I smiled unpleasantly at Mandy.  She hadn’t grown up to be an attractive woman, but then she’d never been an attractive teenager.  Looking at it in retrospect, I could see clearly now at least one of the reasons she’d hated me.  I may have been trash, but I was beautiful trash, and there was not one beautiful thing about her.  Her weasel face was as ugly as ever.

“Well, this charity case is allowed in the kitchen, and you’re not.”  I waved at the door that led to the front part of the house, the section where company was allowed.

Mandy took a threatening step toward me.

I laughed, setting down my clutch.  I held my arms out wide.  “Please.  Is that a threat?  Come at me.  I dare you.  If all three of you attack, it’ll be just like old times, right?  I remember how you thought the odds of three to one would help you.”

Of course they backed down.  When they went in for the kill, it was usually with words.

Because mean girls don’t kill.  They dehumanize.

A few times they’d tried their luck with me the other way, but I could see that they still remembered how that had gone for them.

That was the moment that Dante walked into the room, and damn him, and me, I was actually happy to see him.

He zeroed in on Mandy and strode right up to her.  “I’m only going to say this once,” he told her harshly.  “It’s your first and final warning.  If you can’t be civil, if you try to pull one of your childish stunts, or I catch you making one snide comment, or even hear that you did, you’re out of here.  Also, no guests in the kitchen.”  He pointed to the door.

The pack of bitches left, shooting murder at me over their shoulders.

“God, do you have any idea how you just crushed her?” I asked him, smiling.  “She’s had a thing for you since high school, and don’t ask me why, but it looks like she still does.”

“I give less than zero fucks how she feels.  That one is a coward and a bully.  I don’t even want her in this house.  I haven’t forgotten how she treated you in high school.”

“You haven’t?” I asked him.

He looked at me.  “I haven’t forgotten anything.”

I looked away.  “Well, this started as badly as it could have.  I already got caught digging in the trash and almost got into a fistfight, all before I’ve even walked into the reception.”

“If anyone else gives you any problems, I’m kicking them out, I swear to God.”

My eyes flitted to him and then away.  “Why are you being so nice to me?”

“It’s not hard, Scarlett.  In fact, it feels a hell of a lot more natural than what we’ve been doing.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

“If I know what love is, it is because of you.”

~Herman Hesse

PAST

Something awful had happened when we started going to high school.  It wasn’t immediate, more of a gradual shift, but nonetheless detrimental to me.

Dante was physical and he always seemed to need an aggressive outlet for it so, much to my chagrin, he was often in some sport or other.  Football was his favorite so every fall from the time we were in sixth grade, he had practice.  Every year practice seemed to eat up more and more of his time.

I tried to take it well, but I was so jealous of his time and attention that I didn’t.  But I did try.

I started taking drama after school myself, and it suited me.  My stutter still plagued me at the worst of times, so I never got a speaking role in the school plays, but I was happy to fill extra spots and work on the set.

I thought for a while that it would work.  We both had things to do, opposite interests that took up our time.

I’d finish drama and go watch him from the bleachers, sometimes I’d do my homework, sometimes I’d read, sometimes I’d just ogle him, and then we’d either drive or walk home together.

On paper it sounded great, but that’s not what happened.

In high school it became apparent that he was quite good at everyone’s favorite sport and for some reason it started to matter to people and seemingly overnight he was one of the popular kids.

It was awful for me.  I was no more popular than ever.  In fact when jealous girls got wind that I was his girlfriend and just how long we’d been an item, and how smitten he was with me, I was more hated than ever, which was saying a lot.

I started getting into fights again.  Bad ones.  And I was old enough now that I was getting in serious trouble for it.  I almost got kicked out of school for one incident with a girl in the locker room (a girl who unfortunately also happened to be the daughter of one of the local sheriffs) that involved her dumping Gatorade on my head and me slamming her face into the locker.

It’d predictably started with the familiar mocking chant of, “Hey, trashcan girl.”

I was resigned to the fact that I would never live this down.  It was a part of me.  It was a thing I had to own that would always make me an outcast.

I was odd.  I had been shaped by uncommon, un-relatable things.  This I knew.

And since I couldn’t get into a fight every time I heard that, even with my temper, I ignored the first verbal jab.

We’d just finished gym class.  Normally I liked gym.  I didn’t talk to any of the girls in my period, but there weren’t many kids I talked to.  I was good at being a loner.  It suited me.  The things I heard the girls talk about couldn’t have interested me less.