We get onto the school bus, us being the last ones to get on because we were "enormously" late, we take the seats in the front of the bus because all the back ones are taken. We sit in pairs once again, me sitting next to Melanie this time, Michael sitting with Johnny, Josh sitting with Alicia and Alex sitting with Tasha.
As soon as everyone was on, the bus started its engine and we made our way back to school. "Where were you the whole trip?" I look to the back and see the person I hate the most in my entire life. "On a big adventure where we looked at some of the best paintings in history" I impersonate him and then chuckle to myself making the whole bus laugh as well. Melanie nudges me with her elbow and gives me a look telling me to stop.
"Why do you care where she was, suspenders?"
I always find a way of humiliating him but I know my reasons, sometimes I don't but you know whatever. Mostly it's because he cares too much, he always sticks his nose everywhere, into things that aren't his problems yet somehow he always manages to know. "I was talking to her not to you" he spits back only making me laugh.
The whole bus is looking at us, people at the back of the bus are standing on their feet so they can watch the scene we're making. "I was with them" Melanie speaks up really softly answering his question. "Can I speak to you after?" he replies in a softer voice as well, ignoring the fact that I'm right in front of them.
"Oooohh, suspenders has a crush on Melanie" I say making the whole bus laugh again and they all start singing "Tom and Melanie sitting on a tree, K I S S I N G" Melanie buries her head in her hands from embarrassment.
Suddenly Tom raises his voice from anger, "Yeah? Well it's not like you two haven't been spending a lot of time together!"
"Oh Tommy, it's not like I can't have any girl on this bus" I get up on my feet and start pointing to random girls that were watching. "I can have you, you, you, you, you and you" at this point I grab Melanie by her waist to lift her up from her seat, I bring my lips to hers and start kissing her hungrily. She unexpectedly pulls away and a smirk forms on my face, but when she looks at me she starts shaking her head very slowly, a frown on her face, her eyes not leaving mine.
That's when my smirk starts fading away and she walks to the back of the bus, looking for a spare seat. I sit back down into my seat, processing what just happened.
What did I just do? God, I'm such a dickhead, I always have to mess shit up, I could have known better than to do stupid shit like that. Melanie's not one of them naive girls who'd do anything and would give up literally anything just to hug me or even talk to me- matter of fact get a hi from me or a single a look from me.
Being too lost in my thoughts, I haven't even realised that the bus stopped in front of our school and people were going home already. After talking to Miss Williams in her office we make my way to the car park. Once we dropped of all the boys, Michael drops me off as well, our whole car journey was silent because they knew I was in a bad mood.
"You know you shouldn't have done that" Michael says as he stops the car before my house. "If you like her, go get her back" he says once again taking me by surprise.
"I thought you said-"
"About what I said before... I was wrong" I scowl at his answer and he speaks up again, "I didn't know how you felt but now I do and it's nobody's choice to make but yours. You decide whether you wanna be with her or not and I'm sorry for not understanding you, now I do."
I scoff, "Eve?" I asked him with a smile on my face and he just nods, "Thanks" I say to him and pull the door handle to open the car.
When I get home, I think about what Michael said to me and he's right, it's time for me to stop caring about what others think, whether I "the popular guy" decide to date a nerd, that's my private thing, not anybody elses to care about.
I decide to give Michael a call since I'm clearly not in one of my best moods and I can't come up with a solution.
"Hey man, so I tried calling her a multiple of times but she didn't answer, I left her like 20 messages, at least 6 voice mails and nothing."
"Whoa whoa, Dylan stop stressing about it so much, she just needs her space right now"
"How do you know that? Since you met Eve you became like a love expert all of a sudden"
"Nah, I just imagined what it'd be like if I was her"
"You're right, so what do I do?"
"Just give it some time-"
"I don't have-"
"Or..."
"Or what?... Or what? Talk Michael"
"Just go to hers"
"Yeah, I'll do that, thanks bro"
"That was a 'or' so I'm not saying it's the best thing to do... Dylan? Dylan?!"
I ended the call and started getting dressed into some comfortable black jeans and a red hoodie. I know Michael told me that the other option was an 'or' option but it seemed like the best option until now. Standing in front of her door and contemplating whether to actually knock or not.
"Are you going to knock or not?" I heard a familiar voice coming from the back, scaring me a bit. I turn around to see Eve standing opposite me in blue jeans and a white cardigan. I smile to myself, "I don't know if I should"
"I think you should so if you won't, I will. Now knock on the door and I'll wait right here" I nod to her suggestion and knock on the door with my shaky hand and nerves in my whole body.
Moment later the door opens and then immediately closes right after she sees me. I put my foot into the doorway to stop her from closing it fully. "I don't want to talk to you right now" she says from the other side of the door still trying to close the door with pressure, kind of hurting my foot a bit. "When will you wanna talk to me then?" I question back.
"Never." she replies. Nice and short, cooool.
"Melanie please" the door then opens revealing her in her baby blue pyjamas, wearing her old glasses and the same baby blue headband she always wears. Before I can even look at her properly, she swiftly closes the door again, "Go home Dylan!" she loudly says from the other side. I just sigh.
"Hey let me talk to her" I turn around again, Eve giving me a kind smile which I return and then make my way back home.
MELANIE'S POV
Before I can even enter the living room, I hear knocking on the door again, with a sigh I return to the door, preparing myself to swear. "I already said, go home Dylan!"
I open the door to see my cousin Eve squinting her eyes at me, "Sorry to disappoint but I'm not Dylan" she says making me smile. I leave the door open for her to welcome herself in, she closes the door behind her and takes her shoes off following me into the living room.
"Looks like someone's mad" she says when she enters the living room after looking around and seeing two ice cream tubs one of which is already empty. I grab the second ice cream tub which is also half empty and start eating it with my spoon again, "I'm not mad" I say as I put both of my legs on the sofa and cross them making me more comfortable.
She sits next to me and crosses her legs over as well, leaning into me, "doesn't look like it" she says as she leans forward towards the table grabbing some pop corn in her hand before putting it in her mouth. "What happened?"
"What happened is, he humiliated me in front of the whole class" I growl and carry on watching what's on the TV, which to be honest isn't interesting at all. She sighs grabbing the rest of the bowl with pop corn and faces me. "I think you should talk to him."
"I think the fuck not!" I say when I realise what she actually said, almost choking on my ice cream. I can't believe what she just said, out of everyone she should know me the best, meaning I'm stubborn.
"I mean- Look at you! You're here eating two tubs of ice cream, a bowl of pop corn, chilly pepper crisps and chocolate with raisins, you hate raisins!"
"Yeah well we ran out of chocolate with nuts" I say with a mouth full of ice cream, almost making it sound like I was talking in gibberish.
"Mel, it clearly bothers you, so talk to him" she whines.
I put my spoon into my tub of ice cream and sharply turn around facing her, "Fine. What do you want me to say?"
She sighs for longer than possible, "God Melanie, you're so stubborn"
"Yeah got that one right" I motion with my spoon cocking my eyebrows.
NEXT DAY IN SCHOOL
I walk into the canteen hall with my food on my plate, making my way to sit in my usual spot, at the back with all the "losers" as everyone likes to call us. As soon as me and Alicia take our seats, we see Chelsea, Donna, Tom and Damien make way towards our table too. And that's our squad, a bunch of nerdy, geeky students interested in science and maths, things that other people- sorry, normal people are not interested in.
"You okay?" Chelsea asks me as soon as she takes her seat, assuming I have my face on bitch mode. I just nod, not wanting to talk about it. Usually I wouldn't even think about looking in the direction where the popular kids are sitting, but now that I met one of them it's hard not to.
When a certain someone who always wears pink and high heels to school enters the hall with her moron friend besides her, they make their way to the "popular club" table. That's what we call them. Before I used to hate guys like Dylan because to me they were selfish rich brats who knew nothing about intelligence and treating people like people and not like their slaves. Now don't get me wrong my point of view on popular guys has changed a tiny bit but not enough for me to stop hating them. Just when I thought they're different they show themselves in their true light.
I stare as the woman in pink walks her way over to the popular club table, her heels making distracting and very annoying click clacks as she walks by. She stops before Dylan and whispers something into his ear, when she sees me staring at them she bites his ear lobe. I hate her. She must be really happy to see him without me, after she told me to stay away from him but I didn't- well he didn't stay away from me so technically it's not my fault.
He turns around to face her after she does her thing with his ear gross and quietly says something to her, I wonder what, but judging by her face nothing good, although knowing him he's probably like 'meet me in the toilets in 10 minutes'. From the corner of his eyes he catches me staring and my bitch resting face is on full active mode.
He looks deep into my eyes, me not breaking the eye-contact because I have to pretend like I don't care when inside I'm dying. After seconds of staring at me, that beautiful and sexy smirk of his appears on his face, you know the one that could make me do anything, the one that always gets me no matter how many times I've seen it, the one that enlightens my day. Oh god I should really stop- but I don't want tooooooo.
Ugh why is it so hard liking a boy? and why are boys so complicated? Like it doesn't take much to make a girl happy, for instance he made me happy just know by smirking at me, one simple move and I'm already his and he knows it and that pisses me off.
Look at me talking about boys being complicated, but girls are far worse, like me right now, he's smirking at me and deep inside I'm dying and want to go up to him and just kiss him until someone pulls me away, but instead of doing that I'm playing it the hard way and being stubborn about it. Ugh some things just can't go the easy way.
He then stands up from his seat before nodding at Michael errrrm what is that suppose to mean? and then walks up to my table with that same hot smirk on his face again. I can't help but smile as I'm looking at him coming closer, so I fix my eyes on my plate in front of me to hide my smile from him because if he saw it, it wouldn't be good, he'd know that I already forgave him even though I don't want to.
Seconds later I hear the chair next to me screech the floor as he takes the chair out of the table, ready to sit on it, but instead he sits on the table and puts his feet on the chair. "Hey nerd" he smiles at me. I pick my head up from the table, trying my best not to smile so instead a give him a dirty look with my resting bitch face. He doesn't need to know that inside I'm dying and would give anything just for him to take me away from others.
"May I help you with something?" I sarcastically say making him chuckle. God it's so hard not to laugh with him when his face looks like an angel.
"Actually, yeah. You see, I lost my princess, so I was hoping if you could tell her that I'm really sorry and that I need her back" Smooth as your face Dylan but I'm not forgiving you.
"Why don't you tell her yourself?"
"Okay I will." he says before smirking again and I can already feel my cheeks starting to blush so I put my head down again, looking into my plate with food and picking bits of pasta out with my fork, pretending to actually consider eating some of it. He leans in and I can feel his breath on my right ear sending shivers down my spine.
"I'm a dickhead-" he starts but I interrupt, "Yeah you are."
"Just listen" he says and I look up realising that he's only inches away from my face, I fold my arms in front waiting for a answer, "I'm sorry princess, will you forgive me?" He asks before smiling at me. That nickname is something I can get used to really quickly.
"No." I say, not as coldly as it sounds.
"Mela-"
"Shut. It" I look at Dylan pointing his index finger at Tom who just spoke but was cut off by Dylan again. He really doesn't like him. He then averts his eyes from him to me, "Please Melanie" Oh my god, my heart, it just stopped for a split second. How can someone have this affect on me by just saying my name?
I sigh and look away from him. As much as I want to forgive him, I also don't want to, besides he's better off with someone like miss pink lady over there.
Suddenly I'm being dragged out of the canteen hall and somehow I managed to grab Alicia with me. We stop in the corridor outside the canteen and he unexpectedly backs me up against the wall automatically putting his hands on my waist, he starts leaning in very quickly, urgently trying to kiss me so I pull him closer to me with my hands around his neck as our lips brush over each others before he passionately starts kissing me.
After a few moments pass, we pull away starting to breathe heavily, we both look into each others eyes for a few seconds before he rests his forehead on mine, "I guess I'm forgiven" he smiles before softly placing his lips on mine again, planting a small meaningful kiss. I chuckle into his lips, "cheeky" and he smiles as well.
"Well that was awkward, watching you two make out" Alicia then speaks up and we both look to our left, heat rushing towards my cheeks whereas he has a smirk plastered on his face. Two different people. For a moment I forgot I took her out with me, but I guess I did forgive him, how can someone not after a kiss like that?