Dangerous: A Marcel Styles Fan Fiction

17: Gossip and Bells

17: Gossip and Bells

   The rest of that day went by incredibly slow. Not only was the act of nearly killing Cory the only violent act I saw of him that day. The only time I saw him after the conflict was in the parking lot at HJ Productions, as usual.

   The next day moved slower. There weren’t any fights in the hall in the morning or any sign of Cory in math class (one could only hope he wasn’t still trapped in a locker). However, I did still see Marcel that morning as he passed my locker and flashed me his adorable, familiar dimpled smile.

   When lunch came, Georgia Rose and I sat in the cafeteria at a table packed with the popular people as usual. Tara Art – the girl who had retrieved my glasses yesterday after they’d fallen when Cory had shoved me – sat across from me complaining about the prison slop our cafeteria fed us:

   “Okay, this looks like pudding,” she stated, “But it does not taste like it.”

   “What does it taste like?” Riley Donovan asked, “I’m afraid to try mine.”

   “Fish,” Tara answered with a wrinkled nose, “mixed with….” To verify her answer she took another tiny spoonful of the lumpy grey paste we’d been given, and nearly gagged. “Okay, this can’t be legal.”

   “Then why are you eating it?” Georgia Rose interrogated.

   I stifled a giggle as Tara shrugged and used a finger to push her tray away in disgust at the prison food they fed to us willingly. Big, hearing me, Georgia Rose took the opportunity to shift the conversation, hoping to still get the details I’d continually deprived her of.

   “So, V, did you hang out with Marcel last night?” she asked taking a forkful of what looked like fettuccini up to her mouth.

   “No,” I said holding an obviously irritated smile. There was no way I was telling her anything about Marcel and I. There was nothing to tell. “It was just me.”

   “Oh, c’mon, Veronica, when are you going to tell us about it?” Tara begged, “I know this is typical sleepover stuff, but we want to know. Was he any good?”

   “Yes,” I said, beginning a paraphrase of what I’d told Georgia Rose when she’d first found out about the second night I’d shared with Marcel, “He was fucking amazing. It was just sex – with no strings attached – meaningless!”

   “Oh, come on,” Riley purred, “He’s been defending you since he was a nerd, it obviously meant something to him.”

   “I hear wedding bells!” Georgia Rose sang.

   “Shut up,” I warned her, glaring at her with wide brown eyes.

   “One more thing?” Tara asked, and, at my shoulder shrug, her chin rested on her hands and some of her reddish bangs fell into her eyes as she squeaked, “What is the most romantic thing he’s said to you so far?”

   I ran through a scan of every piece of dialog I’d heard Marcel speak in my head. I certainly couldn’t tell him he’d said he loved me – that just proved their points of a romance budding between us, though that was not the case – and his “I missed you” was less adorable than appropriate for the moment. His promises to protect me, though charming, just weren’t something I’d admit to these girls, and I certainly could tell them nothing of the math help I’d been receiving, whether it was with Marcel the Nerd, or Marcel the Bad Boy. Therefore, I was left with one poetic line.

   “Well before he fucked me, he told me m-my skin was soft,” I said. They raised their brows in near perfect unison, forcing me to add Marcel’s lovely simile, “Like a butterfly.”

   “Well that’s kind of cute,” Riley remarked. She had been absentmindedly tracing small circles with her finger on the surface of the table. “I guess some guys just aren’t big romantics.”

   I rolled my eyes at them as Riley and Tara began discussing Riley’s semi-tolerable on again/off again relationship with Jimmy Rodriguez. A few minutes of Riley’s sex life bored me to death and I was decently peppy the second I felt my phone vibrate in my pocket, however, answering to the message that came in around my friends was a danger.

   Wanna come over tonight? – xMx

   The second I hit send after typing back a confirmation, my phone was in Georgia Rose’s slender hands and she squealed with delight upon seeing this part of our conversation. I balled my hands into fists to keep from screaming at the invasion of my privacy as the blonde passed my cell phone around from person to person. Of course, an invitation to his house didn’t guarantee intercourse one hundred percent, but it definitely wouldn’t end in a different way.