I shot daggers at Cris with my eyes and he whispered an apology before running away from my nails that were about to grip his throat.
Bloody bastard.
I crossed the threshold with my face red enough to resemble a tomato. I didn’t look at Donovan, but I didn’t need to know he was behind my seat, as he usually was.
I sat down and pondered what to do about the guy behind me. I should apologize, but damn, it was hard, too hard, especially when he passed by ignoring Cris and me like a perfect asshole.
“You can do this, Celina, just say you’re sorry, it’s not that hard.”
Yes it is. It is!
Almost imperceptible to the human eye, I started to turn around, right at the moment one of Jessi’s friends approached him. The one with the black hair, the one who told me Donovan was sexy, that wretch was about to talk to him and I was a move away from telling her to back off.
“You’ve been missed, sweetheart,” she purrs, leaning her backside on Donovan’s desk.
Silence.
“Aren’t you going to answer me?” I noticed the indignation in her voice.
Donovan wasn’t going to answer her…
“I’m not interested.”
Well, maybe he was going to do it after all.
“Mh, bad boy. Is it true that you were dating Jessi’s cousin?” I tensed up. I knew she was there to hear him and she loved it.
“Control yourself, Celina, just ignore it, ignore it.”
“No,” he simply replied.
He wasn’t lying, but it hurt that he denied me like that, he could at least say that we were friends or at least, were we? I don’t know what to think. After the other night, I don’t even know what we are.
“Would you date me?” she asked without hesitation. I immediately expected Donovan’s rejection, but I didn’t get it. Was he thinking about it? I didn’t want to see his expression to find out, I wasn’t going to turn around to let him see how much it was affecting me that he would accept this girl’s proposal just to annoy me. Could he be that immature?
“Maybe,” he considered, making a knot form in my throat. What was he doing?
“I thought you were more accessible than all the girls thought, you know, since you went out with this,” she spat looking at me and pointing at me for her to see.
“To hell with controlling yourself, kill her.”
“Excuse me?” I questioned, turning to face her, kind of daring her to repeat it.
“On top of that, half-deaf. I’m a better catch.”
That was the last straw.
I got up from my seat and she did the same from Donovan’s desk. We approached each other to face off. “Repeat it. Just one more time. Give me a damn reason to…”
She let out a laugh, interrupting me. “For what? You want me to beat you up like Jessi? I won’t hesitate to do it.”
I made a fist at my side and was about to punch her disgusting face when Donovan stepped between us. “Back off.”
One would think that he was watching Donovan’s back while he threatened the girl who had been defaming me since I arrived at the institute with Jessi… but that’s not the case, gentlemen, nothing could be further from the truth. Donovan’s chest was in front of me and I had to lift my face to see his. He was telling me to back off. To me.
“She started it,” I said, trying to defend myself.
“Did I ask you? I said back off,” he ordered, without any expression on his face or in his voice. He was not the Donovan I knew.
“Who the hell do you think you are to tell me what to do?” I narrowed my eyes at him, trying not to show how much he was hurting me. “Are you protecting her?”
I couldn’t believe this situation. I never in a million years thought Donovan would defend that girl over me.
He shook his head as if he couldn’t believe this shit either. “Sit down, Celina.”
I was furious.
I was exasperated.
I was helpless.
I was shattered.
I pushed his chest away from me, I couldn’t bear his insipid closeness, not now.
I’m sure my eyes were filled with tears and I wouldn’t be able to tell if they were from anger or sadness.
That’s when I saw another expression on Donovan’s face for the first time that day. Was he hurt? Now, I don’t give a damn.
“Yes Donovan, I’m sitting down, wait for me,” I pushed his shoulder hard, ignoring the girl who was smiling next to him. “I wish you both a nice fuck!”
I was wrong, maybe he didn’t agree to go out with her to annoy me, maybe he did because he’s a complete bastard.
I practically ran to the exit, pushing people who were around us watching as Donovan protected the girl from the claws of the beast.
Cris was not wrong, I was a beast.
A beast that got entangled in Donovan’s game. So he wanted to play? Fine, big mistake on his part, I can play much better than him.
***
No, I wasn’t going to stoop to his level.
I didn’t need him.
I can be better than him.
Plan one: Pretend he doesn’t exist.
“He’s fucking you with his eyes, I feel sorry for him,” Cris whispered in my ear, looking behind me, surely Donovan would be there and that’s why I wasn’t going to turn around. It was Thursday and I can swear that since Monday I didn’t turn to look at him and I won’t lie saying that this was not killing me.
“That’s a shame for him…” I retorted sarcastically, walking towards the parking lot with Cris behind me trying to keep up with my hurried steps.
“Go talk to him, he probably didn’t defend her like you think…” He started and I stopped dead in my tracks. I looked at him in the most somber way and he raised his hands in surrender. “Calm down, don’t kill me.”
Cris approached me and put an arm around my shoulders, trying in some way to console me. “He’s a jerk.”
“I know, honey,” he murmured over the top of my head and kissed it.
The plan was getting very hard for me from the moment I realized that having Donovan so close and not looking at him was affecting me. Everything was affecting me lately and I hate it, I wasn’t like this.
Plan two: Sit in another desk, away from him.
“This is my seat,” the guy who until yesterday sat in the place where I was more than comfortably settled, assured me.
I’m sorry to say that I had to beg the literature teacher, who is a pain in the ass to teach, to let me change seats and she agreed… after I sorted all her books alphabetically.
I spent eight hours there.
“Sorry, I talked to the literature teacher and she gave me your seat… but mine is not far away.”
The guy spat out a couple of curses towards me and the teacher, but he walked away defeated to my old seat. I turned around just to see a very pissed off Donovan looking at me and then at the back of the guy’s neck, as if he wanted to get him out of that seat by force.
Well, yes, I looked at him.
Plan three: Don’t respond to his ways of getting my attention.
“Can you move?” Donovan said, pushing my shoulder to enter the institute.
I wasn’t in the way, he could move just a meter to the right and he would have entered.
But no, the bastard wanted me to respond.
I wouldn’t do it.
When he bothered me directly, I always nodded, without saying a word and from all his pissed off reactions, I knew that pissed him off.
Plan four and hardest: Don’t give in to Donovan.