HALLUCINATED

APOLOGIES

After that I never ever dared to talk to the devil. I would see him in the halls every day. He continued to be the playboy he was but from what I heard he never did anything to anyone like he did to Mia. And as for Mia, she had dropped out of school. He was still my partner in English but we never talked about anything regarding our assignments together. It was like it was mutual between us. He would do his part I would do mine and we’d turn it in to the teacher combined.

Ginny and Justin were now in a relationship. Justin was still friends with Aaron. He said that he might be stupid but he doesn’t intend to be he just doesn’t know. I thought it was bullshit. He also told us he had changed. I didn’t see the change except that he hurt others less than he used to and that doesn’t take away the title of a playboy from him. And I hate them. Plus I would never forgive him for what he did to me. Luckily, for our final English assignment, the role play, Aaron and I weren’t on the same team so it was a success and I managed to get a good grade in English by the end of the year.

Aaron continued as my English partner into the second year of high school. Currently I was in my English class listening to what Ms. Tolman and Aaron surprisingly had taken a seat beside me.

“So, for the first assignment for you and your partners, Ive thought of the easiest and relaxing assignments to start the year with. You and your partner will get together and do a movie marathon and the movies you would include should be based novels preferably classics and you would prepare two reports. One is going to be the reviews of the movies you’ve watched, try to make it creative. The second will have the information about the authors and directors and the journey from writing stories to directing a movie based on them. Since this being a long assignment I will give you two weeks for this. On Friday of the second week I will grade your assignments. That would be all.”

With that Ms Tolman dismissed the class and left. Before I got up to leave too I made sure to plan out how to go about with this project. I pulled out a page and divided into two columns – one my name and the list of movies I’d watch and the list of movies he’d watch and passed it over to him and got up to leave. As I was about to take a step away from my seat I was stopped by a hand pulling at my arm.

I turned around to see Aaron gripping at my arm while his head hung low.

“Can we do this assignment together?”

My eyes just widened slightly as I let his voice fill my ears again. I’d heard him after a complete year.

“Don’t dream about it Cage. I don’t feel like doing anything with you.”

“Please? I am really not good at reports and I am afraid I might mess up for both of us. If you don’t want to give me a chance, its okay. But here I am asking you to save our grades. Please.”

The way he said all that, the look in his eyes while he said that, that look was genuine. I wanted to give him a chance. I mean who wants to let go of such a beauty. Male beauty, that is. But somewhere deep down, I still had the fear of being stepped over by someone who wants to get ahead of me. Somehow the emotional part got the best of me.

“Okay, my place at any time that suits you. I don’t have anything important to do.”

“Okay thank you so much.”

And with a nod I turned on my heels and walked out of this class. It took all of self-control in me to not look back at his face to see his reaction. You don’t care. You don’t care.

After a brief talk with Justin and Ginny about what had happened, we sat there eating our lunch in silence. Ginny and Justin had gotten a lot closer in the past year. They’d always do everything together myself would tag along because they didn’t really give me other options and not that I would be the bone in the meat. I always had other girls I loved to hangout with. Besides Ginny, I had made two other best friends Aria and Lycia.

We used to party together, have sleepovers, girls’ nights, study nights and all sorts of that stuff. Over all, everything combined, I was having a blast with my friends last year and I could care less about a certain someone who used to try to hurt me because I knew I had my girls.

Despite all of the happiness that had surrounded me last year, the sad thought of what Aaron did to me and how things never got their fair chance for a start, sneaks into my slurry mind. I wished things would have happened differently.

And now, somehow, we were back to square one. Aaron was trying to step forward to start something again but this time I was very sure to build a wall around me and I promise I won’t let him hurt me again.

I was currently sitting at a table in the canteen with my friends chatting and eating. Lycia and Aria had joined us a few minutes later. I had my homework piled up with me, so as soon as I was done with my meal I started with my homework. It’d been a few minutes into me trying to solve a math problem which didn’t seem to crack into my head.

“You will never be able to get a solution from the method you’ve been using. Put the equation equal to zero before integrating and continue.” Spoke a raspy voice from behind me. I whipped my head to come face to face with a painfully beautiful male. My eyes scanned the man from head to toe.

His eyes were a vibrant blue, blonde hair styled in a messy……something, which only made him look sexier. As I downed the sight of this man, my gaze moved from his perfect eyes to his well sculpted nose, his beautifully high cheekbones to his lips where I wandered for a little longer than it was necessary. The man in front of me was an epitome of male beauty.

“Hi, I am Eric Graham.” He spoke, pulling me out of my erotic thoughts. He had stretched his hand for me to take while I stood in front of him caged by his gaze that held mine with a different kind of intensity.

With all the courage I’d stuffed in me, I shook his hand. The air was heavy with the tension between us. Despite the situation and despite of my reaction toward this man, I felt something was missing. I just couldn’t figure what.

Then suddenly, out of nowhere a head popped in front of me and took me less than a second to process who it was. As soon as I did, my calm face was replaced by an irritated face.

“Hi!” Aaron’s hand shot up into my face. He had gotten here during the time I was busy admiring Mr. New face and had managed to squeeze himself in the little space between me and Eric and separate us as if he was pushing Eric away from me.

What happened to I’m-so-sorry-gimme-another-chance Aaron?

“Hi Aaron” I huffed in irritation.

“Yeah partner, I had forgotten that I don’t know where you live.”

Ginny gave me a quizzical look. I looked around to see the same look plastered on Aria and Lycia’s face. I knew I had a lot of explaining to do.

“I’m Ivy’s ride home so you can tag along.” Aria said.

“Oh? How about I drive you home today then Ivy?”

My eyes widened at Aaron’s question.

“Sure. I had to stop by at Lycia's anyway.”

“Great then, we are only having gym next and we are allowed to skip it once so how about we leave now?”

“But…..I…..um…..” I had to stop him but the words never came out of my mouth.

“Will you be fine Ivy?” Ginny asked.

It’s just a drive.

Mustering up all the courage I could find, I nodded my head up and down in a forced agreement. Had it been a year back and same offer were made, I would have been very happy and would’ve said a yes without even a first thought! But this Aaron was the one who ruined my first year in high school. Aaron had this devil-ish aura surrounding him where ever he went and I had just agreed to let the devil drive me home and then let him feel comfortable on my couch in my home.

By the time I was done counting the consequences of this and had zoned back in the real world leaving behind my world of worries and problems and wilderness, I realized I was being pulled by my arm out the doors of the school building. My wrist was firmly held in a warm hand which was Aaron’s. His slinky was hung over his shoulder and his free hand was used to keep it in place. We were headed to the parking, where a black BMW i8 stood out in all the cars that were parked there. Surprisingly, we came to a stop right in front of the ‘black beauty’.

“Indeed. Black beauty. I love her.”

Had I said it out aloud?

“Is this yours?”

“More or less. At least for the time being, yes its mine and I take it that my baby impresses you.” And with that there was his infamous s**t eating grin on his face.

Trust me, at that time if some Edward were reading my mind he would have been terrified at the kind of murder plans I was coming up with.