Mellenda turned and slapped Brendan across the face. “No, she won’t let you touch her tits. And she has a name, and has feelings, and really wishes she’d never come here.”
Mellenda walked away without looking at Jude. She pushed past several couples and groups and walked out into the chilly evening air. She leaned against the side of the building and fought tears. Jude was at her side less than a minute later. He rubbed his hands down her arms and then took off his suit jacket and draped it over shoulders. Mellenda still didn’t look at him. She was afraid if she looked at him, she wouldn’t be able to hold her tears back.
“Baby are you okay? I’m sorry about that bullshit. He’s trashed, and I shouldn’t have opened my mouth and told him that stuff about me and Shayla.”
“But it was true wasn’t it?”
“Yes. I was even more screwed up than her since he’s been my best friend since grade school. Look at me baby. Please.”
Mellenda looked at Jude and felt a tear slip down her face. She moved to brush it away, but Jude took her hand and brushed it away with his other hand. “Jude you’ve never been faithful to a girl before have you? Tell me the truth.”
Jude put his arms around her waist and looked into her eyes. “You want the truth Mellenda?”
She swallowed, trying to get rid of the lump that had risen in her throat. “Yes.”
“I’ve never been faithful to a girl. Until you. Cross my heart and hope to die. I don’t need another girl. You are everything that I need, everything that I could have ever dreamed of and more. This sounds really fucking dumb and you’re probably gonna puke on me after I say this, but you complete me.”
Mellenda giggled. “You’re a dork Jude. An adorable, terribly sweet dork but a dork all the same.” She kissed him. “I love you. What do you say we get the hell out of here and put that room to good use?”
“I love you too, but what about your dress? You paid a lot of money for it didn’t you? And don’t you wanna dance?”
“Do you really want to go back in there and get into it with him again? I’m sure he’ll probably regret half of what he said in the morning, but we don’t need this tonight.”
“I agree. You deserve better. Maybe we can find a music channel on TV. I’m not a very good dancer though, I gotta warn you.”
“I don’t care. I like you the way you are. Even if you are a dork and a pervert and an asshole.”
Jude laughed. “Thanks baby. You smacked Brendan a good one. I bet his face is still red.”
“He deserved it. He really grabbed my butt.”
“Can I kiss it better?”
“Weirdo. Let’s go. You wanna order a pizza? My treat.”
“I wanna make love to my lover. My woman loves me.” Jude turned away from her and shouted “You hear that Brentwood? My woman loves me, and I love her, and you can all go fuck yourselves if you don’t like it.”
A voice answered “Good for you man. Now take your woman and go away. I’m trying to get laid and you’re breaking my concentration.”
Mellenda giggled. “Where do you think they are?”
“Who cares? Let’s go.” Jude took her hand and led her towards his truck.
He let her drive to the hotel. She parked in the lot and then followed him to a room on the second floor. She stood by as he unlocked the door. She followed him into the room. He flipped the light switch and she let out a sigh.
“Jude, how much did this room cost you?”
“A hundred bucks. Why? Your dress cost way more than that didn’t it?”
“Yeah, but this is too much. You bought me a really nice birthday present, and now you got this nice room for us. You’re going to make me cry.”
“Baby, I’d rather have you cry because I made you happy, than have you cry because my drunk ex best friend grabbed your ass and said a bunch of stupid shit.”
“You’re too good to me.”
“I could never be too good to you. Let’s see what kind of music we can find on TV. Then we’ll eat, and then the best part, we can spend the rest of the night making love.”
“Should we order the pizza now or do you want something else?”
“Pizza’s fine. If I would have been thinking, I would have bought some romantic food. Whatever in the hell that is. I wanted this night to be perfect for you. I’m sorry Brendan and Shayla and my stupid mouth messed it up.”
“You told me you loved me. You told the whole town of Brentwood that you loved me at the top of your lungs, and you even got so sappy as to tell me that I complete you. I think that when I remember this night, those are the things I’ll remember.”
“What about the sex? ‘Cause we’re gonna have lots of it.”
Mellenda laughed. “And the sex.”
They didn’t find a music channel on TV that was playing music, so they went out to the parking lot and danced to songs on the radio. The reception was bad on his truck’s radio, and they got a lot of strange looks from people entering and exiting rooms but neither of them cared. They ate pizza and then made love until late into the night.
Chapter 12
The next morning when Mellenda woke up in Jude’s arms, she realized she’d never felt more at home in her life. He stirred and she turned her head to look up at him. “Good morning.”
“Good morning beautiful. Let’s run away together so we can wake up every morning like this.”
“Ha ha. We’d be stuck waking up like this every morning in your truck. My parents would disown me.”
“I’d live in my truck if it meant I got to be with you.”
“Okay, now that’s taking it a little too far Jude. I can take the whole you complete me thing, because you heard it on some silly movie, but living in your truck, um no. I prefer living quarters with beds and bathrooms. We can live in a really crappy studio apartment that’s barely bigger than the cab of your truck as long as it’s clean, but not in your truck okay?”
Jude laughed. “Okay. You snore by the way.”
“I do not snore. You snore. When we live together, I’ll have to invest in a good pair of ear plugs so that I can get any sleep.”
“You seemed to sleep fine last night.”
“You tired me out with your endless sex drive.”
Jude grinned. “I was pretty good wasn’t I?”
“You wanna try for an encore before checkout?”
“Hell yeah.”
Mellenda laughed. She reached for her purse, and dug around for a condom. She came up with nothing. “Shit. I don’t have any condoms.”
“I have one. I think. Let me check.”
“Is it the right kind? I’m allergic to latex remember?”
“I’ve had this one for a while. We used the whole box that I bought on your birthday. I guess I’m so used to it that I don’t really think about it anymore. It feels like we’ve been together for way longer than the two months, two weeks and two days that it’s been since you asked me out.”
Mellenda had to think about the dates, but she realized he was right. “You counted day by day how long it’s been since we’ve been together? You really are a dork.”
Jude laughed. “I marked the days off on my calendar. I don’t suppose I could talk you into doing it without a condom.”
Mellenda bit her lip. “It’s not that I don’t want to, I’m just not sure that it’s a good idea. I don’t always remember to take my birth control pills.”
“Oh. I could go buy some. I might have to borrow money from you to pay for them though.”
“No problem.” Mellenda picked her purse back up and opened her wallet. She groaned when she saw that instead of the $20 bill she should have had, she had a single dollar bill. “No wonder the pizza delivery guy was grinning so wide when he left last night. I gave him the wrong bill. That means he got damned near $25 for a tip.”
“The guy had to know that you didn’t mean to tip him more than what our order cost. You should call the pizza place and complain. They’ll probably give you your money back
, or at least a coupon for a free pizza or something.”
“That doesn’t do us any good right now. I have a credit card my parents gave me for emergencies, but I doubt they’d consider this an emergency. I’m not sure if it’s any good anymore to tell you the truth. They’ve gotten into some pretty bad debt in the past couple years.”
“It sure makes sense to send you to an expensive private school then. I could probably borrow some money from my dad but he’s at work. Mom’s home, but she leaves the cash with Dad because she spends too much money. Sounds kinda dumb since he’s the drunk and she’s the pot head but anyway. I’d say that I’d ask Brendan but that’s not happening right now. So it looks like we either have sex without a condom or we don’t have sex.”
Mellenda sighed. It wasn’t like they hadn’t had plenty of sex the night before, but she wanted it pretty badly too. He was starting to gain some really nice muscle and it turned her on. She traced a heart on his chest and then kissed his chest.
“Screw it. Let’s do it.”
“Are you sure? When’s the last time you remembered to take your birth control pill?”
Mellenda thought back. “Monday I think. Could have been Tuesday.”
“Damn baby you really are bad at remembering to take them. Why don’t you get some other form of birth control?”
“My parents didn’t want me to get the pill as it was. I don’t mind condoms. I know that some girls do and a lot of guys definitely do, but not me. I’ve only had sex a few times without a condom and it didn’t feel any different to me than it did any other time.”
“It feels way different for the guy. I’ve only done it a couple times myself but wow. I think you’d notice a bigger difference if you got used to doing it without a condom and then tried to go back to doing it with one. Do you think you’ll ever want to have my baby?”
“Sometimes I wonder if I’ll ever really want to have any man’s baby, but if I was ready to have a baby I’d want it to be yours.”
“Awesome.”
“It’s really weird to hear a guy your age talk about having kids like it’s a cool idea. I know that’s stereotypical, but some guys aren’t ready to really be a father well, ever.”
“Some women are the same way. That doesn’t seem to prevent all of them from having kids though. In my perfect world, the people that wanted kids would have them, and do a really good job of raising them and get whatever help they needed with no questions asked instead of having their kids taken away. The way I look at it, if you’ve got a drug problem but know you need to straighten out your life and be better for your kids and yourself, you should get help and not lose your kids. And if you’re poor or someone made lies up about you, what kind of shit is that? Just ‘cause you’re poor doesn’t mean that you don’t love your kids or that you shouldn’t have ten of them if you want. It just means that you have to work harder to raise them. I don’t care if I am trailer trash, and the son of an alcoholic and a pothead. I love my parents. They’ve done everything they could to raise me, my brother and my sisters right.”
“You’re not trailer trash. And more trash lives in mansions than in trailer parks. It really bugged you when Brendan called you that last night didn’t it? I’m sorry.”
“Honey, I’ve been called trailer trash since kids were old enough to throw insults at each other on the playground. There is some trash in my trailer park, but I agree that there’s probably a lot more in mansions than in trailer parks. Enough talking. Let’s make love.”
Jude kissed her and they were soon making love. Mellenda wondered if she was imagining things since they had shared the L word, but she thought it felt better with Jude to have sex without a condom than it had the one time she’d done it with Ricky or the two times that she’d done it with Tony.
They took a shower and then it was time to check out of the hotel. Jude dropped her off behind the shack. She walked back to school, feeling like a weirdo in her dress and wishing that she’d thought to bring an extra set of clothes since she’d known they were spending the night together long before prom night. She luckily didn’t run into anyone on the way back to her room, and there hadn’t been a guard around to give her a funny look.
There was a piece of paper taped on her door when she got back to her room. She frowned as she pulled it off and wondered what it could be. She unfolded it as she opened her door, thinking that it was probably from one of her classmates, but she saw that it was on a Crestview Academy letterhead. Her heart sank as she sat down on the bed to read.
‘Miss Brooks,’ it said. ‘No matter what time you return to school, report to my office immediately. I will be in all day Sunday. It is very important that I speak with you.
Sincerely,
Armand Luciano: Headmaster: Crestview Academy
Mellenda sighed. She thought that she’d almost rather have talked to Marcune than the new head of their school. She’d never had a problem with Marcune, because Marcune had seemed to feel overly favorable towards her and others who actually deserved their grades at Crestview. Of course, she hadn’t always deserved her grades, and she had a horrible feeling that that was what the summons to the office was about.
She took off her dress and hung it in her closet and then dressed in jeans and a t-shirt. She put on a pair of sandals and then headed down to the office. There was no one in the outer office and the inner door was cracked open. She could see Armand sitting behind the desk. She knocked lightly on the door.
He looked up at her and gave her a half smile. “Come in Ms. Brooks. Close the door behind you please.”
Mellenda complied. She sat down in the chair across from the desk. She looked at the pictures he had displayed, trying to curb her anxiety. Armand was married, and the pictures on his desk were of his wife and two kids, but there was talk that he had been sleeping with several girls since only a few days after he’d arrived at Crestview.
“Can I ask what this is about Mr. Luciano?”
“You can call me Armand. Hearing myself referred to as Mr. Luciano makes me feel old. I don’t believe myself to be old when I’m barely into my thirties.”
Mellenda let out a weak laugh and wiped her sweaty palms on her jeans. “So what is this about Armand?”
“Mellenda, do you have a boyfriend?”
“I do, but what does that have to do with anything? He’s never been in my room.”
“This isn’t about a boy in your room, though there was talk that there was a boy in your room a while back. But that was Molli’s mistake. I had planned to talk to her about both that and her pregnancy when she returned to school but of course she never returned. I asked about a boyfriend because we are facing a grave situation here you and I, but I believe that we may be able to come to an arrangement on how to get you out of it.”
Mellenda fought a groan. Armand was asking her to screw or blow her way out of this, and there was no way in hell she was going to do that. She thought that she might have considered it if she was still with Ricky, especially if she still suspected he was screwing around, but she loved Jude and she wasn’t going to do that to him.
“I’ll let you explain what you mean by an arrangement, but what exactly is the grave situation that we’re facing?”
Armand pulled a folder out of his desk drawer. He opened it and pulled out several of her English tests from junior year. She had been completely lost, which wasn’t like her since she’d never had trouble in any of her classes before, but she couldn’t wrap her head around what the teacher was trying to teach.
Tory had tutored her, and it had helped some, but the teacher graded hard and she’d been facing a low C in the class if her last two test scores had been like her previous ones. So she’d bought the answers for the last two tests from Leslie, the girl in her class that wanted to be a social worker, and had propositioned her in the shower. She would have figured that if Leslie had made good on her threats to tell Armand, she would have done it long before now.
“Do these look familiar Mel
lenda?”
Mellenda glanced at the papers to verify that they were in her handwriting. “Yes.”
Armand pulled out another sheet of paper. “What about this?”
Mellenda swallowed hard. Armand was holding what looked to be a photocopy of the answer sheet for the test, which was written in Leslie’s overly feminine handwriting. “And if they do?”
“Look Ms. Brooks, we know that you purchased the answers for the last two tests in your junior English class. The classmate that you purchased them from has come forward to report not only you but several other girls as well, for purchasing the answers from her for many tests throughout their academic careers at Crestview Academy. Believe me; they are going to be dealt with accordingly as well. Your other grades are good enough to believe that this was an unusual occurrence, so you will not be expelled and you will be allowed to finish out your senior year. Your records will be amended to an F in your junior English class. You will be moved from all of your advanced classes back to the regular curriculum. You will also be on academic probation for the remainder of your time here, and will no longer be in the running for valedictorian. Believe it or not, with the rest of your grades, even with the failure, you would still be a candidate. Even the girls that purchase their homework seem to realize that their grades can’t be too high or it will raise a red flag. It is a damned shame that with the money parents pay for this school, more girls aren’t taking advantage of the stellar education that we provide here.”
“I’ll lose my scholarship if you do all that. I’m not saying that I didn’t do it, or that I don’t deserve it, but isn’t there something else I can do? Can I retake the class? I’ll go to summer school if I have to. I don’t care about valedictorian. Tory Collins in the smartest girl in this whole school. She deserves it way more than I do.”
“Ms. Collins isn’t in the running. Her grades have slipped in the past few months. She is still doing well, especially with most of the grades we see around here, but her grades in math this year have been rather dismal. Lanisha Saxton was the front runner for valedictorian until her parents pulled her out due to the expulsion of Lindsey Ackerman. There are only two girls besides you that are still in the running. You were out in front and considered to have it pretty well locked in until this came to our attention. Why did you cheat Mellenda? Your teacher advised me that Tory Collins was tutoring you and you seemed to understand the material better. Even if you had scored less than perfect on both of those tests, you would have finished the course with a low B. One that you would have deserved much more than the A you received and the F you’re going to receive if we can’t come to some sort of agreement. Would you like to hear my proposition?”
Misty Reigenborn Romance Boxed Set Page 182
