Here's the next little piece.
Ten minutes later Josie pulled her car up to the front of the theatre.
"Thanks for the ride, Josie. I owe you another one."
"Yeah," She said rolling her eyes. "I really need to start writing these down in the weight of the debt owed. The top of the list being that I'm letting you stay at my house while a sexy, molesting vampire is after your ass!"
I rolled my eyes and got out.
"Hey!" Josie's voice made me turn. She was leaning across the passenger seat shouting out the open window. A car behind her honked and she slowly inched forward.
"Call me whenever you're done, but keep in mind that staying out after dark isn't a good idea."
She had a point and I nodded. "I'm good. I'll call if I see him, though. Even if it's in the middle of the movie."
"Works for me." And she drove off.
I stepped off the curb and began to dig in my purse for my wallet as I walked up to the booth.
"Hey, Baby," a smooth voice said. But it wasn't quite as smooth as a different voice I knew...and it hadn't called me 'Love' in a faint, sexy accent...
Get a grip, I said to myself. You haven't even seen Marcus's face yet and you think of him.
I turned and smiled at Marcus, trying to ignore the feeling of awkwardness and betrayal.
"Hey," I said with a small smile. I had always been at a loss of what to call him. It felt awkward calling him 'baby' like he did to me. But then to call him by his name seemed too formal. But that was always what I ended up calling him anyway.
I looked him up and down. I wasn't studying his body like he was currently doing to mine with a smirk. I was making sure he had dressed respectably. I hated when he showed up with a do-rag under a sideways turned baseball cap and an oversized t-shirt with his basketball shorts down to his knees. I hated that look. It was trashy and it said to me that he had no self respect for how people saw him.
But he wasn't dressed like that today. He had on a pair of basketball shorts (the right size) and a green t-shirt. His short, thick, black hair was brushed and shiny.
I gave a hesitant smile up at him.
He gave me a smirk back and he put his arm around me, steering us toward the movie booth as he said, "Let's go," in his easy rumbly voice.
Marcus was the quarter back of my school football team and looked every bit the part. He was built powerfully from his shoulders to his feet. I always felt dwarfed in size by him because I'm a small girl.
Marcus bought both of our tickets and we went into the movie together.
The first scene in the movie was a crowd of people in an elevator falling to their deaths as the elevator's wires were cut.
God I could already tell this was going to be bad. I hated movies like this. Thrillers I could handle. Ghosts? Not even close.
I started to get more and more freaked out. The main characters had some sort of romance thing going on when they both got stuck in a building after hours when the doors had all mysteriously locked. Things were getting hot and heavy on screen and I was starting to sweat because the music was building...the music that meant that someone was about to die at the hands of one of the gruesome-looking ghosts.
Marcus chose his point to attempt at some romance. He snaked his arm around me and pulled me close to him, already having pulled up the armrest between the seats. I was too busy trying to slink down in my seat to try to cover my eyes and my ears at the same time. I felt tears pick my eyes when I caught a glimpse of the screen and a terrifying zombie looking thing. But my eyes immediately closed of their own accord and I felt a shiver of fear rack me. God why was I here? I hated this crap anyway.
"What's wrong with you?" I looked up at Marcus' hissed question.
"I hate ghosts," I managed to whisper. Barely though, my mouth had become far too dry to do much. "Can we please go?"
He looked back at the screen. "It'll be fine. Just watch the rest. You're gonna' like it if you watch the whole thing. It's more than halfway through anyway."
"I know," I know I whispered. "But I'm really scared. Can we go?"
"If you want you can leave without me. But I really want to see the rest."
Marcus' arm left from around me and I felt alone. My legs were locked and there was no way I was going to be able to make it out of the theatre while the movie was still going on.
Five minutes passed and I curled into a ball on the seat, shivering.
I felt Marcus' arm come back around me. "If you're really that scared I guess I could distract you..." He turned my head towards his and I felt the tears fall down my cheeks. He didn't realize that I didn't want to be distracted; I just really wanted to get out of here. More than anything else at the moment. But I didn't move. Right as he was about to kiss me something happened.
A drink smashed into the back of Marcus' head where it exploded and covered him in...something oily. That was no drink. Someone had gone through a lot of trouble to fill an entire extra large cup completely with popcorn butter. But the weird part was, not a drop had landed on me. It was really strange. He was soaked in it and though his arm had been around me and he had been leaning towards me, there was nothing on me. I was as dry and clean as the moment I had walked in here.
Marcus surged to his feet as the theatre erupted into snickers from the many guys who filled the seats.
"Who threw that?" Marcus roared in the general direction that the cup had come from. "Who fucking threw it? Whoever you are I'll tear your damn balls off when I find you!"
"I think he might have some trouble with that." A low voice to my right whispered directly into my ear. Shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit. "Perhaps you should inform him how hard it is to mar my skin. After all, you do have some experience."
I froze and looked into his mismatched eyes, not sure what to do. I was distracted from the movie and for that I was grateful to whoever threw the drink...wait a second...
"Dalca?" I asked as if I was unsure who the mismatched eyes belonged to.
So much for calling Josie when I saw him...
"Yes, Love?" His voice purred, sending shivers down my spine. I reveled in the simple pleasure that just his voice gave me. For some stupid, and I do mean STUPID reason, his voice calmed my heart which had been pounding away in overdrive since the beginning of the movie over an hour ago. And that made no sense. I should be terrified of him! But I felt relieved that he had shown up. It was like some unknown tension in my body was released.
"Did you throw that at him?"
"Perhaps I did. Are you going to do something about it?"I felt a feather light touch on my cheek as he cupped my face with one hand. His thumb ran across my lips. I unconsciously leaned into his hand and my eyes drifted shut at the serenity I felt. I couldn't even respond to his challenge.
Wait. WHAT WAS I DOING? My goddamn BOYFRIEND was sitting right next to me screaming his head off because someone basically threw a vat of popcorn butter at him. Meanwhile, the person who threw it was sitting next to me stroking my face; the same person who had molested me the night before...and I was letting him do it again. How did he manage to have so much power over me right away? A least the first time I had fought against him. Now I was just giving in without a thought.
I leaned away from him, furious with myself. "Why?" I demanded. The word itself sounded rude...exactly how I wanted it to sound.
He laughed, something that I wasn't expecting; Anger, maybe from pulling away from his caress, but not amusement.
His body shook with laughter and I could feel it tingle the air around me and rub my skin.
"Why? Because when I marked you last night, Love, it meant you were mine and that you still are mine. HE," Dalca said, almost spitting in Marcus' direction, "was trying to touch something that belonged to me and he was causing you intense discomfort by lying to you and by forcing you watching this ridiculous movie."
The first thing made me fume. I was NOT his. This bastard could take his eighteenth century ideas back to wherever he came from. But the second thing was actually kind of...sweet. He could see that the movie was upsetting me and that was one of the reasons that he had thrown the giant bucket of butter at Marcus. Or at least, according to him it was. But the lying thing didn't make any sense.
"Wait. What do you mean that he is lying to me?"
His strange eyes hardened suddenly. "Just listen to your friend in the future. She is right it seems."
"What?"
"Natasha!" Marcus' voice suddenly split the conversation in half. I turned towards him when he grabbed my arm and began to drag me towards the exit. "We're leaving. Come on." He dragged me roughly and his grip was painful.
"Marcus, that really hurts! Stop! Ow!"
But he didn't and as he neared the end of the aisle, I felt something tugging and sliding along my neck. I looked back towards Dalca only to see something that scared me silly. His eyes were blazing. They weren't red but they might as well have been for all of the anger that was radiating out of him. In one hand he held the end of my scarf and it slipped away onto the floor, exposing the light colored bandage that covered the bite that Dalca had given me. The last thing I saw him do was him bare his fangs in my direction, his face half in shadow from the movie.
The moment that Marcus pulled me out of the theatre, I realized that Dalca must have been pissed because Marcus was taking something that he thought was his away from him. Maybe that was a vampire thing? Who knew?
But the next thing I saw nearly made me freeze on the spot. It was still light outside. Dalca was not in any sort of danger from the sun's rays. That only meant one thing to me. At any given moment Dalca was going to come charging out of the building with murder on the mind.
SHIT! How was I supposed to get Marcus to realize the danger he was in?
Marcus had released my arm and was muttering a continuous stream of curses under his breath. He stalked off down the street leaving me to follow him. People stared as he stomped down the street dripping oil. Once he got to the park around the corner, he peeled off his oily, yellowish-green, popcorn scented shirt and tossed it into a trash can nearby.
He sat down on a park bench and didn't say anything.
I looked around hesitantly, trying to see if anyone was coming towards us with bared fangs and red eyes. No one was but I still felt uneasy. I took one more sweep of my surroundings before I looked back to Marcus.
He was staring at me like I was crazy.
"What the hell are you doing?" His voice was subdued but still angry.
I deliberated about how to answer him. I decided to just tell him part of the truth. Not the whole truth just part of it. I reasoned that since Dalca was after me (or at least he was in the long run) Marcus should know what he was into.
"Ummm...I think I know who threw the popcorn butter at you," I said slowly, afraid of how he would react. I couldn't blame him for being mad and a little over reactive.
"What?" He roared surging to his feet. "Who was it?" He leaned down over me and gripped my lower arms with his greasy hands. At least he wasn't grabbing my shoulders where the sleeves of my step-mother's shirt was.
"It was this guy named Dalca-"
"That's a gay-assed name," Marcus muttered under his breath.
I felt annoyance bubble up inside me. How is a name gay? Why did guys say that anyway? Besides, Dalca was definitely NOT GAY.
"No it's not-" I said, interrupting.
He looked at me as if he was surprised that I had said something.
It dawned on me then. If his expression was that confused did that mean that our relationship was normally like that? Whenever he said something did I give in without much argument? But that wasn't like me...Josie's words echoed in my head. 'You're not like that and I don't understand why you would change just for him.'
I realized this and made my decision. I wasn't going to change for him. If he loved me that meant that he was going to have to accept me for who I was. No more hiding.
I continued on more confidently.
"He was one of the guys in the back corner of the theatre laughing at you," I lied quickly. It was something that I had always had a knack for. Thinking on my feet.
He released my arms and began to stalk towards the entrance of the park.
"Come on," Marcus growled under his breath. "When we get in there just point the motherfucker out and I'll take care of the rest."
My blood froze at the thought of Marcus confronting Dalca. I wasn't sure exactly how strong Dalca was, but if countless soppy vampire romance stories were anything to go off of, Marcus would be a splatter on the wall before he could land a punch.
I ran after him and grabbed his brown, popcorn butter covered arm. Any other time seeing Marcus shirtless and covered in grease so that he shined like a bronze statue would have made me drool. But I was able to push it out of my mind to stop him from leaving. I told myself that the reason he wasn't sexy to me at the time was because and ONLY because he was about to go get himself killed and NOT because I was thinking about a different, more pale skinned person...
"Marcus, wait," I said, having difficulty holding onto his greasy skin. "Please don't go after him. I don't want you to get hurt. Please."
When he looked back at me, I gave him puppy dog eyes. He looked at me for a long time with his face expressionless. Then he grunted and rolled his eyes but the muscles in his arms relaxed.
"Thank you, Marcus." I said smiling.
"Whatever, baby," he said. Which was the closest that he was going to give me to an apology. Then he looked at me with a new sort of interest in his eyes. A look I knew all too well. "Are your parents home tonight?"
A shiver tried to run its way down my spine and I pushed it down, not wanting to seem nervous but at the same time I couldn't help being shy. No, but someone basically beat you to the punch…., I thought grimly.
"Umm...they're in Fiji for the next until tomorrow and they won't be back until late." I didn't even bother to ask why he wanted to know. I knew.
"I thought that maybe, if you're ready, we could...you know..." He trailed off, not stating the obvious.
I giggled, to try and hide my nervousness. "I would, but not tonight. I am ready but I'm having a sleep over with Josie tonight. Plus I would think you would want to shower a little?" I made it a question and giggled again as I gestured at his greasy torso.
He looked down at himself and grunted something like 'should go back and beat the crap out of the motherfucker that did this.' But he rolled his eyes and let it go.
Yep. So Marcus is an ass. I wasn't doing that for the whole plot of this story. That part was originally me ranting on something one of my exs had done but I decided to write it into the story because the person Josie was talking about in the last chapter seemed like a guy that would do something like this.
Thoughts though. Tell me what goes through your head. What did you like or didn't like? It doesn't have to be long. Just a passing thought is all I want, let your words flow through and click REVIEW! ^_^
