Collision Course(55)
Author: S.C. Stephens

The driving beat engulfed us, as surely as the driving bodies surrounded us, as we parted the sea and moved to a central location in the pack. I caught a few heads turning and whispering to others around them as we passed, but I ignored it. I let go of Sawyer’s hand as we found a place with a little room to move.

I wasn’t really a dancer, but what guy in high school is? The others around me were doing the ‘yeah, I’m only out here to please my girlfriend in the hopes of getting lucky later’ dance, so I copied them. Sawyer however…could move. I found my eyes drifting over that body as she frolicked around to the upbeat song. She sang along and moved her hands through her hair, dislodging a few long pieces, which only made it look even better. A slight flush crept into her cheeks as the heat of the crowd and that long-sleeved dress started to get to her. She was intoxicating to watch.

I realized this wasn’t helping my situation at all and shifted to look out over the crowd. I noticed sets of eyes staring at me, but many more sets were staring at Sawyer. Most of those sets were guys, and most of those had a glint in them as they watched her body move. A sudden surge of possessiveness washed over me, which actually startled me with an icy wash of astonishment. Was I possessive of her? She wasn’t mine, by any stretch…but, I didn’t want her to get hurt. And as I glared back at a few male eyes, all I saw were jerks and a**holes who’d stomp on her heart if given the chance. Hell if I was going to give them that chance. They’d have an easier time getting through her overprotective father than me.

A few guys glared back at me, but most turned away and focused on their own dates. A calm, satisfying peace went through me as their eyes left my beautiful friend. Not tonight boys. Tonight, this angel, for some reason, was mine. A smirk was stuck on my lips for most of the songs after that.

Finally, a slow song started playing and Sawyer smiled and reached out for me. I wasn’t sure exactly how my body was going to respond to hers pressing up to me, but I couldn’t deny her what she wanted. Not tonight. Praying that I could stay in the even-flow I’d managed to obtain, I smiled and grabbed her waist, pulling her into me.

My fingers slid over the crushed velvet of her dress and the contours of her body beneath it were only too obvious. I slid over the lean muscle of the sides of her stomach, around her curved hipbones to the lowest part of her back. As her arms laced around my neck, a few of my fingers disobeyed me and rested along the very top of her backside. She either didn’t notice or didn’t care, as she gazed at me adoringly.

She sighed and tilted her head as we stared at each other. She pulled me tighter, her chest resting flush against mine. Those br**sts I’d been admiring earlier, pressed firmly against me, made me need to swallow repeatedly and search my brain for something else to think about. Not helping the situation any, she started running her hand through the back of my hair, bringing our faces mere inches apart.

My eyes drifted to her lips and I knew…I knew this was going to be a bad moment, if I didn’t do something to distract myself – and soon. Quickly thinking of anything to say to her, I sputtered out, "So, Miss I’m-secretly-obsessed-with-school-dances, how is it you’ve never been to one before?" She’d let that slip during our planning sessions for tonight and it had surprised me. For someone so into it, I figured she’d been on the dance committee at her old school.

She sighed and looked away, our bodies naturally pulling back from each other. I exhaled a quick breath in relief and then tilted my head at her reaction. She was worrying her perfectly painted lip and staring out over the crowd of intimately dancing couples, but she didn’t seem to be seeing any of them. I idly wondered what exactly was replaying itself in her head.

"It’s okay, Sawyer…to talk to me." I immediately recognized the oddity of me saying that, since I never really opened up to her. She raised an eyebrow as she twisted back around to face me and I thought she probably caught the oddity of it too.

She didn’t call me on it though, only sighed and shook her head. "I didn’t have a date." She shrugged and I frowned at her anticlimactic answer. Surely there was more to it than that?

I shrugged as well. "Why didn’t you go alone…or with a group of friends?" I knew that some of the girls around here did that occasionally. It seemed socially acceptable for girls to that – girl power and all. If a group of guys did that, well, there was a certain social stigma to it.

Sawyer looked down before quickly looking back up at me. "I didn’t have a whole lot of girlfriends back there and the school instituted a one guy, one girl policy anyway. It had the parents in an uproar at first," she shrugged, "but what can you do?"

I frowned as I considered that. She was still worrying her lip and looking like she really wanted to fess up to something. I wouldn’t normally have pushed, but she looked like she wanted to talk about it, she just wasn’t quite there yet. I squeezed her waist, drawing her tight to me again. "Hey…tell me."

She sighed again as she looked over my face. I thought her eyes were starting to water, but I couldn’t really be sure in the swirling light patterns that flashed along our bodies. She opened her mouth and shut it, then opened it again. I waited patiently while she did it again, this time speaking before closing it again.

"The boy…the stupid one I told you about…" Her eyes flicked over my face nervously and her voice dropped so low, I had to lean in to hear her over the music. "He…" I nodded at her and rubbed the small of her back, silently encouraging her to open up to me. She swallowed and then finally did. "He was supposed to take me to junior prom last year."

She looked away, her eyes definitely shining as she glanced around at the crepe paper and loose balloons. "I was so excited to go." She turned her head back to me, the sad smile on her lips unconsciously making me hold her tighter. "He was the most popular guy in our class, and my class alone, was about three times the size of the entire student body here." Her head motioned around to the suddenly sparse feeling gym. A surge of jealousy flashed through me, but I forced it down and made myself concentrate on her story.

She slowly shook her head as she said, "He was handsome and athletic and funny and charming," her eyes locked onto mine, "and he told me he loved me." That jealousy sprang up in me again, but her lower lip started to tremble, making it shift to sympathy instead. She shook her head again, more forcefully. "I thought I loved him. I adored him. God, I practically worshipped him."

She looked down at our tightly held together bodies and her voice dropped again. I lowered my head to rest against hers, so I could hear her in the noisy room. "Two weeks before the dance, I gave him my virginity." She looked up at me and I forced myself to not close my eyes and dwell in the sudden sadness that swept through me. Sadness that she wasn’t at the same level I was, that she’d been with someone like that before, that someone else had ever touched her that way. But I made myself keep eye contact as her voice quavered horribly with her next words. "I loved him and gave him every part of me…and he…" her voice and face turned to a mean sneer that I’d never seen on her, not even when she talked about Brittany, "…he gave me a three on his fuck-o-meter."

My mouth dropped open at that and a hard flash of anger burned me. "He what?"

The moisture in her eyes built up to near flood level as her face softened into sadness. "He was playing some stupid game with his friends, something his brother had picked up at his fraternity." Her eyes looked over the crowd again as her arms tightened around my neck. "He got points for sleeping with different types of girls. I was a low type."

She swallowed and lowered her head. I brought my hand up to her chin and made her look at me. Our feet slowed to stillness as I held her in my arms. "No, no you’re not. You’re not a low anything. He’s an idiot."

She sniffled and swallowed back her tears, a light smile playing on her lips. I stroked my thumb along her cheek before returning my hand to her waist, pulling her in for a hug. She returned it, laying her head on my shoulder, her mouth facing my ear. Without us looking at each other, she continued.

"I found out about it, when I overheard some girls laughing about me in gym class. They said there was a chart in his locker and I was on it, so I busted it open to see for myself…and it was true. He’d slept with a half dozen other girls while I thought we were a couple, and he ranked them all higher than me. Needless to say, I didn’t go to the prom with him. I barely went to school after that. I just couldn’t take the hurt and humiliation. I couldn’t bear to look at his charming, beautiful face."

I held her tight when she said that, my hands coming up to wrap over her shoulders, wishing I could wrap myself around her heartache. I’d never loved someone who’d used me like that. I almost couldn’t imagine the torture that must have been for her. "I’m so sorry, Sawyer," I whispered.

She sighed and sagged against me. "Do you know what the stupidest part is? I still loved him. I spent weeks wondering what I’d done wrong, why he didn’t love me like I loved him. A part of me wanted to rush over to him and tell him I forgave him for everything, beg him to take me back. But I started seeing him hanging on other girls…and I couldn’t. I knew I didn’t compare. I knew I had no chance. I knew I was worthless."

I immediately pulled back from her and put both hands on her cheeks. "No, you’re not. Don’t ever say that." I shook my head, disbelieving that the warm, wonderful person between my hands could ever think they were anything but perfect.

She closed her tear-filled eyes and leaned her head against mine. In a whisper she continued with her painful reminiscing. "I didn’t handle it all very well and I…I did something outrageously stupid." Her voice lowered even more, to where I could barely make out the words over the blasting song lyrics. "I…got…really drunk and…"

She stopped herself and peeked her eyes up at me. Biting her lip, she shook her head lightly against mine. "I freaked my parents out and they pulled me from the last few weeks of school, eventually dragging me out here. They thought I’d do better in a smaller environment, even though it cost them their jobs, their friends. They gave up their entire life back there…for me." A tiny smile lit her lips. "I try to never forget that, even when they’re being impossible about our…friendship." I smiled with her and dropped my hands to her waist again. She pulled her head back, and her voice took on that wisdom-soaked tone that was too old for seventeen. "This town, this school, was a chance for me to start over and I’ve never taken that for granted, even when things here have been hard."

She grabbed a loose piece of her super-black hair, holding a strand up for me. "I did this to remind myself, that I can be anyone I choose to be." She looked at the strand and smiled. "I’m traditionally a mousey-brown kind of color," she explained. With a smile she added, "My mom gets a kick out of coloring it for me every few weeks. It’s the one thing we splurge on."

The smile on my face faded as I thought over everything she’d confessed to me. I ached with sympathy for her and admired her for her strength, all at the same time. Maybe our situations weren’t exactly similar, but she’d certainly dealt with her fair share of torture and ridicule. And here she was, starting over in a new town, determined to make it through each day in any way she could, much like me.