I know, I know, it's been a long time. Well, sorry for the delay, but I hope you enjoy this chappie!


Chapter Seven

Dreams


"It's mine," Dylan clarified, reaching down into her purse, pulling her iPhone out quickly.

"Oh, cool." Derrick turned back to the TV, where the stupid chick flick was starting up. He wondered vaguely when Dylan had time to press play. Then again, her TV had problems, even though it was a state-of-the-art, high end quality plasma that should really belong in a small cinema.

Dylan looked down at the caller ID blinking back at her, before stealing a furtive glance at him. Is she pissed? Derrick wondered, catching her reflection in the rim of a silver bowl on a shelf a little to the left of the tv. But why? I'm watching her dumb movie!

Decisively, Dylan jammed her thumb down onto the screen with such force that Derrick jumped and turned to face her. "Babe? Everything okay."

"Yeah," she replied, smiling sweetly and discarding the phone on the table nearby. "Just Leesh."

"Wonder what Alicia wanted," he mumbled, feeling obligated. He didn't actually care, as he was still pissed at Alicia turning his world upside down during Biology.

He leaned a little more into the couch, looking at the TV even though he wasn't at all interested. It was just a guy habit. He'd probably spent more time staring at a television screen than he had in homeroom all his life. Funny how things work.

"Oh, you know." The phone buzzed again and Dylan rolled her eyes before leaning over and, Derrick assumed, rejecting the call. "Directions for the poetry thing. You know how she gets lost easily."

At this, he genuinely cracked up. "Yeah. Remember last year, the beginning of summer party thing? She came an hour late 'cuz her navigator thing was taking her all the way to Jersey and she didn't even realize it."

Dylan laughed. "Yeah, and all because she just typed in 'beach'."

"You better text her the address," Derrick advised her smiling, "or else we'll have to send out a helicopter this time."

"Will do."

He shook his blond bangs out of his before focusing on the television again, even though it was getting increasingly harder, because the stupid reflective bowl on the shelf kept taunting his eyes with the fact that while Dylan was holding her phone and looking down at the screen, she made no effort whatsoever to type anything at all.

"Done," she declared, tossing her phone in the direction of her purse.

Yeah, right.


Ring.

Ring.

Massie wished Dylan would pick up her damn phone already. She paced around her room, trying to smooth down her mussed up hair. A section of strangely bare wall caught her eye. Didn't she hang up a mirror there? She thought back, tilting her head to the side, phone still pressed into her ear. Weird.

She started pacing again, not noticing the shards of broken mirror that had fallen behind the waste basket.

In the end, she settled for sitting on her unmade bed, swinging her feet, looking out her half opened window. She never even remember moving the silk curtains back. Images swam in front of her eyes, haunting her. God, it would be so relieving to be able to tell it to Dylan. Maybe she would just tell everything to Dylan.

Call rejected.

Wait, what? Massie yanked her phone away from her ear, looking down to see if maybe she had dialed Layne or something by accident. But no, her thumb froze as she scrolled through her recent dials list. She had called Dylan.

What the fudge muffins?

Her throat started to close up, her fingers tensing and trembling all at once, dropping her Blackberry with a clang, and dots started to appear around her rooms. Dots that didn't exist. She suddenly felt so cold and so alone. She had no one.

You don't deserve anyone.

But I want someone, she ached to cry out, to for once drop her composure and kick all the way to hell, to fall apart in front of everyone, to just cry and cry and cry, until the world overflowed.

You don't deserve to want anything. The words echoed around in her head, as cold as the voice that said them.

And then Massie fell apart on the floor of a room. Massie Block lost it all and a became a sobbing, snotty, shaking, trembling heap on the floor.

It's the worst thing in the world, when something happens that you never expected to happen, when you lose something you held so close it actually became a part of you, latching onto your heart and adding to you. Making you yourself. You can't take that away from someone.

But you can cut it out with a knife, leaving a crudely shaped hole in them for everything to spill out and watch them drown in everything they are.

That you can do.


"We should get going soon," Derrick said. "Isn't Kristen's reading at eight?"

"Eight-thirty," yawned Dylan, standing up. "But I have to take a shower. Help yourself to anything. We got some leftover mac-and-cheese in the fridge."

"The gourmet kind Jean-Luc makes?" He perked up, naming Merri-Lee's personal chef.

"Yep." She leaned down and kissed the top of his head, her ringlets tickling his ears. It used to feel comforting, even kind of sexy. But now it just itched.

Derrick fantasized about Jean-Luc's amazing cheesy pasta until Dylan had walked out of the room and upstairs to her luxurious bedroom, so he wouldn't say something he regretted. True, he and Dylan had kind of been bumping heads lately, but they were a couple and couples did that, right? And yeah, she was starting to annoy him, but when you were going through a rocky patch with someone everything they did annoyed you. It was part of the cycle of life, wasn't it?

Stop thinking so much, he chided himself. He hopped over the sofa and padded into the modern kitchen in search of the most heavenly mac-and-cheese on the entire planet. After he found it, incidentally, it was gone in about ten minutes.

It was really quiet now, he reflected as he rinsed out the Tupperware in the sink and tried his hands. Derrick didn't care much for silence. It had the tendency to amplify things, to sharpen details. It made you more aware of everything, every little doubt brought out, no persuasion or words to give you piece of mind.

He stood at the counter for a full two minutes, contemplating something. It couldn't make things better. It could definitely make things worse. But he had to know.

So at 7:32 precisely, Derrick Harrington invaded his girlfriend's trust and took her phone from the table and scrolled through her messages.

And there was no message sent to Alicia. No new messages received.

Frowning, he checked her recent calls. And stopped dead. Alicia hadn't called her.

But Massie had.


"Are you coming to the game Friday?" Danny Robbins asked anxiously, pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose.

"Of course we are," purred Alicia Rivera, crossing her well-toned legs, making Danny and the four or five boys grouped around them gulp. It didn't matter that she was just a freshman she was still the hottest thing on campus.

"Yeah," Kristen Gregory added, sounding hyped up as usual. "But you guys better kick ass."

"Count on it," Chris Plovert said, nudging Danny Robbins to the side, so he was right in front of their table.

"Really?" Kristen raised an eyebrow. "'Cause last game, you guys sucked some major balls."

Cam Fisher coughed into his hands. "Sorry, bro, but the chick has a point." He shifted his weight, causing the wooden table to squeak. Plovert rolled his eyes at the other boys. They never really got over Cam turning into a 'sissy', spending all his breaks and frees with his girlfriend (surprisingly the two had lasted through the summer). So while all the other guys were flirting with three of the sexiest girls on campus, albeit freshman, he was sitting with the girls, arm around his girl, twirling her hair.

It was so sweet it was sickening. Claire Lyons giggled and leaned back into him, the image of the ideal high school sweethearts.

"Don't sweat it, Gregory," Dune Baxter said, throwing his arms around Plovert and Kemp Hurley, the two closest to him, "these boys are gonna nail it this time. Grayson won't know what hit them."

"That won't be the only thing we'll be nailing," Plovert joked, winking at Dylan Marvil, who blushed and then suddenly became extremely interested in her Sidekick. She'd been complaining about it forever, ever since she left it in her jeans and they got washed, leaving the screen disoriented and the call button dysfunctional. She'd been moaning about having to wait until her mom got a new Blackberry so she could get Merri-Lee's old iPhone.

"Hey, look, here come the lovebirds," remarked Cam, looking over Claire's head at two people walking in their direction from the lockers

"Last time I checked, you and Claire were already here," Kristen said shortly, looking at the trashcan. Cam looked over at her, genuinely hurt.

"Burnt dude," Dune laughed before leaning over to give Kristen a high-five she tentatively returned. "You're on a roll, Gregory."

"I meant Derrick and Massie," said Cam slowly.

"Hey guys," Massie squealed, climbing gracefully onto the table. Kristen and Dylan both scooted a little bit apart, giving her room to sit down.

"Heyyyy," the girls chorused.

Alicia leaned forward, her long hair being used as a curtain, blocking out the boys who were punching Derrick on the shoulder as a way of greeting. "Soo, are you and Derrick really a couple?"

"Like, officially?" asked Kristen, tucking her hair behind her ear.

Massie just grinned shyly.

All four girls squealed. Cam rolled his eyes and descended to join to guys, muttering under his breath.

"He just asked me. We're going to Homecoming together , too," Massie told them, giggling into her palm at the end.

"Awwh, how cute," Claire sighed, her hand fluttering over her heart. "I knew you guys were going to go steady after that first date. I just knew."

"Shut up," Massie replied playfully, shoving her.

"Nah, Clairebear has a point," Alicia said wisely. "You did have that glow."

"Yeah, that I'm-so-in-love-it's-raining-hearts glow," Kristen piped up.

"Shut up. I did not." Massie paused, looking at them. "Did I?" They all cracked up.

Massie stole a peek at her boyfriend. Plovert and Kemp were retelling some story, getting really into as usual, with big hand gestures and intense facial expressions. Derrick side-glanced back at her, his spiky bangs, which were far too long, touching the tips of eyelashes. Warm brown eyes washed over her, melting her. She smiled softly back at him, before looking at her toes and giggling, the wind sweeping her auburn hair over her face.


It's funny what kind of things minds do when people are asleep. They show us our greatest fantasies. They trap us in our worst fears. They pick through our memories, finding moments in our life so perfect, so amazing, but so small and insignificant that no one really remembers. But sometimes that one memory is the one you need.

It doesn't matter what you try to tell yourself. How you try to make yourself feel. When you're asleep, all the walls you put up fall down, whether you want them to or not. All your left with are your deepest desires. As scary as those are.

The phone felt heavy in Derrick's hand. He didn't notice that the shower had turned, water pounding against glass, or that the film's credits had to ceased to roll. The very air around him seemed to pause.

Dylan was lying to him. Massie was calling her. Why wouldn't Dylan pick up? She'd called back twice since Dylan had rejected her first two calls. He must have been in the kitchen. He should call back. It wasn't a big deal. What if she needed directions?

His finger hovered over her number. You're playing with fire a voice sing-songed in his ear. Dylan doesn't want to talk to Massie.

But Derrick knew the answer, even though he wouldn't admit it. Dylan was afraid that Massie liked Derrick. And that Derrick felt the same way And all of a sudden, Derrick was pissed as hell.

He loved Dylan. He'd proven it to her. They'd come so far in their relationship. It seemed impossible that it had been months already and this had never come up. She never asked him about his exes. They barely ever even mentioned Massiehe didn't even see her in breaks most of the time. Massie was always somewhere else.

He'd always figured that Massie didn't like him. Detested him. Hated him. As cruel as it might sound, he hadn't really spared a thought on her throughout all those years. Yeah, sure, she was in his dreams, sometimes, but what were dreams, anyway?

The point was, Dylan and him, they'd never had a problem with jealousy before. It shouldn't matter if he called an ex. And if Dylan did have a problem with it, they could talk it out. That was what couples did. It'd be fine.

Derrick took a deep breath and pressed the green button.

She picked up almost immediately.

"Hey, Mass," he breathed, eyeing the upstairs bathroom door, wondering exactly what he was doing.


Sooo.

That was the new chapter. Like? Hate? Reviews, please. I'd love a lil' feedback on the flashback :)

xx

Bree