Tackle Me: Contemporary Bad Boy Romance

by Serena Vale

  Jenny was at a loss for words and felt like someone had reached inside her chest and clamped a steel fist around her heart and spinal column, pinching them shut like a plastic straw. She thought to ask how Nichole got these pictures… then her mind changed gears to argue that she and Rick had broken up weeks ago… that she had been giving Rick so much grief before they broke up that she had no right to be jealous or angry. But the words wouldn’t translate from thoughts and all Jenny could do was stand at the threshold of her door with an irate roommate.

  “I thought that there had to be a reason he broke up with me,” Nichole said, her voice sounding genuinely hurt. “Now I know… but I never would have thought it was you!” She stiffened her lip, and the look on her face sent a feeling of panic down Jenny’s spine. “Get ready you fucking slut… the whole campus is about to find out that you’re sloppy seconds!”

  In a move that surprised her, Nichole reached out and pushed Jenny from their room and into the hall beyond. Jenny lost her footing and fell onto the carpeted floor, her backpack tumbling over her shoulder. She tried to protest and speak but too late, the door to the room she and Nichole shared slammed shut. The sound of the panic lock sliding into a place filled the silence of the hall.

  She knew she wasn’t getting back inside there.

  Jenny sat, dazed and stunned, wondering just what it was that Nichole had meant. The fear of infinite possibilities crept up inside of her. She knew the kind of person that Nichole was, and the options that her roommate had to make her life into a new kind of hell seemed more than possible, they were certain.

  Jenny couldn’t believe this turn of events. This night… which had started out normal and turned magical had suddenly become something else. Something that seemed like it was right out of a nightmare.

  Uncertain of what else to do, unable to think anything else, she began to cry.

  Nichole made good on her threats just as she had promised. Jenny, having slept in the common room of the dorm, woke to find people pointing and laughing at her the second she had opened her eyes. She had known these people from her life in the dorm, though she had not been particularly friendly with any of them. She had always been content to keep to herself and not interfere with the lives of others if they would do as much for her.

  Now she was beginning to regret that decision, as she had no friends to turn to.

  It didn’t take her long to find out what Nichole had done that had suddenly seemed to make everyone turn on her. A quick check of her phone yielded a flood of social media alerts that were all about her… and Rick.

  The pictures, presumably the ones that Nichole had taken – or perhaps someone had sent to her? – had all managed to surface on the internet. At a casual glance, most of them were harmless, some of them simply posing the innocent question: Who is Rick Tigh’s New Mystery Woman?

  Others were as corrosive as sulfuric acid and burned her twice as badly. Most of the comments that she had seen were mean and hurtful. Some of them came in the forms of, “I’ve seen this chick at the library… should have known the quiet ones were the kinkiest.” Some were more like, “I can’t believe Rick Tigh would hook up with a nobody like this.” Others were more akin to, “I can’t figure it out. He’s a 10, and she’s a -100.”

  There were hundreds of comments and thousands of views of these photos, and they were popping up everywhere. It was like she suddenly couldn’t escape them, like a flood tide, and she was about to drown. Fresh tears surface in her eyes, and when she saw Nichole emerge from their dorm a short while later, Jenny was uncertain of what to do. Part of her wanted to attack her feisty roommate while another part of her wanted to grab her and drag her to the R.A. and demand a mediation session. But her mind drew a blank as Nichole emerged and mouthed a very subtle “Fuck you,” as she disappeared out the door into the open campus.

  Jenny sat motionless for a long time, unable to move, feeling as though her skin had been pumped full of led. Her mind seemed to have abandoned her, and she was unable to make any kind of sense of any of this. She felt like an ant under the proverbial magnifying glass and that her whole world – which had been quiet and unseen until this point – was suddenly ruined and being destroyed by intense focus.

  She almost sputtered her tears, not knowing what else to do. A crippling feeling surged into her stomach, and she felt like vomiting. She wanted to cry again, she wanted to run away, she wanted to find the deepest and darkest hole in the world and just crawl into it. But that option seemed moot now, as it seemed that even one who had spent her life trying to be invisible could easily be flushed out.

  Part of her wanted to run to her now vacant dorm room and just hide in there, locking the door and keeping all of the evils that Nichole had unleashed upon her out. But she knew that it would serve no good… Nichole had occupied that room and spun her evil like a spider spins a web. She would be nearest to the evils that now haunted her there as anywhere else.

  Unable to keep her feelings suppressed she felt her mind switch over to logic. So Nichole had done what she had promised she would… it was done then. What Nichole had done was the equivalent of casting a stone into a still lake; there would be ripples, but eventually those would fade and become nothing. Her actions would be forgotten, and everything would be as it was.

  Jenny felt some comfort in that thought. If she had observed anything about how people viewed the social lives of others is that they took only a momentary interest until something more worthwhile came along. They would forget about her soon enough… everything would just go back to being the way it was before. It would be like it had never happened.

  But it did happen, she told herself, closing her eyes and feeling tears squeeze out from behind them. She still couldn’t believe her rotten luck. Last night had been wonderful and so unexpected, but now her life felt as if she had been cast into her own personal hell.

  Things won’t go back to the way they were, she realized. People – ones that she didn’t know but ones that had clearly recognized her – had marked her. They would never let her forget what this was all about and shame her for it. The weight of public opinion was so heavy upon her she felt like she was breathing in a dense metal. There wasn’t any way to escape this. She would always be known as the girl that Rick Tigh didn’t deserve, and there would be consequences to pay for it.

  She paused, a thought occurring to her, but one that hurt her inside terribly.

  She gritted her teeth, trying to see both sides of the coin that she had just been presented with. She tried to keep objective, but her vantage point was compromised. She could no longer be objective; her views were askew unless she could detach herself from her predicament.

  God… no, she thought, feeling a new heavyweight filling her up and burning her like molten metal. She had the solution now and was unable to think otherwise on it. The answer to her problems was simple, but it was the most reasonable and surest way to correct her predicament.

  She began to reach for her phone, a simple text… a phone call… that was all it would take. But then she held. No, she decided, it was something that she couldn’t allow technology to handle. It was something that she had to show she had the heart to do in person. And she needed to do it at the earliest opportunity.

  Feeling her heart grow heavy, she picked up her backpack and headed out the door and into the campus where she was certain the rest of the world was waiting for her. Waiting… and anxious to mock her.

  Chapter 8

  When she arrived at chem lab, she was an hour early. She had walked much of the way with her head down, hoping that no one would recognize her. But peripherally she saw people occasionally looking at her, watching her, and a few fingers pointed in her direction confirmed that some of the other students recognized her.

  Feeling sick she had hastily walked away, eager for someplace to disappear into. When she found the hallway outside the lab mercifully empty, she attempted to slip inside the classroom, desperate for a small measure of silence
and peace to collect her thoughts, as was her personal tradition. But her aggravation increased when she found that the door was locked, preventing her from getting inside and just sitting at her desk and buying some time to think.

  Feeling that molten metal plunging into her stomach she put her back to the door and slid down, sitting on the cold linoleum of the floor and hugging her knees to her chest. She did her best to keep from weeping in the event that someone came by. She didn’t want to add to her humiliation by suddenly seeming weak, but she couldn’t help herself. At least not while she had privacy for the moment, she wanted to let her emotions run freely and purge them from her body. So her tears came freely, and she wept and shut her eyes.

  She lost track of how long she had been sitting there when Rick’s voice broke the silence of her personal torment.

  “Jenny?”

  Her eyes shot open, and she looked in the direction of his voice. When she saw him, her heart gave a small flutter, but it quickly subsided when his expression changed. It wasn’t a shift of heart that seemed to change him, but more of a reaction to seeing her. It went from jovial to worry in a heartbeat. She watched as his eyes took in the sight of her and undoubtedly he seemed to realize that she was wearing the same clothes that she had been wearing yesterday… last night… and that the puffy redness under her eyes was a clear indication that something was not as it should be.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked, rushing over to her.

  She stood, wanting to run to him and hold him. She wanted to find sanctuary in those arms that had held her last night. She wanted to feel sheltered and secure. She wanted to feel like she had just passed under everyone’s notice and live her life the way she had always lived it until now.

  But she couldn’t… she held her ground and held up a hand to stop him from advancing any nearer. He paused, confused like he had been anxious to hold her in his arms again.

  She summed up her courage and forced the words out. “H-have you seen them?”

  He furrowed his brow. “Seen what?”

  “Please, don’t play stupid, I can’t handle it right now,” she said, her voice a combination of rage and sorrow. “I know you have to have seen them. You’re in a frat. I’ll bet your brothers threw a party for you over the whole thing.” She hoped the words sounded hurtful. “I’ll bet you even have a Google alert on yourself or something.”

  He shook his head, and she could tell that her words were hurtful to him to some degree, he looked perplexed but when he spoke his voice sounded calm. “Jenny, I don’t know what you’re talking about. I woke up at five this morning for practice at six, and none of my frat brothers were even awake yet. And I’ve been moving around all day, and my phone’s been off. So, please, tell me what you’re talking about?”

  She again measured his words, looking for any sign of untruth but she found none. He genuinely was ignorant of the weight that had been crushing her all morning. “You really don’t know, do you?”

  He simply waited, patiently, for her to deliver an explanation.

  She didn’t know what else to do except open her phone, find the photos that felt like they were choking her, and passed it to him. His eyes widened when he saw the pictures on the screen, and as he swiped through them, his expression changed over and over again. His eyes scanned the small screen, and she had no doubts that he was reading over some of the words that had been written there.

  “Holy shit,” he muttered.

  “Yeah,” she said, holding back a tear.

  He shook his head and passed his phone back to her. “Don’t worry about it.”

  She suddenly felt like she had just been kicked in the chest by an angry horse. “Don’t worry about it?!! Are you kidding me?”

  He froze, looking frightened by her. “Babe, it’s okay… it’ll blow over soon. People forget about this stuff all the time. Two or three days no one will remember it even happened.”

  Part of her wanted to be reassured by this, having thought the same thing already, but she couldn’t manage it. But hearing it come from him – and so casually – did not offer the relief she had thought it might. What offered her even less relief was that he was taking this in stride like it happened to him all the time.

  Suddenly it felt as if a steel rod had been shoved down through her skull and planted her to the floor like a scarecrow in a cornfield. A terrible thought crossed her mind and for once, her turbulent mind was able to form thoughts into words. “Has this happened to you before?”

  He nodded with such a casual grace that she felt certain that she would vomit. “Sure… a few times, but it’s okay…”

  “It’s not okay!” she flared at him, her anger rising. The sorrow in her heart was replaced by a sudden urge to murder him… to murder Nichole… to murder anyone that happened to be close to her. “People are saying all of these horrible things about you… about me… about us! It is most definitely not okay!”

  “Jenny…” he said softly, reaching out as if to put his hands on her shoulders.

  She smacked his hands away. “No! Don’t touch me!”

  His expression changed again. There was something hurt behind his eyes, and she felt only a momentary pang of guilt for having done so. She thought about what he had said that this sort of thing had happened to him before, and it infuriated her. She felt like she had made a classical scientific blunder: she hadn’t noticed a pattern forming.

  Of course, this sort of thing had happened to him before! He was a goddamn football star! He had whichever girl he wanted and as often as he wanted them. Hell, he’d even told her that his father had burned it in him not to get too attached to one girl for too long. And here she was, just another point in his pattern of behavior, and soon enough he would move on to the next girl.

  She had had foreknowledge of something before it happened and she had still fallen into the blunder! It was like chumming the water and then jumping in with the sharks, expecting that the ravenous animals would ignore her! She felt so stupid for having thought otherwise.

  This realization seemed more crushing than anything she had been brooding over since last night. She felt childish, even stupid for having thought about the things that she had last night in those few blissful minutes between their time in the lab and reaching her dorm. Her mind, however briefly, had wandered off to wonderful and amazing things. Going on dates – actual dates – with Rick Tigh like a normal person would have seemed so unreal, but they had been within her grasp. She had fantasized about dinner and movies, not as study partners, but as a couple. She had thought what it would be like to bring a boy home to meet her parents or possibly better still… to meet his father.

  God, how fucking stupid I was!

  “I can’t…” she tried to say, but the words refused to leave her lips. She felt like she was trying to explain a book on rationality to someone who was illiterate. “I can’t be here right now… I can’t look at you… I can’t be near you… I’m leaving.”

  She gathered up her backpack and brushed past him. She needed space, her own space, not someplace where she would usually seek solitude but somewhere else… someplace she knew that he or anyone else would never look for her.

  “Jenny, where are you going?” he asked as she walked by. “We have class in ten minutes…”

  She ignored him and kept walking, her eyes welling with more tears. She was angered by what she had just heard, by what she felt, but somewhere inside of her she was amazed that she still had enough substance within her to produce fresh tears.

  Chapter 9

  Jenny knew that she had had some rather clever ideas in her time, but she thought that her current choice of hiding place was one of the top ones. It almost made up for the feeling of total inadequacy she had felt for the whole day… for feeling as dumb as dog shit.

  She looked about the empty football field and reveled in the serenity of her solitude. It wasn’t the official field where games took place, and it reminded her more of where a high school team might play, bu
t it offered her the silence and solitude that she had longed for. It was the Tiger’s practice field, and she knew that if there was going to be anyone here, they would not be here until later in the afternoon. She had at least another hour or two to be alone.

  She had lain out on the center of the 50-yard line, looking up at the sky. She watched as the clouds took shape and dissipated in the blueness above her. Her cheeks felt red from being under the sun for so long today, but it felt better than for the reason that they had felt red earlier today. Fury, she was noticing, was a compromising emotion. She hadn’t been able to think straight before she got here and with the blessing of being alone, she had managed to calm down.

  Her phone continually buzzed. She could hear it vibrating in her backpack, but she actively ignored it, feeling better and better about herself. It felt good being detached from, well… everything. She hadn’t gone to class, she hadn’t opened a single textbook, and she had avoided contact with any other living person for nearly six hours now. In short, she had played hooky today… something that she had never done in her whole life.

  It felt good.

  Two of life’s milestones in as many days, she thought with an amused smile.

  She sighed deeply and watched the clouds as they rolled by. She tried to determine if any of them held shapes familiar to her and she had counted them as they went by. Thus far she had seen a duck, a car, a house; something that almost looked like the Orion constellation, a twisted tree, a helium molecule… the list went on and on. She felt better, having lost herself in an old childlike escape that she hadn’t utilized since she really was a child.

  To just be away from everything… from everyone… it had felt like she’d taken a real breath of much-needed air. Her heart had calmed down, and she felt like she was thinking straighter for it. She felt like she had finally cried out all of her tears and life was finally beginning to feel like normal again.