barely stop myself from rolling my eyes and finally deign to look over at him. The second my eyes find his, I stop. All I can see is my best friend, my ride or die. But this person smirking at me...I don't know who he is. "You know I used to think you were a nice person, once. My best friend. But now? You're just an asshole." I say, starting the car and speeding off. 

The drive home was filled with a sense of sick satisfaction of having gotten the last word in to Nathan. The situation with him made me completely forget about the main issue though - the fact that I still don't have a boyfriend to show up with to my parent's anniversary party. The realization sinks in and I smack myself upside the head. "Idiot."