4My Life Would Suck Without You
It started with a ball.
Well, balls.
You know the thing about being the new kid? It's damn hard to get started. For a week or two, people stare and whisper about you and you're the highlight of every class. Savour it, because if you haven't proved yourself to be interesting by the end of those first weeks, line up and get a glaring 'nobody' stamp on your forehead. Some say it's not that bad – after all, the membership is free.
The detour around that pitfall: join the soccer team.
No really, I'm serious.
Small town, small school. There was no separate team for the genders. Guys and girls mashed up together as a single team. That gave the teachers an excuse to say that there was no sexism involved. Yeah right. Most of the team was made up of guys, and the very, very small handful of girls had been in the team right from the start.
I'd played soccer back when I was younger, and I tried out just for the shits and giggles. I wasn't usually interested in this sort of stuff – but hey, boredom was the culprit. The conditions were dead simple: if you could kick a ball and kick it well, you were in. It was just the usual drill of shooting goals from different angles and distances, and advancing and defending – stuff I could do in my sleep even if my skills were a bit rusty.
Well, lo and behold, a new kid got in. And who was that? Yours truly.
The first training session, my dedicated captain (a.k.a. Mr-Fangirled-Popular) took one look at me and sent me off to run ten laps around the field.
Fitness my ass. I'd seen him with that bulky dude in the change rooms. He was probably just upset that I'd tried out better than his pal.
The teacher had been checking up on us, so I grabbed my sweat towel and set off at an infuriated jog. The rest of the team passed balls to each other and shot a few goals while I laboured. I could tell that they were an old team, all buddies and that. They'd probably been in the same team for years. I think I ruined that by taking Bulky's place.
Yeah well, sucked in.
I was halfway through my sixth lap when I was stopped. My lovely teammates had just exhausted their supply of balls, and guess what, I just happened to be passing the equipment bag.
"Hey, Stanton, pass us some balls," the captain called, wiping his face on his shirt.
I glanced at the bag. Needless to say, I was still, to put it eloquently, pissed off. The golden rule: never piss Imogen Stanton off. The guys in my old school had learned that for themselves.
I smiled sweetly at Mr Jerk Extraordinaire. "What, don't you have any?"
Silence.
Then a boy I recognised from my Biology class whistled appreciatively, and the well-deserved victim got a couple of pats on the back. The two girls had amused smiles.
I think that was the first time Darren Powell really noticed me.
I also think I made quite an impression. Well, he certainly made it look that way. It was like I had painted a target on my butt or something that day. He started taking more notice of me. At odd moments, he'd try to strike up conversation with me, sneak a couple of pay-back liners.
I think that, instead of getting that stamp, I'd gotten a target sticker slapped to my butt.
Thankfully, he wasn't in any of my classes.
I jinxed it. Guess how I felt when I got moved up to the math extension class and found out that he was there as well. And that there was a spare seat next to him. Now guess who had to sit there.
It was so cliché and ridiculously coincidental that I didn't know if I should laugh or scream.
He didn't say anything for most of the lesson but his smug smirk drove me crazy. Then the bell rang, and as I was cramming my things into my bag so I could get the hell out of there, his palm smacked down on my textbook, holding it down so I couldn't leave.
"Get lost," I glared at him.
He leaned in close and grinned. "Penalty," he whispered, but before I could really kick some balls, he was brushing past me and was gone.
Asshole.
I think only one good thing came out of my smart-mouthing. Powell started to include me in the team. I worked with the others in the sessions. I could have quit soccer on the spot just so I wouldn't have to put him with him for an extra two hours, but that was just like admitting defeat and I'd sooner try my dad's Casserole of Puking Death than lose to Darren Powell.
Without a doubt, I hated him with a passion.
Yet somehow, I ended up sleeping with him.
Yeah, go ahead and laugh.
It happened in the holidays. Julie, one of the girls on the team, had turned seventeen, so she invited us to a party at her place. She was actually a pretty nice girl, Julie. I sometimes sat with her at lunchtime. I might have appreciated her a little more if she had done me a favour and hadn't invited Powell as well.
What with the pool party and stuff, I managed to avoid him for most of the night. That is, until I had one drink too much and he got dumped with driving me home. I'd discovered halfway through the semester that he lived a couple of streets from mine. Small world.
I was drunk, he wasn't. I wasn't drunk to the point that I was stripping like a moulting bird but I definitely wasn't at my best. Darren had to stop the car four times so I could puke. Every time I threw up, he was there to dutifully hold back my hair and stroke my back. He'd had a tissue handy, too. I guess I couldn't have asked more of him. He had chosen a good night to be a gentleman. At that moment, I couldn't have cared less what he'd have to say the next day.
He was watching me so he would know when I was about to show him what I'd eaten at the party, and he immediately pulled up in an empty parking lot when I lurched forward in my seat again, a couple of blocks from my house. "Jesus, how much have you had? No, don't you dare try to answer. Give me a sec-" He was already out of his seatbelt and was fumbling with mine.
Except this time I didn't want to puke.
When my seatbelt's clasp was undone and Darren was about to get out of the car, I grabbed him by the shirt and jerked him toward me. I pounced on him, breathing hard on his face. "Powell, Powell," I cooed, tracing my finger down his cheek, fingering the stubble on his chin. "Why have you been following me around?"
He tried to push me back into my seat. "You mean I need a reason? Come on, Imogen, I want to-"
"This is what you want, isn't it?" I pressed myself against him, my hand sliding under his shirt.
Even in a situation like that one, Darren Powell could smile. "I thought you wouldn't touch me with a ten foot pole. Oh wait, I'm sorry, you're drunk." Again, he tried to untangle us, but I held him fast.
This time, I was the one grinning. "Penalty, Captain."
He stopped and looked me in the eye. I was actually more conscious than I felt, and I managed to meet his serious gaze with my own. He was quite calm.
After a minute, he said, "The gearstick is annoying. Let's do it in the back."
And we did it in his crappy Ford, right behind the local swimming pool.
I don't think we spoke to each other for a week. The following day had been a Sunday and I don't think anyone saw us in the car. From the looks of it, Darren hadn't told his friends, and no one knew about us. I was actually grateful that they didn't. It was too early for fireworks.
My last boyfriend had been a vocabulary-limited bloke and I think his most memorable quote was: "Shit, fuck me sideways – but you can fuck, girl."
Surprisingly, I wasn't traumatised by the fact that I had, drunken-willingly, slept with Darren Powell. Hell, I was mad with myself, of course – I hated the guy. But I felt… triumphant afterwards. He'd been trailing me for so long, I'd been playing with him, and somewhere in between we had developed this monstrous relationship that no one could understand. Sleeping with him had sorted most of that out.
It took him two weeks. He finally cornered me after training and invited me for a drink. At first I turned him down but he grabbed my shoulders, turned me around and gave me the same look he had given me in the car. "Imogen Stanton, you're one hell of a bitch but at least hear me out, okay?" God, he looked so serious. I wondered if he had been a virgin.
That made me laugh. Darren frowned. "What are you laughing about?" But his shoulders loosened a little and the corner of his mouth tilted upward.
I shook my head, chortling. "Nothing, nothing."
"So you coming?"
"What's the word?"
"Penalty."
I'd been waiting for 'please' but I went with him anyway. We went down to the Gloria Jean's near the station. It was a popular hangout spot for students from our school, but we were the only students when we got there. Staying back for training had its perks, I suppose. Not like I was afraid of anyone seeing us or anything.
"You grab a table, I'll order," I told Darren. I held out a hand. "Now, cash."
He looked amused as he took out his wallet and handed me a twenty. "I want a latte."
"You want a croissant with that?"
"I'm so touched you remember my eating habits." He touched his chest with a hand. His eyes twinkled with humour.
"Oh, shut up."
Darren found a table with one of those big umbrellas over them. The dark blue of the umbrella went with his eyes, I thought absently as I navigated my way to the table. Darren was one of those tall, blond hair, blue eyes guys. He was your typical Mr Popular. Never in nine pits of Hell had I thought I'd get myself involved with a guy like him.
On the complimentary side, Darren wasn't too bad. He was Mr Popular alright; girls flocked around him like pigeons. He flirted with them sometimes, played around – crap, now I realised that he did that with me as well – but he didn't go screwing each and every one of them. Come to think of it, I'd never seen him with an official girlfriend. I guess he wasn't the change-girls-like-boxers type of guy. Good thing, I suppose.
Gee, now I was starting to get really worried about his virginity.
"So." I made the first move again. I liked being a girl in control. "Make it quick, Powell, things to do, people to meet."
He took a bite out of his croissant. "Just how often do you 'meet' people, Imogen?" I couldn't exactly remember when he had started calling me by my first name.
I articulately waved my hand around. "Oh, you know I'm popular." I leered at him over my hot chocolate. "Are you worried, Darren?"
His grin widened. "You should say my name like that more often." He took a sip from his cup, and then got straight to the point. "Right, let's not keep Miss Imogen from meeting new prospects. So we screwed. What now?"
"Well, wasn't that nice and blunt?" I commented.
Darren tipped his baseball cap to me.
I reached over and ripped off a piece of his croissant and stuffed it in my mouth. "Question," I said, swallowing the mouthful. He raised an eyebrow and leaned back in his seat, arms folded. "Are you – or rather, were you – a virgin?"
He chuckled and shook his head. "I'll tell you now; I had my first when I was fourteen."
"That's late, by my old school's standards," I told him.
"It's late by our school's standards, too. I learned to take it slow after that one."
"Really now?"
"Yeah. It was a bit of an accident." His eyes flickered to meet mine. "Sort of like with you."
I casually drank some of my hot chocolate. "Oh, that wasn't an accident, I assure you."
"I know." He paused. "You fuck good."
"Don't get used to it."
"You mean it?" His voice was suddenly so serious that I was actually taken aback.
I put my drink down and looked at him. "I'll tell you the deal, Powell. I don't like you. You know that. We did it in your car, that's it. You're not one of those guys who presses the matter, are you? You don't seem like it."
"I'm not."
"Then we can just move on. Who knows, you and I might become friends sometime before the world combusts."
He smiled. "You're an interesting girl, Imogen Stanton. I like that."
"Is that why you've been hanging onto me?" Before he could answer, I added, "But tell me, how much did you pay for those balls?"
His smile revealed teeth. "You're a bitch, Stanton. I like that too."
I eyed him. "You have something to say, go ahead."
"You called for it." He took one more bite out of his croissant. "So we slept together. Usually, I just move on, like you said. Seriously, it's nothing big. But you, Imogen…" Darren's eyes flashed. "Since you came to this town, life just got a hell of a lot more interesting. You're not like other girls."
"Julie and Bianca aren't that much of another species either," I pointed out.
"True," he agreed. "Except they're like sisters to me. We've been playing together since we were in primary. All of us have. It's a small town. But then you came along. You, who took my cousin's spot on the team, who challenged my sexuality in the first week, who hated me – you make me tag along with you. You're just that much of an attention whore." He smirked at me. "You know you think of me."
"Excuse me?" I said indignantly.
"Admit it. You're either calculating an angle to smash my manhood when I'm playing goalkeeper or you're plotting some way to get me in trouble in math. You think about me all the time, Imogen."
Right, I was going to have to reinforce the 'girl in control' bit. "I'll admit it if you admit you think of me, Darren." He was actually unlike any boy I'd met and slept with before. I honestly didn't know what he was thinking. It made me excited, if just a little.
He sighed melodramatically. "Young love is so heart-wrenching."
"You ever loved someone, Darren?"
"Nope. You?"
"Thought I did but didn't." I shrugged. "Like all other first cases."
"My first case was rather different."
"Was it now? Do tell."
"Jealous now, are you?" Darren drained his latte and crumpled the cup. "We could pair up, Imogen. You and me. It'd be fun, don't you reckon?"
To my half-hearted horror, I could actually picture going out with Darren Powell. "We wouldn't last and you know it," I said truthfully. It never did.
"Have fun while it lasts. I don't think you'd cry over it, would you?"
"I'm more worried about your fragile heart, honey," I replied.
I was starting to get used to that smirk of his. "Is that a challenge?"
The basis of my relationship with Darren was that neither of us was willing to lose out to the other. If a challenge was set, we wouldn't back out.
My finger twined around a lock of my hair. "Until the formal," I said.
It sounded like I was setting a limit and discarding him like a broken toy but Darren caught on straightaway. "A month?" he grinned. "That's just too easy."
"Don't talk big." I licked my lips. "I dare you."
"I double-dare you," he answered with a smile.
"I triple-dare you."
"Does that mean it's on for three months?"
"What kind of logic is that?"
"Mine."
"Fine, three months. Penalty for the one who cracks first."
"It won't be me."
"We'll see about that."
Believe it or not, we lasted. No one was particularly surprised that we got together. Julie, big on parties, threw another one. I made sure I didn't get drunk this time, and we didn't screw at every corner. In fact, we hardly did. Somehow, Darren Powell and I had developed some sort of respect for each other. How the hell it had gotten there, I had no freaking idea.
The dare was on, but we didn't really break it up after the first fight. We had a few fights, sometimes about stupid stuff, sometimes a bit deeper. Once, I gave Darren a bloody nose. We just kept making up again. We didn't know why we were persisting with it. It wasn't like it was serious or anything. It wasn't like we were actually in love.
After all, I still hated him.
Darren and I weren't your average couple. There were times when we were sweet to each other and shared drinks and whatnot. Other times, we'd be so rough and cynical that our friends wondered how we could survive each other. But hey, we were having fun.
I'd never been the best player, but just this once, I think I scored a goal.
AN: I get strange ideas in the shower, that's my excuse. It's also my first time writing something like this - teenage stuff. I'm not sure if I did a good enough job but practice makes perfect, I suppose.
Yeah, the title came from Kelly Clarkson's song. It's got nothing much to do with the actual story. I just needed a title and was looking through my songs. This one sort of stood out.
Anyway, I'd love to know what you think of this, and if you have any suggestions on how I could improve, please let me know.