Tamara had gone all stiff and scowling. I really liked that fighty attitude to her—I liked it so much I needed both my arms suddenly to disguise just how much. “It’s not like I just felt like you were doing something wrong, you were definitely crossing a line somehow and everyone else saw it. I’m not going to be allowed to forget about it for the rest of the year.”
Well, I wasn’t going to let the likes of Tyrell fuck with Tamara any more. I didn’t have the charm Lucas had, but Ty and I played footy together, and I had ways of letting him know that shit was not going to fly. Once I hit him a few times during training, he would knock it off. Ty wasn’t a bad guy, he was just a dick.
“I’m going to think over my actions more carefully from now on,” I told her, like a fucking choirboy. “Because I know they can have an impact beyond just what happens to me.”
Yeah, I knew how to get women off my back when I needed to.
Ms. Miller looked tentatively pleased, and for her part Tamara nodded. Good girl. “I appreciate it. I just want to forget all of this happened really.”
Oh, she would definitely be able to forget all of this once I was through with her.
Chapter Six: Tamara
I’d been so freaked out when Steven was there next to me. I felt like he would be able to see what I’d done, and once he knew there was no chance he was going to be nice to me.
What I’d actually learned was messing with me too, of course. I already knew Steven was aggressive, violent. But so abusive someone had needed to turn to a legal method of protecting herself from him? That was scary… and now I was in his sights. And Ms. Miller was… protecting him, somehow? Keeping his secrets, at least, which I supposed was required of her as part of her job, but still seemed pretty fucked-up to me. I didn’t even know if I could take it as her not seeing any genuine danger ahead for me.
I almost wished I’d agreed to try bringing myself into his group. If Callie could forgive me the sin of caring about her, she was the best person to give me advice on how to handle someone in Steven’s league… but considering how things had turned out with her, maybe that wasn’t my best-ever idea.
Well, I wasn’t going to change my mind now. Over lunchtime, instead of tempting myself into doing something that might just start another round of trouble with Steven, I hid in the library with some homework. Of course, I’d never been good at concentrating on work at school at the best of times when it always felt like someone might be just about to creep up on me, and I soon closed my book and wandered over to the one nearby window positioned so you could see out of it.
I’d never realised before, but that window looked out on the sports fields, where people like Steven spent their breaks. And as I thought of his name, before I could do anything to stop myself, my eyes located him on the field, jumping for an impossibly high football. I couldn’t help staring at the play of his muscles under his shirt as he brought the ball close to his chest, landing almost with dancing grace. I knew just how strong he was, how much force he could bring to bear if he needed to. It was the last thing I should be doing, but it made me wonder what it would be like if he was bringing all that strength down on me when he wasn’t angry. If—
What I was thinking was completely messed-up. I knew what Mum would say: it was a product of the forgotten traumas of my childhood—and I wouldn’t have been completely confident in telling her she was wrong either. Although, considering everything that had happened with Callie, maybe it would turn out we were all just exercising poor judgement because of the stress of being so close to finishing school.
Steven came up alongside another guy who I recognised from that distance because he’d been imprinted on my memory after recent events: Tyrell. It just figured they knew one another well—
Tyrell staggered as Steven rammed him hard in the side. I wasn’t an expert at guy social interactions, but it seemed a bit rough by usual kick-a-ball-around standards. Tyrell appeared to be laughing it off, coming back around to jostle with him—and then Steven’s next strike sent him rolling. Tyrell turned right over and landed on his feet, and didn’t come at Steven again.
I kept staring, but my mind was a long way away. That had to have been a point Steven was making with Tyrell, and I was related to the most recent encounter he’d had with Tyrell to need to make a point. I didn’t want my mind to be going in the direction it was going… but I didn’t seem to be able to help it.
By the time I was able to focus on the actual activities outside again, Steven and Tyrell were running together, exchanging a ball in perfect synchronisation like they hadn’t fought in their lives. Whatever message Steven had been sending, he seemed satisfied it had gotten through. That was how the male half of the population worked. When the bell started ringing to call us in from lunch, the two of them ran in together, trading punches and back slaps.
I turned from the window and, just for a moment, crouched so nobody could see me. Was that how all males in this world worked? Was whatever they did to you only something that happened in the moment and gone soon after?
Did he think about that girl with the restraining order? Did he think about what he’d done to her, I meant, not in annoyance whenever it was possibly going to cause him a problem, but because he felt sorry for her, because he worried about how he might have hurt her? I wanted to believe the answer was yes, but I didn’t have the evidence to back it up.
I sat with my laptop on my knees late that night and stared at my chat program, which was of course a time-honoured method of getting more responses to pop up.
Aileen had messaged me just before dinner to let me know she’d decided an apology wasn’t necessary. She was stupidly forgiving like that—and I said stupidly, because obviously I owed her an apology. I’d completely ignored what she was saying to me and gone wild on my own ideas, and I still didn’t have the guts to face up to what I’d done.
Callie was probably already in bed by now. She’d become so obsessed with getting her ‘professional life’ right ever since she was first able to have a job. In a way I understood: she wanted more than she would ever get if she didn’t fight for it. But it still left a bad taste in my mouth, being apparently one of the things she was willing to sacrifice.
I wished I hadn’t thought of it in terms of fighting, though. Suddenly I was thinking about Steven again, wondering what he was up to that night. Probably I didn’t really want to know.
And yet before I could do anything to stop myself I was looking up his name, trying to find a social media profile.
I came up with nothing. When I checked Lucas’s profile it was strangely sparse—curated, he didn’t even have pictures of Callie there yet—but their friend Carlene was less discreet. She had photos of Steven all over the place, mostly turned away from the camera or scowling like he wished he hadn’t been talked into it, but one where he was lifting up his shirt to show a sleek muscled chest, smirking.
That one made me feel so dizzy I was barely able to focus enough to confirm that Carlene hadn’t linked his name to any account. Well… maybe he was one of those rare people who didn’t do Internet things. He was such a sporty guy he probably didn’t even miss it.
I shut my laptop quickly as Mum opened my door. “Oh, you didn’t need to jump on my account,” she said.
“I wasn’t doing anything really. I figured you wanted to talk.” There wasn’t any other conclusion to draw when she was bursting in on me already in my pyjamas.
I’d been so focused on heading off any encouragements to open my computer up again that would let her see what I’d really been doing, I hadn’t been thinking hard enough about not provoking her. I tensed for her reading it like I was hating on her for wanting to talk to me all the time, but she just sat down next to me. She was clearly very focused on what she was already here for.
“I’m wondering, have you noticed anything… different, lately, with Mike?”