Offside

  Nicole stood, bit down on her lip, and started walking slowly. I placed my Ray-Bans over my eyes, tossed my arm around her waist, and smiled at everyone around me as I escorted my Rumple into the school. Nicole pretty much stared at the ground, only occasionally glancing up at those around us.

  “Why are they all looking at us?” she asked under her breath.

  “Malone doesn’t date,” I told her. “Everyone knows that. I sure as hell have never brought a chick to school in my Jeep before. Well, not in the front seat.”

  I snickered but quickly silenced myself when I saw her glare and realized how prickish I sounded. I offered her an apologetic shrug, which was met with eye rolling. Hoping I hadn’t blown it already, I pulled her a little closer to my side as students began to fill the hallways.

  “Where’s your locker?” I asked.

  “It’s number 8420.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Mine’s 7289—right over here. Stop here first?”

  “Okay.”

  Nicole fiddled with the strap of her book bag while I twisted the combination lock. I opened the locker and carefully hung my bag on the back hook, pushing it against the back wall so it didn’t stick out too much. I pulled out the green folder where I kept my homework and then straightened the books lined up at the bottom.

  “You have got to have the most organized locker I have ever seen,” Nicole said.

  “I don’t like things out of order,” I said with a shrug. I pushed against the twisted up edge of one of the books. It still kind of bugged me. I should have gotten a new one. While I was doing that, Nicole reached around me and pushed at the spine of one of the books, leaving it askew.

  “Hey!” I exclaimed. I grabbed the book and lined it up again. “Don’t do that.”

  Nicole giggled. Giggled.

  I glared at her.

  “Oh, this is going to make things interesting,” she said softly.

  “Don’t push your luck,” I said with a growl, but I couldn’t glare at her for long when she looked up at me all innocent-like and bit down on her lower lip. “I’m being the nice boyfriend. You have to be the nice girlfriend, too.”

  “I don’t recall agreeing to specific terms,” Nicole said with a raise of her brows. She leaned close to me. “You are a fool, dear Thomas.”

  I smiled down at her, closed my locker door and wrapped my arm around her shoulders as we went down the hall. I noticed the looks some of the guys were giving her, but a stern glare from me had them staring at the ceiling pretty fast. I was going to have to put a clear end to that kind of shit. No touching, no talking, and no looking at my Rumple.

  Mine.

  I was going to have to keep the wolves at bay.

  We rounded the corner and Nicole flipped the combination lock until it opened. Inside, her locker was a total disaster. It hurt just to look at it.

  “How can you even find anything in there?” I asked as she dug around in a pile of papers, shuffling things from her book bag, which I realized was equally catastrophic, to the locker and vice versa.

  “I have my ways,” she mumbled with her head still inside the metal cabinet.

  “It’s a fucking mess!” I said.

  “Fuck you,” she snapped back.

  I felt an involuntary twitch as I turned up the corner of my mouth a little bit, and my head cataloged other times people had uttered the same phrase to me. It had always been met with either indifference or violence. Rumple, though—she just amused me.

  When she was done orchestrating the movement of disaster one and disaster two from one place to another, I wrapped my arm back around her and led her down the hallway to her literature class. People continued to stare with open mouths, and Nicole continued to hide behind her hair. When we got to her classroom door, I pulled her over to the side and backed her up against the wall. I held her hips and she looked up at me with wide eyes. She was definitely a little nervous.

  I leaned close to her ear.

  “Relax,” I whispered. I reached up and pushed her hair back behind her ear. She tensed a little but then seemed to take my advice to heart.

  “Easy for you to say,” she mumbled back.

  I looked down at her, trying to ignore the throat-clearing from some of the students as they walked close to us. My eyes dropped to her mouth for a second, and I remembered again the feelings I had when I woke up with her—primarily, the desire to kiss her. My tongue darted out over my lips, and my eyes met hers again.

  “Everything is good,” I told her. “I’ll be here right after your class is over, okay?”

  “If you say so.” She sounded about as convinced as a collection agent talking to a guy about his back child support.

  “I do,” I replied. I tried to keep my eyes off her lips as best I could. I wanted to kiss her. It seemed natural, like I should have kissed her right then.

  But we hadn’t talked about anything like that.

  Fuck.

  “See you soon,” I finally said. Nicole nodded. I released her, and she walked into the classroom.

  Once I saw she had settled down toward the back of the class, I started heading for my Shakespeare class. Before I got very far, I felt a hand on my shoulder and looked up into Clint Oliver’s face.

  “Malone!” he said with a smile.

  “Wassup, Clint?”

  “I was going to ask you the same thing, man!” he said as he leaned in toward me like a co-conspirator. He was talking way too fucking loud for anything to be secretive.

  “Don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said. I sped up a bit as I pushed his hand from my shoulder.

  “You and the Skye girl!” he yelled. As if I didn’t know what he meant. He quickened his pace to keep up with me. “I thought you already tapped that bitch! Since when do you go back for seconds on pussy?”

  I froze in the middle of the hall, stopping dead in my tracks and bracing myself as some freshman plowed into me and then backed away with wide, frightened eyes. I barely noticed him. I clenched my hands into tight fists and barely resisted the urge to just turn around and beat the living shit out of Clint right there where he stood.

  I had a better idea.

  “Come with me,” I said coldly.

  “Where are we going?” the idiot asked.

  “Locker room,” I replied as I took off again. There was no first period gym, so it would most likely be empty.

  “What for?”

  “I need some practice,” I replied.

  “But it’s first bell...”

  “So what?” I turned to him and leveled my eyes with his. He nodded slightly and followed me as I knew he would.

  He’d follow me after today as well.

  We entered the locker room and found Mika Klosav in there, smoking a cigarette by the showers.

  “Hey, Thomas!” he called out. “Did you really bring Nicole to school?”

  Actually, his presence was fucking perfect.

  “Shut the fuck up,” I said with a growl toward Klosav. Then I turned to Clint, but I didn’t speak to him.

  I grabbed Clint’s shirt by the collar and threw him against the lockers. I didn’t let go but pulled him back and slammed his head against the metal. I punched him twice in the stomach, causing him to double over, but more importantly, taking the wind out of him so he couldn’t fucking talk. I reached over and opened one of the tall lockers, shoved him inside of it, and then slammed the door in his face. I could hear him yelling, but I didn’t give a shit about the words, so I didn’t really listen.

  Pain seared down my side, but I didn’t fucking care.

  “Malone…what the fuck?” Klosav dropped his smoke and took a few steps toward me. I turned and snarled wordlessly at him, and he stopped in his tracks.

  I fished a padlock from the bin, twisted the key to open it, and returned to the locker, flipping the lock through the little ring by the handle while Clint continued to yell. I backed up and kicked the center of the door, denting it slightly with my heel.

 
“Shut the fuck up!” I screamed at him. I twisted the lock and clicked it shut. “You keep your fucking mouth shut, you hear me, you little piece of shit? If I hear one more fucking SOUND from you, I’m going to rip your fucking throat out!”

  I kicked at the door again, leaving another mark.

  “I want to make one thing absolutely…fucking…clear…” I accentuated my words with continued kicks to the door. “Don’t you ever…ever speak about Nicole like that! You don’t talk about her. You don’t touch her. You don’t fucking look at her without my permission!”

  I took the little key to the padlock and balanced it on the bench next to the row of lockers—right at the edge. I jumped up on the bench and placed my foot right on the edge and on top of the key. I pushed hard, leaning into it while trying to keep my balance. Once it was bent enough to be useless, I picked it back up, jumped off the bench, and threw it toward the showers.

  Mika ducked to keep from losing an eye.

  “Do you fucking hear me, Clint?” I slammed my fist into the damaged locker door.

  “Fuck! Yes! I hear you!” he screamed back.

  “You hear me, Klosav?” I turned and snapped at Mika. “Is it perfectly fucking clear to you, too?”

  “I got it,” he said quietly, his eyes wide.

  “Make sure everyone fucking gets it!” I turned on my heel and stormed off.

  I was only five minutes late to class, and the teacher was going over Hamlet. I ignored her glare as I walked to the back of the room and dropped down in my seat. I rubbed my bruised knuckles against my aching side. I couldn’t concentrate on the teacher’s flowing words. Inside my head, there was nothing but violence.

  It scared me.

  News about Clint spread pretty fast, maybe a little too fast. The first half of the day, I walked Nicole to all her classes, and everything went well. I had calmed down. No one was bugging Rumple. I had my arm around her, and by third bell, she was relaxing and not hiding behind her hair so much.

  Lunch was a little different.

  I was waiting for her outside of her calc class, but instead of walking over to me slowly and sliding up next to me as she had done during her previous classes, she stomped right past me with fire in her eyes. I turned and followed her, ignoring a couple of snickers behind me. She went straight into the lunchroom and stood in line. She didn’t even turn back to look at me.

  She was obviously pissed.

  And it was just cute as hell.

  “Something wrong, Rumple?”

  “Don’t call me that!” she snapped. She grabbed one of the orange plastic trays and slammed it down on the silver steel rails.

  “Why do you always say that when you’re pissed about something?” I asked. I moved up close behind her—not quite touching her but knowing she could feel my presence. “You don’t usually mind me calling you that.”

  “I don’t really want to speak to you at all right now, Thomas.”

  “Well, I haven’t seen you for the last hour, and everything was good up until that point,” I said. “Want to tell me what’s gone wrong since then?”

  “What did you do to Clint Oliver?”

  “I shoved him in a locker and padlocked it,” I said.

  “And you hit him?”

  “A couple times.” I shrugged. “Not really hard or anything. It was mostly to shut him up. I did more damage to the locker.”

  She turned to me with a look of complete disbelief.

  “What the fuck is wrong with you?” Nicole used that sort of whisper-yell thing that only girls seem to be capable of doing. “You beat him up and locked him in a locker? Why would you do that?”

  “I didn’t like the shit spewing from his mouth,” I replied. “He was disrespectful. I reminded him to show me some respect.”

  “Christ, Thomas!” Nicole looked down at the banana on her lunch tray as she shook her head. “You beat a guy up!”

  “He deserved it,” I told her.

  “Did you beat up Frankie Ronald and Mika Klosav, too?”

  Oh shit. Forgot about them.

  “Um…Frankie, yeah,” I admitted. “Mika—not really.”

  “Not really?”

  “I punched him.” Again my shoulders went up and down. “Only once.”

  “Is that what you do all the time, beat people up when you don’t like what they say?”

  “Not always,” I said. I pulled away from her a bit. I didn’t like this…this having to justify myself. I never justified my own actions. I did what I fucking wanted to do at school.

  “Why, Thomas? What did Clint do that was deserving of all that?”

  “He was running his mouth,” I said. “I already told you that.”

  “What did he say exactly?”

  Well, I really didn’t want to tell her the specifics. I promised to protect her from all that bullshit, and that’s exactly what I intended to do.

  When I didn’t respond, Nicole grabbed a yogurt and a bagel and slid her tray to the cashier. I dropped a Gatorade on Nicole’s tray and slammed a twenty-dollar bill on the cash register. Nicole turned to glare at me as she put her wallet back in her book bag, shoved the Gatorade back at me, and stalked off with her tray.

  She was actually starting to make me a little hard.

  I followed her to a table and flopped down next to her. She leaned forward on her arms and turned her head away from me. I leaned forward, too, placing the side of my face on my arms and peeking up at her through her curtain of hair.

  “Would it matter if I said I was defending your honor?”

  “Not in the least!” she snapped back at me. “You can’t just do that, Thomas! You can’t just attack someone because they say something you don’t like! They had to take the lockers apart to get him out!”

  “That was the idea,” I said. “How is he going to learn a lesson if he gets out right away?”

  “What?” She turned to me with her eyes full of fire. “That’s your idea of a teaching lesson, is it?”

  “You’re cute when you’re mad,” I told her.

  “You have been, and continue to be, a total jerk,” she replied. “I don’t think I have ever met anyone who is as self-centered and obnoxiously egotistical as you are.”

  I moved closer, raising myself out of the chair a little so I could get close to her ear.

  “Teach not thy lip such scorn, for it was made for kissing, lady, not for such contempt.”

  She glanced at me quickly, and I heard her breath stop in her throat. Her skin tone darkened for a split second before she scowled.

  “Do you think quoting Shakespeare is going to make any difference?”

  “A guy can hope, can’t he?”

  “You’re incorrigible.”

  I had to smile.

  “A little,” I admitted with a shrug.

  Nicole’s look softened, and she turned toward me a bit. She looked at me quizzically for a moment as she took a bite of her bagel. I stole the spork for her yogurt and started tapping it against the side of her tray.

  “Were you?” she suddenly asked.

  “Was I what?”

  “Defending my honor?”

  “Maybe.”

  “What did he say?” she asked, and I could see the hurt in her eyes. That’s exactly what I didn’t want to see. I tucked the spork into the pocket of my jeans. I’d put it on the top shelf of my locker with the other one. I reached up to push her hair over her shoulder.

  “It doesn’t matter,” I told her. “I said I would take care of it, and I did. No one is going to say anything about you again. I’m going to…”

  I thought about it for a moment, trying to make sure I chose the right word.

  “I’m going to protect you,” I finally said.

  She looked at me thoughtfully for a moment, nodded slightly, and then sat back in her seat with a sigh. I sat back, too, and then scooted my chair closer to hers. I slipped my arm around the back of her seat, and I leaned my chair back until it was casually balancing on two legs
.

  Maybe I had been out of line in barricading Clint inside the locker. Maybe Shakespeare would have said I was one to “imitate the action of the tiger.” I wasn’t sure, but at least I seemed to be forgiven at the moment.

  We made it through the rest of the day and off to my soccer practice. Jeremy pounded me with free kicks from inside the box along with questions about Nicole.

  “Since when do you kick ass for a chick?” he asked as he slammed another ball toward the goal.

  I jumped and tapped the ball with my fingers, sending it far left of target, but landed on my left side in the process. I winced and pulled myself up to my hands and knees.

  “Sorry, dude,” he said.

  “It’s okay,” I said as I tried to control my breathing. “It’s really not bad…just when I hit it in a certain spot, you know?”

  “I don’t know,” Jeremy said. “No one’s ever broken my ribs.”

  “Rib,” I corrected him. “Only one.”

  “Whatever.” He looked at me for a minute as he dusted off the ball and tossed it back to the ground. I positioned myself just right of the center of the goal and crouched—watching the tension in his legs and hips…calculating which way he would move…which way he would kick.

  “Okay, boys—let’s scrimmage!” Coach Wagner’s voice called out from the sidelines. Everyone started lining up in the center, and I looked over to the stands to see Nicole walking up and standing near the fence by the bleachers.

  “It was an interesting little display this morning,” Jeremy said quietly as we approached the rest of the team. “Want to explain that one?”

  “Clint’s an ass who needed to be smacked down,” I replied with a shrug.

  “Over a girl?

  “Fuck you.”

  Jeremy just chuckled in response.

  We lined up, and I ended up on the skins team. I jogged over to the fence, toward Nicole, and pulled my practice jersey over my head.

  “Why don’t you hold on to this for me,” I said with a wink as I tossed my shirt in her direction. Nicole rolled her eyes.

  “It smells godawful,” she remarked.

  I smirked as I stretched my arms behind my back and then leaned to each side in turn.

  “Your rib okay?” she asked suddenly as her eyes moved to my taped-up side.