Dangerous: A Marcel Styles Fan Fiction

32: One Minute

32: One Minute

   My productivity at work had been shot to hell. I swear, Rachel would have me fired if my father didn’t run the company. Actually, she should fire me anyway. After all, I had interfered with clients business (so what if the Best Song Ever had been the outcome?), I’d slacked off on more than one occasion for the mess of drama in my personal life, and who cared if only two people knew what had gone down in the break room closet? I’d still done it. I may as well be canned.

   To make up for it I worked straight through my break, even though absolutely nothing interesting happened the entire day. At least, not actually within the building.

   It was the parking lot after work where I saw a leather clad boy with brown curls standing near a parked motorcycle. His head was bowed, gaze focused down on the phone in his hands. He seemed calm – well, at least, less enraged than he had been last night and this morning – and mostly stable.

   I was drawn to him like a moth to a flame. We’d both had time to cool down, which was long enough to come to the conclusion I definitely owed him an apology, even if it had just been a miscommunication. I stepped to him slowly just waiting for the moment when he finally looked up for a mere second and noticed me.

   “Just leave me alone, okay?” he mumbled in place of a greeting.

   “Give me a chance to explain,” I begged.

   He turned his emerald eyes and dull expression back up to me, forcing my heart to race. He seemed to study me as he thought about my request. After what felt like an eternity to me, Marcel sighed out, “You’ve got one minute,” and led his gaze down to his phone.

   Put on the spot, one minute was hardly a possible time limit to even begin my apology. It didn’t even seem as if he would listen to me anyway since he was, apparently, so involved in texting. But, since he was giving me this chance – though in his mind it was obvious I didn’t deserve it – I took it.

   “I’m really sorry,” I started, “I got to the band through HJ, but since I can’t tell her I work, and since we’d already slept together anyway, I had to make Georgia Rose think I knew the band through you only. She just worded it differently. I never once gave her the impression I was using you! I swear, I never meant to hurt you.”

   He hadn’t shown any signs of paying attention to a word I’d said. The entire time I’d been talking he’d preoccupied himself by sending the text he’d been writing, shoved his phone in his pocket, fished out his keys and put his helmet on his head. When I’d finished he started the bike.

   “I know popularity means something to you,” he said, “but love should mean more. Do you love me?”

   Not that word again. That terrible, unthinkable, unspeakable, nausea-inducing word!

   “I don’t know,” I admitted in a breath, “I only know I don’t want you to hate me!”

   “I don’t hate you.” He stated clearly before he sped away, leaving me alone again.

   He didn’t hate me. He was just disappointed…and broken.