by Bella King
I paused for a moment before answering her. I did want to go home first, but I also didn’t want her to see the trailer I lived in. It was embarrassing for me to be this poor next to a rich girl like her. “We can go to the dealership straight away,” I replied.
“Are you sure? It’s really no problem if you want to freshen up before we go.”
She was too nice. “No, that’s okay.”
“Alright. I guess I’ll meet you in the parking lot after school then,” she said.
“Yeah, I’ll see you then,” I said, hanging up the phone before she got the chance to say goodbye. I didn’t want her to think I was being friendly with her. I still needed to decide what my plan was going to be to get inside her head and expose her to the world.
I pocketed my phone, feeling strange about the whole thing. It was weird to be so against a woman who was only trying to be nice to me, but she didn’t know what I knew. Nobody did except for my family. I wouldn’t forgive that, ever.
Chapter 9
Scarlet
Dylan was a strange guy, but I couldn’t help but like him, even after what he had done to me after the crash. He was probably filled with adrenaline, and that can make you behave strangely. He seemed nice enough over the phone, and I was starting to feel bad for some of the things I had said to him this morning.
I stirred the small portion of salad around in my bowl, soaking the leaves in dressing before I ate them. It was lunchtime, but I was eager to get out of school and start enjoying the weekend. Dylan said he had to work over the weekend, but I hoped he would show up to the creek gathering anyway. It was a lot of fun, and I wanted to know him better.
I would get him a nice car this evening, and then maybe we could talk some more. I wanted to know why he was so serious all the time. I wished I could understand people better, but it wasn’t one of my strong suits. I had to settle on asking a whole heap of questions just to get enough information out of people to understand them. When I had done this to Jonathan years ago, he had thought I was crazy.
I’d rather be crazy than clueless, so I made a mental list of things I wanted to ask Dylan to see if I could get to the bottom of his strange behavior. I didn’t think he was a bad guy, but he was clearly a bit troubled, and I wanted to know why.
I lifted a fork of lettuce to my mouth.
“Scarlet,” Jonathan exclaimed, sliding down in front of me and placing his tray full of food down with excessive force.
I lowered my fork, raising an eyebrow. “Yes?”
“I did it. I talked to Maddie,” he said, banging a fist on the table excitedly.
“Well, that was quick,” I said with a chuckle.
“You were right. She totally isn’t dating Dylan, but you know what? She’s going to be at the creek tomorrow. We’re going to go and hang out there,” he said, his eyes glimmering with newfound possibilities.
I was happy for him, but my mind was too far into thinking about Dylan to care that much about what he was saying. It was nice that he had a chance with Maddie, but that wasn’t my business. I smiled at him politely. “That’s great. I’m sure you’ll charm her right into your arms,” I said.
He laughed. “God, I hope so. She’s super cute.”
I nodded, neither agreeing nor disagreeing. It wasn’t my place to say whether a woman was cute or not, because I wasn’t especially into them. I liked men who looked like they toiled in the sun all day long, and Dylan fit that description wonderfully.
I ate the rest of my lunch as Jonathan droned on about how excited he was to have met Maddie and how much he looked forward to the weekend when he could finally have a deeper conversation with her. My mind was on the end of the day, and Dylan and my visit to the car dealership. That was more interesting to me than anything else in the near future.
The remained of the day went by slowly, and I found myself checking the large overhead clock in every classroom, counting along with the seconds as they slowly ticked by. Time must have been a relative thing, because it certainly seemed to move slower when I was waiting for something. Life was cruel like that.
Finally, after what had seemed like a lifetime, the bell rang, signaling permission for me to get the hell out of this school and to enjoy my freedom outside. I wanted to soak up the rest of the summer rays before they disappeared for the next six months, replaced with the coldness of winter.
I rushed out of class, not bothering to put anything in my locker. I had been left the car with the doors unlocked and the keys sitting happily in the driver’s seat. Nobody close to this school was out robbing cars because most everyone who went here was reasonably wealthy. It was safe to do that kind of thing, to the point where I barely thought about it.
Even though I didn’t have the best relationship with my parents, I couldn’t deny that they did a good job of looking out for me. Money doesn’t buy happiness, but I’ll be damned if it doesn’t make life a lot easier sometimes. I pulled open the door to my father’s car and hopped inside, enjoying the cool scent of leather and automatic A/C that turned on thirty minutes before I came to the car. This vehicle was even nicer than the one I had totaled this morning.
I pulled it around to the front of the school scanning the throngs of students pouring out of the building like ants for a sign of Dylan. He walked with a distinct swagger, as though his shoulders were so heavy that they rocked him from side to side. He did have pretty broad shoulders, but sometimes it looked like he was putting on a show when we were at school.
I spotted his wrinkled linen shirt as he came out of school. He never had his clothes dry cleaned like mine were and seeing that made me appreciate what I had a little more. I was lucky to have the lifestyle that I did. I wished that he could also enjoy it.
I pulled the car up to him, surprising him with a loud honk to let him know I was there. He jumped up, immediately throwing up his middle finger before squinting and realizing that it was just me. I laughed as he shook his head and circled around the car to get in. He was such a goof sometimes.
The door opened, hot summer air flooding in with the masculine scent of Dylan. He dropped down in the seat beside me, pressing the car deeper down into the asphalt. He must have weighed a lot, but then again, muscle ways more than fat, and he was a very strong man.
“How was school?” I asked him, slamming on the gas and throwing him back before he had the chance to put on his seatbelt. I raced out of the parking lot, trying to beat the traffic. I swerved the car around a slower vehicle, blasting over a small speedbump and flying out onto the main road.
Dylan cursed as he was jostled around, the seatbelt buckle clasped in his large hand, trying to find its socket. He finally clicked it into place, leaning toward me and placing a hand on my thigh to steady himself. “You’re going to kill us driving like that,” he said, his fingers digging into the soft skin that was exposed at the hem of my uniform skirt.
I felt a sudden surge of excitement at his touch, causing me to hit the gas even harder. The engine roared as we ripped down the road toward the city. Dylan lost grip of my leg and was pressed back into his seat.
“Slow the hell down,” he growled.
I eased off the gas, letting the car roll along the road at a slowly diminishing speed. I didn’t want to get down below the speed limit because that was no fun, but I also didn’t want to total my father’s car and traumatize Dylan. For a man as masculine as he was, he sure didn’t like speed.
“You didn’t answer my question,” I said, smiling at it as he breathed heavily.
“What question?” He asked, recovering from the excitement of our exit.
“How was school?” I repeated for him.
He shook his head. “Mr. Smith is a fuckhead. He’s pissed because I didn’t turn in the homework and he threatened to fail me if it happened again.”
That guy. I had never liked him. He was one of the stricter teachers at the school despite not looking that way. You would have thought he handed out A’s like candy the way his eyes smiled
at you behind those thick glasses. That Was far from the truth, and I’m sure that if Dylan hadn’t known it before, he certainly knew it now.
I placed a hand on his thigh like he had done to me, gauging his reaction to it. “He can be an asshole,” I said in agreement.
Dylan looked down at my hand on his thigh. “What is that?” he asked, pointing to my hand.
I didn’t remove it. “What?” I asked, glancing down at it.
“Your hand. Why is it on my leg?” He asked, drawing awkward attention to my action.
I lifted it and placed it back on the wheel. “Sorry,” I said, feeling embarrassed.
“If you’re going to touch me, you need to do it right,” he said, reaching out and grabbing my hand. He moved it over to his crotch and placed it down in his lap, raising his hips up to meet it.
I was shocked by his actions, jerking my hand away. “I’m not comfortable with that,” I said, frowning. He was misbehaving again, and I didn’t understand why.
Dylan chuckled. “I thought women like you liked that sort of thing,” he said.
“Women like me? And just who do you think I am?” I asked, heat rising to my cheeks at his rude words.
“Oh, come on. Don’t tell me you don’t do this for all the rich guys at school. I know all the preppy girls are jerking off the jocks after school. I’m surprised your black skirt isn’t stained with jizz every day at school.”
Holy shit, he was really digging in with the insults again. I was livid that he would suggest something so nasty about me. I didn’t hang out with any of the jocks, and even if I did, I wasn’t a slut. I shook my head in disbelief. “You have a funny way of talking to someone who’s trying to help you, Dylan.”
He scoffed, crossing his arms and showing off his large biceps. They seemed to pop out of his shirt, drawing my eyes off the road again. “You pretend to be all sweet and perfect, but I know you’re not,” he said.
He must have been looking for some flaw in me, but he wasn’t going to find it. He had a warped perception of wealthy people, and I wanted to make sure he was aware of that. I wasn’t going to sink to his level and let him think the worst of me. I had to be better than he was.
I turned the cold air toward my face, trying to cool down my flushed skin. I didn’t want him to see how irate I was at his offensive language. I waited a moment to collect myself before speaking again. “Dylan, I think you have the wrong impression of me. I don’t know why, but you’re mistaking me for the kind of person that I’m not. I need you to stop that.”
I could see him roll his eyes out of the corner of mine, but I ignored him. I still wanted to figure out why he was so set on hating wealthy people instead of minding his own damn business. There must be a reason for his anger, and I didn’t think it was only because he was poor.
“I want to get along with you, Dylan, but you’re making it hard,” I said.
“I don’t fit in with people like you, so I doubt you’d get along with me anyway.”
Talk about a victim complex. He had already painted me as the enemy, probably long before I wrecked his car outside the trailer park. I turned down a city street, slowing the car down as we got into a busier area. “You should give people a chance,” I advised.
“People don’t give me a chance,” he countered.
“I did, and do you really want to be like other people?” I said, bringing up a good point.
“I don’t care what I’m like. I just want things to be easier. You know, it’s hard being out here having to work my ass off just to continue going to school,” he said, his voice growing softer.
I felt like I was starting to get somewhere now. Patience when dealing with people can get you a lot further than you think. It’s always better to let people talk about their problems than to start arguing with them. Often times, they end up apologizing once they get the stress of their chest. I only hoped Dylan might act the same.
I let him continue talking, giving him the silence that he needed to move forward.
“I don’t have money, and that’s not anyone in my family’s fault. We used to, you know? I was a lot like you,” he said.
I was surprised by that. I had assumed he grew up poor, but obviously there was more to his story than that. This was getting interesting, and I couldn’t stop myself from interjecting to urge him to talk more about it. “What happened that put you in the situation that you’re in now?” I asked, thinking that sounded innocent enough.
Apparently, it wasn’t. Dylan grew angry again, his voice laced with hatred as he spoke. “That’s none of your business, Scarlet. You wouldn’t understand anyway.”
“You don’t know that. I could try. What’s the harm in explaining it to me?” I asked.
He laughed, but there was no joy in his laughter. “You know enough about me already. I don’t want to tell you anything more,” he said. “I’d like my car, and I’d like you to shut up about my life.”
“You’ll get your car,” I said with a sigh, pulling into the dealership.
I parked my father’s car on the far end of the lot, where the cheaper cars were. I didn’t have the money in my account to buy him anything over five thousand dollars, but I figured that would be enough for him. He didn’t deserve niceness from me with his awful attitude. I had tried multiple times to be good to him, but he seemed to be more interested in claiming that I was the bad guy instead of working with me so that I would understand his plight.
Dylan leaped out of the car before I even cut the engine, looking like he was scared to be in it with me after the wild ride I put him through. I didn’t blame him for that, but the rest I was still going to hold over his head, no matter how handsome he was.
I climbed out of the car and stood beside it, hands on my hips as he eagerly searched the first row of cars in front of us. He ran his hand down the side of one, doing a quick bent-over peek to the tires, and looked back at me. “This one is nice.”
I was amused by the quickness of his decision. “How much is it?” I asked, walking toward him.
He looked at the sign on the front windshield and his face fell. “Oh, I guess I’ll look for another one,” he said, sounding disappointed.
I came around to see the price, and it was just barely in my budget. “We can get this one,” I said.
He looked surprised, jerking his head back and frowning as though I had just told him something that made no sense at all. “Really?” He asked.
“For sure,” I said. “You probably want to take it for a test drive though, right?”
He shrugged, still in disbelief that he could have this car.
“Well, I would like to, at least, so that I know what we’re getting for you. I’ll go ask somebody,” I said, looking around the lot.
There wasn’t anyone out, which I thought was pretty poor service until I realized we were probably too far out in the lot for anyone from the store to see us. I’d probably have to go in there to get the key anyway.
“Wait here,” I said, walking toward the store, leaving Dylan standing next to the car. I looked back to see him looking it over again, admiring the build. He was cute when he wasn’t so angry.
I went up to the shop, opened the door, and was greeted by a cool blast of air that smelled like rubber.
Chapter 10
Dylan
I don’t know what came over me in the car on the way to the dealership. I was so aroused by her hand on my leg that I wanted more. I felt like she was teasing me, like she would push me to the edge only to take it away with a bout of cruel laughter. Of course, that was all in my head, but I had this image of her as a demon that just couldn’t shake.
It was too easy to demonize a woman like Scarlet. She was so attractive, and yet so ignorant to the struggles of regular people. She pretended to want to know about my life, but I was suspicious of her. She couldn’t know that her father was the one that had caused my father’s suicide. She wouldn’t be as easy to ruin if she knew about how much it hurt me. She would have th
e upper hand.
I had already given her too much information as it was. I had told her that my family used to be wealthy like hers. We didn’t have to live in such a dump my whole life like she had assumed. I used to be normal. I used to be happy.
My father lost his business because of the actions of Scarlet’s father. He was big on business, greedy, and didn’t know when to stop. He would crush competition without giving them a chance, and he didn’t care about what happened to all the people who were without employment when it happened.
My father was brilliant, yet foolish at the same time. He managed to start a company from nothing, but he shoveled so much money into it, taking out loans for aggressive growth. It did well for a while, giving us the unique opportunity to rise to riches quickly. We moved to a nice neighborhood, and I started going to a nice school. Everything was perfect, until it wasn’t.
I remember when my father began getting stressed out. Someone was sending people to his manufacturing sights and criminally sabotaging operations. There was a constant string of these, putting great strain on the business and causing several of his partners to pull out of the company. Nobody wanted to work with someone that unlucky.
My father knew who it was who was behind it, but he never was able to gather definitive proof. It wasn’t until his company crumbled did Scarlet’s father take over, mowing over the industry with his own manufacturing plants and replacing the services that my father had provided. He had no regard for what happened to my father after that. He had only wanted to destroy his business, but in doing so, he had destroyed him as well.
My father couldn’t recover. We were broke, and in serious debt. He wasn’t expecting everything to fall apart so quickly, funds stretched too thin for too long. We wouldn’t be able to get out of this. The debt was too great.
It was all on the shoulders of my family. My father owed so much money that they threatened to take our house. That was when he took his own life. The debt had been in his name, and died with him, but not before wiping out everything we owned.
