Married to the Devil

Chapter 29 ( Not edited)

"Wanna grab a bite to eat?" Mia asked me.

I rubbed my stomach with my aching arms that were weighed down by shopping bags.

"Yes please, I'm starved."

Mia giggled, "Bet you want to put down some of those bags too."

On a spur of the moment decision a couple of hours earlier, I'd informed Mia that I was out of shape and needed exercise. She deemed my declaration preposterous solely on her opinion that she thought I hated exercise.

She's wrong. I didn't hate exercise. Not at all. Sure it wasn't my favorite thing to do. But that didn't mean that ruling it out of my life all together was really the best course of action.

As a young girl who used to play soccer and attend dance class on a regular basis, I'd say that exercise was a pretty high priority for me. And since I knew myself better than Mia did, I won. Hah.

I raised both my arms so that the bags slipped down them and hit the sides of my abdomen. My fingers brushed against each other over my head. Mia lifted her hands in a surrender position. I had proved my point and therefore successfully gotten her to back down.

"You're crazy you know that?" Mia said light-heartedly.

Yeah I know.

I rolled my eyes and gave her a slight shove with my hip that send her sprawling into a nearby elderly man.
She managed to dodge him but not without gaining an angry look from him first.

In a fit of giggles that soon burst out into roars of laughter, we quickly scurried away from the situation.

After we plopped down at a Mexican
restaurant and shoved the shopping bags away from us, a waiter had caught our attention and passed us two menus.

My eyes scrolled down the list of fairly inexpensive items. I stopped when a particular word caught me by surprise.

Fajitas.

It was bolded and written in italics with a special sticker of "favorite!" written beside it.

Images of Derek back in my kitchen popped through my brain on fast forward. His smile. His laugh. His eyes. God, his beautiful, yet betraying, eyes.

No, no, no.

My bottom lip quivered and I could feel the tears threatening to spill over.
The first meal he ever cooked for me was a fajita. I never heard of it before at the time and I didn't think I would again, much less on a shopping trip with my sister when I was supposed to be forgetting him.

Mia placed her hand over mine in what was supposed to be an act of comfort but it felt more like a defeat. She'd seen me in the middle of heart-break, again, just like she had for the past weeks. This was supposed to be my chance to redeem myself and revert back to my usual, happy self.

Derek's face popped back into my head. He had on a dazzling smile and a happy glint in his gorgeous, green eyes. His pink lips moved as he mouthed the words, 'I love you' back when he said it for the first time. Back when we were kids.

The worst part is, I believed him then just like I had believed him now.

The tears of hurt flowed down my face.

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"He actually said that you guys were 'nothing' ?" Cass asked me Friday when we sitting in our school's favorite ice cream parlor.

My blue, plastic spoon swirled around defeatedly in the concoction of blackberry flavored froyo in my paper cup.

"Yeah."

Cass slammed her hand down hard on the counter where we sat, earning some disturbed looks from the tenth graders sitting beside us.

"He's a dick Kate. A complete loser." She huffed.

"Hey watch it, I fell for the 'complete loser' Cass." I said miserably.

She looked guilty,"Kate, no. You know I didn't mean like that."

A lump in my throat forced me to swallow.

"Yeah, I know."

I took in a big bite of my froyo. When there were days that I was sad and upset, Cass and I always came to the ice cream parlor to help cheer us up. Unfortunately for some reason, the usual magic wasn't working on me today.

"We should go." Cass said abruptly, shouldering her school bag.

"What? We just got here though and I haven't even finished." I said, pointing to my half eaten froyo.

She swallowed quickly, glancing behind me, "I know but I've got a lot of homework to do so we need to go now."

She grabbed my arm and started pulling me to the back exit. In the rush, Cass didn't let me have time to pick up my paper cup.

"Cass wait!"

I broke free from her hold and turned to grab my cup. In the process, I saw two people walk into the store.

Derek and Evelyn. Walking in. Holding hands.

I coughed on my spit and almost had a choking fit from the sheer surprise. Derek hadn't seen me yet and was instead looking at the chalkboard written menu at the front of the store, trying to decide what to pick.

Evelyn turned her head and caught eye. She smirked and leaned in close to Derek, siddling her head on his shoulder innocently. He turned to her and smiled. So did she before she grabbed him by the collar and made out with him. The move was made purposely in front of me just to spite me.

And it worked.

Authors note: Hey guys, sorry about Kate crying so much in recent chapters. I only include it because she's hurt, confused and upset by Derek's betrayal of her trust in him. Thanks for sticking with me and reading!