The Bad Girl All The Good Boys Want
Disclaimer: All characters are the property of The CW and Schwahn
Chapter 4: Something To Talk About
"You swore you wouldn't laugh!"
"Then you set me up to fail cause that shit's hilarious!" Rachel cries, rolling onto her side and propping herself up onto her elbow. It was lunchtime and the pair spread out a blanket underneath a magnolia tree near the edge of the quad, far away from the gossipy ears of their fellow classmates. Rachel glances at Brooke's pouting and tries to subdue her laughter. "Alright, alright so what's next?"
"What do you mean, what's next? Nothing, I pretend it didn't happen and soon enough Peyton will come crawling back to him."
"Oh come on Brooke, the guy is obviously into you, I mean the evidence was literally dripping down your back!" Rachel covers her snickering with a cough but the smirk spread across her face gives her away.
"He's in love with Peyton." Brooke says quietly, stirring her cup of yogurt and casting her eyes downward.
"Please," Rachel snorts, "Peyton is a whiny voice, mudslinging, gold digging tramp."
"Not cool Rach, I don't let her bad mouth you and I'd appreciate it if you'd respect my friendship with her." Brooke defends her friend, although that was a pretty accurate description of the blond.
"Open your eyes Brooke, Peyton is way too jealous of you to ever truly be your friend." Rachel says not unkindly.
"What's to be jealous of?" Brooke furrows her brow in confusion, "I'm a fucking mess."
Rachel gapes at her, trying to discern if Brooke was merely fishing for compliments but the look of true disbelief spread across the brunettes face makes Rachel's blood boil for every sneaky put down by jealous bitches and neglect suffered at the hands of her parents.
"Ask any girl on this quad," Rachel snorts, shifting her eyes out into the crowd to survey their peers, "to switch places with you for one day and I guaranty you, there will be a line stretching across the football field." with a sly peek at the speechless brunette she adds, "Myself included, especially if Nathan Scott was insanely in love with me."
Brooke blushes at the backhanded compliment, bypassing the validity of the statement and chooses to focus on the one thing she knows can't be true, right?
"Nathan and I have been best friends since we were babies, in all likely hood he thinks of me as a sister."
"I may have only lived in the South for a few years but I doubt that people actually ask their sisters to marry them?"
"That was…" Brooke pauses, coming up blank on how to explain away Nathan's heartfelt proposal and oath to love and protect her child from disappointed parents and the towns gossip mill. "You know that Nathan tends to go overboard, being all protective and stuff."
"Right," Rachel draws out the words skeptically and goes back to eating lunch, smirking to herself. She's going to beat it into Brooke's head that Nathan has more than friendly feelings towards her, one way or another.
"So in this dream," Jake asks, his shoulders quaking with the effort to control his laughter, "were you a pizza deliver guy or a cable repairman?"
"You know, I don't even know why I bother talking to you sometimes?" Placing another ten pounds onto the bar, Nathan question his decision to skip lunch and work out his frustration in the weight room. Telling Jake about his um…'nocturnal emissions', just proves he's slowly losing his mind.
"Come on man we've all been there," Nathan gives him a sharp look and Jake quickly amends his words, "imagining other girls of course. It's nothing to be embarrassed about."
"Yeah but how many dreams have you had where you actually end up…"
"Jizzing all over the girl? Well, you got me there bro." Jake takes his position over the weight bar, ready to spot the brunette if need be.
Nathan scowls up at Jake from his reclining position on the bench but chooses to focus on beating his current weight than get into an argument.
"So what does this latest development mean for you and Peyton?" Jake just can't resist poking the tiger in the cage. Nathan surprisingly, shrugs off the question.
"After I read the article, I went over to say sorry for Dan being an ambitious ass," Nathan responds in between puffs of breath, pumping the heavy iron at a steady pace. "didn't matter, she still screamed her head off… threw my stuff outta her window… making accusations about me and Brooke… while insinuating that I have an improper relationship with my mother."
"The usual?" Jake shakes his head at the typical drama of his best friend's relationship with the blond brooder. "Didn't you explain that the main reason you went with Brooke to the ball was because her mother was trying to set her up with Cyrus 'slip her a roofie' McCallister?"
"In between dodging my stuff, by that point Peyton was too worked up to care." Nathan shakes his head, recalling his argument and breakup with Peyton yesterday. Maybe this time they'll stay broken, he silently hopes. Honestly, as bad as it sounds he's kind of relieved that she instigated their split, Nathan has been feeling for some time now that the two of them have grown apart and the only real reason he kept going back to Peyton was his fear that she might do something stupid to hurt herself.
The shrink her father made her see after her mother died, suggested that Peyton may be suffering from Borderline Personality Disorder. Nathan's not really sure what that means but Peyton uses it as a 'get out of jail free, card' to treat her friends like shit.
Placing the weight bar back onto the stand, Jake slaps Nate's shoulder telling him to hit the showers cause their free period is almost over.
Basketball practice was particularly grueling today, Nathan notes. Not only was this the first time he'd seen Peyton all day because she skipped the three classes they shared but because the cheerleading squad shares the gym with them on Mondays. With the vivid images of last nights dream still playing in HD in his head Nathan nearly falls flat on his handsome face when Brooke waltzes into the gym in a clingy tank top flaunting her large breasts and itty bitty blue shorts with the words 'Bad Ass' scribbled across her taut cheeks. So busy admiring his best friend's ass, that he crashes right into another teammate who was also mesmerized by the beautiful cheer captain. Lucas' feet are rooted to the floor, he's openly leering at his ex and pissing Nathan off in the process. That bastard has no business eyeing Brooke after the crap he pulled a few weeks ago.
"Move your feet, Solomon Grundy!" Nathan shoves his half brother
"You ran into me not the other way around." the twerp has the balls to fire back.
"Keep it up and I'll kick your ass right back to your little shantytown." Nathan sneers, turning around to continue running laps before the coach shows up.
"Your hands go on my waist Taggaro, not my ass, if I fall I'm bringing you down with me!" Brooke threatens the Latino boy who takes his sweet time repositioning his hands to the correct place.
"Mmm, I'll go down on you any day, Davis." Felix whispers suggestively into her ear, then lifts Brooke into the air high above his head before she can reprimand him.
Brooke grinds her teeth in annoyance, ruing the day that she agreed to let that jerkoff onto her squad. But they needed the muscle and since Tree Hill High didn't have a gymnastics team, Felix's preferred sport, he opted for joining the cheerleaders mainly to gain access to the hottest girls in the school. For two years now he has been doggedly pursuing Brooke, only to be met with rejection at every turn.
Despite what the school's rumor mill would have everyone believe, Brooke has only slept with six guys. To some that may seem like one guy too many yet in comparison to the other girls in their school, who hide behind perceived innocence and promise rings, Brooke is lagging way behind in the slut category. Maybe it's her comfort and confidence in her sexuality that is often mistaken for an excess of promiscuity. She knows for a fact that Theresa's conquests range in the double digits and Rachel admits that once she got her new body she went wild, bedding a different guy each week until a STD scare made her a little more selective.
Felix tosses her easily, flipping in mid-air and sticking the landing Brooke grins and turns back to watch her squads performance.
"Okay people that was good, let's go again from the top!" she claps her hands and the girls scramble to find their places, "Five, six, seven, eight and go," the front row drops to one knee, gesturing in sync, all except for one, "hang on a sec, Peyton you've got the arms wrong let me…"
"It's not brain surgery Brooke." Peyton rolls her eyes at the brunette
"Okay, what's with the attitude?" Brooke gives a short laugh, trying to down play the drama Peyton wants to create in front of the group.
"What's with your life?" Peyton snaps "Aren't you embarrassed that the most important thing in your world is some stupid cheer?"
Brooke bites back the scathing retort poised on her tongue, she takes a deep breath attempting to remain calm in light of the blonds foul mood. This mornings incident with Nathan is still weighing heavily on her mind and she feels oddly guilty for something his subconscious conjured up.
"I'm sorry things didn't work out with Nathan but don't go all Mariah on me, okay?" she meant it as a joke but judging by the fire ignited behind narrow green eyes, Brooke is certain that all it did was serve to anger Peyton further.
"You think this is about Nathan?!" Peyton screeches, gaining the attention of the boys practicing as well as everyone else in the gym. Brooke sighs, knowing that an audience was exactly what Peyton was aiming for and now the frizzy haired blond intends to throw herself a pity party for all to witness. "You're not even close. You're not in the neighborhood of close."
"What's wrong?" Brooke asks, genuinely concerned
"What's wrong is how pointless this all is." The girl whines
"Stop saying that." the despair in the other girl's voice is truly beginning to frighten Brooke. Unbidden, her mind flashes to a memory last year when Peyton called her in the middle of the night, crying about missing her dead mom and coked out of her skull.
"No, because it's true! What difference does it make if you sleep with a popular guy or you go to the right party or you know the right moves to some moronic cheer to do at some lame ass game I could care less…"
"Enough Peyton!" Brooke's shout echoes throughout the now silent gym, her anger finally simmering to a boil overrides any concern she may have felt. Peyton wants to make her latest tantrum personal, Brooke may feel bad about her conflicting feelings towards Nathan but she'll be damned if she let's Peyton turn everything around and make her fucked up relationship Brooke's fault. "You're not the only one with problems, Bevin's dad is in the hospital but she still chose to show up, Sonya is still recovering from knee surgery yet here she is making an effort. I bet every person here can name at least one thing that's wrong in their lives, the only difference is they don't want to wallow in misery and drag everyone else with them. So if you want to talk about it, practice is over in twenty-nine minutes but if you wanna continue to phone it in, causing more work for the rest of us, then…you know where the door is." she finishes quietly.
Peyton gawps at the brunette who stares back at her with firm determination. Brooke has never spoken to her like that in front of other people before and out of the corner of her eye she spies Rachel with a self satisfied smirk pasted on her face. It's all that redheaded bitch's fault that she no longer has the upper hand in her friendship with Brooke. Since Rachel arrived on the scene, midway through freshman year, she has delighted in driving a wedge between the two of them.
Sensing that all eyes were focused on her, Peyton realizes that in order to protect her reputation she can't back down, even if it means taking one more step away from a ten year friendship.
"Fine," the blond snarls, tossing her pompoms to the ground she stomps over to the bleachers to grab her bag. Swinging around, she huffs indignantly as Brooke and Rachel draws the squads attention back to the routine as if that little showdown didn't just take place. The squeaking of her sneakers over the polished floor mocking her and she virtually kicks the door open to make the most dramatic exit ever.
"Alright ladies," Coach Durham's gruff voice rings out over the sound of the gym door slamming shut, and the team immediately falls into line, "if you're finish watching soap operas, let's run the zones. Scott number one, you're at the point."
Lucas makes his way to the designated spot but Nathan calls out to the coach stopping him in his tracks
"Actually Coach, Jake, Tim and I have been working on a few new plays, we were hoping to show you if that's alright?"
Whitey considers the younger Scott boy for a moment, he's not as dumb as they assume, he knows that adding Lucas to the team has caused a major shift in Tree Hill High's popularity hierarchy. More importantly, Whitey also sees the longing stares that each Scott brother casts at the Davis girl, adding propane to an already raging inferno of competitiveness all because their father chose to praise one child and ignore the other. 'Damn you sperm Danny!' "Okay," Whitey concedes, "let's see what ya got." the three boys get into position, showing their counterparts where to line up.
Lucas throws a contemptuous glare at Nathan's smirking face. Lucas is being phased out yet again and Nathan's getting away with it. As he studies the play his anger rises when it becomes apparent that this is an aggressive offense drill that requires the point guard to drive through the lane instead of taking the three pointer. 'Fuck!' Lucas has to admit, his brother is getting more creative in his plans to sideline him.
a/n: This one is short but I wanted to get it out because the next chapter will probable cover several days. Thanks to all who reviewed, I wanted to thank a few personally but this site is being weird again and not listing the new reviews, anyhow thank you everyone I am really loving this pairing now.