Boys And Their Toys: A Dark High School Bully Romance (Troubled Playthings 1)

thing really,” Lucas said. “I mean, if you say this happened, I guess it happened? I just know a few weird things about you from back then.”

This was my chance to make some joke about how kids were funny and try to steer the conversation away from that whole mess, but his carelessness had provoked me and I wasn’t awake enough to make better choices.

“Well, surely you remember our fifth grade school dance.”

“Surely,” Lucas echoed.

“You asked me to go with you,” I said. “As a date.”

“What?” said Lucas. “Wouldn’t I have had—”

He’d stopped too late for me to be able to pretend I didn’t know where he was going with that. Wouldn’t he have had someone better to go with?

“I can’t explain it to you,” I said. “It’s not like eleven-year-old me ever bothered to ask eleven-year-old you whether there was some deeper meaning behind it all. You just asked me, and I said yes.”

“Okay,” said Lucas, “so when we went to this exciting party I can’t remember, what did we do? Share some non-alcoholic punch? Dance at a safe distance of about one foot?”

I winced. He remembered the dumb rule our homeroom teacher had instigated that year to deal with excessive physical contact between boys and girls, but not that party? “We didn’t end up going together. You came up to me a few days before the party, while there were lots of kids around who had already been teasing me about my new boyfriend, and you told me you didn’t actually want to be just going around with someone else at the party. So I said it was fine, and really it was, except I wished you’d never asked in the first place if you were going to be like that, because it just made me look like an absolute idiot. And I still don’t know why you did any of that, not that I know why you’re doing any of what you’re doing now either…”

“So… is that what’s been going on in your head the whole time we’ve been hanging out?” Lucas asked. Only he could characterise what had been happening between us the past few weeks generally as ‘hanging out’. “You’re there trying to work out if you can finally get the answers to your questions about some stupid thing that happened years ago I can’t even remember?”

“No, I—” I could just see the side of his face as he concentrated on not driving particularly carefully, and I felt like I hardly recognised what I saw. At any other time when we’d clashed, when he’d seemed annoyed at me, there had been that hint of playfulness in his face still. It was a part of him, it seemed—but right now it was completely absent.

Had I said things so clumsily I had convinced him I was far more worked up about the whole situation than was actually the case?

“Like you said,” I tried again, “it was years ago. So obviously I haven’t been just sitting around going over it all this time. But when you suddenly started paying attention to me again, of course I was going to wonder again. And now you’re telling me you don’t even remember the months you spent coming up to me and acting like you liked me… yeah, that’s all in the past, but of course it’s going to make me question whether this is just something you do to girls all the time. If none of it is at all meaningful to you.”

“Of course none of it is meaningful to me,” said Lucas. “I thought we went over that already. I’m not looking to have some relationship, I just want… well, it’s none of your business.” He was slowing the car, which was an unexpected relief. I’d thought I was starting to get past the fear of vehicles all my recent accidents had stirred up, but it was no surprise that Lucas could throw me right back in that place. “So is that what all of this is about to you, then? You think that just because I paid you some attention years ago—apparently—that we might be meant to belong together? Like we’re some destined lovers?”

“I don’t think anything like that,” I insisted, my voice shaking in part because of that existing fear, and partly because of a new fear that Tamara’s suggestion, Lucas’s accusation, might have something in it. “I was just wondering if maybe…”

Lucas pulled the car over so hard the tyres scraped against the edge of the sidewalk. “Get out,” he said.

“What?”

“I’m sick of your shit. Get out of my car.”

“Lucas, I’m barely properly dressed, I don’t have my keys or my phone…”

“Do you want to know why girls like you don’t ‘get the guy’, Calista?” He was looking at me now, but his eyes were dark in a way that wasn’t just the usual colour of them. I wasn’t sure he was even really seeing me like normal at all. “I bet that’s what you all talk about, in your little groups when you’re there staring out at the rest of us like we have some secret you just can’t crack. Like we’re just a bunch of meanies who won’t tell you the profound truths of life. And that’s not what it fucking is at all. You’re all just so fucking complicated. Won’t let a thing be what it is, there’s always got to be all this other shit going on under the surface. That’s why those other girls win out over you. They don’t turn something simple into a big fucking deal.”

I felt like the venom in his voice was pinning me to my seat. It didn’t make any sense to me that he was being so vicious about something we both agreed was stupid.

“I’m waiting, Calista,” Lucas said. “Get the fuck out. Don’t make me drag you out.”

“You can’t mean it, it’s dark out there, I don’t even know where we are, I—”

“Of course I fucking mean it, Callie. I don’t just say shit for no reason.”

His shift back to my shortened name gave me a bit of hope. This was just more of Lucas being Lucas. He’d already promised to help me get back into my house, hadn’t he? The bastard just wanted to make some point, and then he’d let me back in, a bit shaken but wiser for the experience from his perspective.

Well, I knew better than to think I could avoid playing along with his game. I opened the door and slid out, shivering more from the humiliation of it than the actual cold. I couldn’t even believe I’d started out this night thinking maybe I would be willing to sleep with Lucas, if he wanted to take things in that direction. I couldn’t even see what I’d been attracted to on the surface any more.

Lucas reached over to slam the door in my face, and before I could process what was happening before my eyes, he had driven off into the darkness. His taillights turned a corner, and I could no longer see him.

And now there I was, standing by the side of the road in what seemed to be an industrial part of town. It felt like the sort of place where my dad would warn me not to wait around too long at the lights. But I had no idea how to get out of it, and I doubted there would be anyone hanging around in the darkened concrete structures all around me this late at night, not that I felt good about just walking up to some random business.

There was no way Lucas really meant to leave me out here. If I waited long enough, he would come back. He was just going to do a lap or two around the area to fuck with me. He wasn’t…