Author: fraidy bat
Rating: T
Pairings: Olivia/Viola, Viola/Duke, Sebastian/Yvonne implied
Summary: 98 percent of the time still leaves two percent in which anything can happen. A sequel to He's Not You. Viola POV.
Disclaimer: I do not own anything from She's the Man. None of it belongs to me.
Notes: Brace yourselves, everyone. :D
Chapter 5
"You guys wanna play a little game?" Toby called out, holding a soccer ball in one hand.
"What, now?" said Duke, setting down his soda.
"Yes, now. It's your birthday, and you love soccer, so we're required to play soccer with you," he replied, tossing Duke the ball.
Grinning, Duke stood up and poked me in the shoulder. I got up from the lounge chair I was in and stood next to him. He pointed a finger at Toby. "Okay, you're on."
As far as I knew, no one had played a game of soccer since the season ended, not even a casual backyard game like this. I felt hope infusing my heart; this is what Duke and I did best together.
"I call Andrew," said Toby, taking off his watch and handing it to Eunice, who was gazing adoringly at him.
"Obviously, I got Viola," Duke said, winking at me.
Soon, more guys from the team were taking sides, and then some people not on Illyria's varsity soccer team were joining in. Even some girls besides Kia and Yvonne were expressing an interest, and I nodded to myself in approval. It always did me good to see my fellow females playing sports.
My mother's very large house had a very large backyard to go with it, and much of it was covered with thick, well-kept grass. It was perfect for a nice, friendly game of soccer. Everybody started taking off shoes and shedding jackets. It struck me as funny that it was 75º outside and very sunny, but since it was the middle of February, people still felt some kind of seasonal obligation to bring jackets or sweaters. We didn't get much of a winter where we lived, but the pile of discarded outerwear spoke of all that wishful thinking.
My good mood was climbing toward its apex, and as I geared up with my little makeshift soccer team, using rocks as goal posts and sticks for sidelines, I was unprepared for the swift descent it would take when I looked over to see who had joined the other team and was already taking off his socks.
It was loud outside, and I was really glad about that. Greg smiled and waved to Olivia who was watching from the patio with several other partygoers, and I made a noise of complete disgust. Thankfully, no one but me heard it.
"Have you ever played before?" I heard Olivia call out to him.
He laughed, and it was truly an unpleasant sound. "A little when I was a kid. So this should be funny."
She smiled coyly, and I felt slightly nauseated. "I might find it amusing."
"That's why I'm doing it," he said, leaning toward her so he could make better eye contact. She turned pink and lowered her eyes. I resolved to kill him. Or at least break his leg. That creep had no business putting his slimy moves on her. He was absolutely untrustworthy, and I had to get rid of him. If I couldn't put him in the hospital, I was at least going to shame him into never speaking to her again.
Duke pulled us into a huddle to determine positions, and since it looked like they were putting Greg at right forward, I requested left forward. In another minute, we were face to face. His lips pulled back from his teeth in that hideous smile of his. I was sure he was taunting me, daring me to upstage him in front of Olivia.
Oh, you do not know who you are messing with, asshole.
Eunice, our newly appointed referee, blew a whistle she just happened to have with her in her purse (that girl did not cease to amaze), and we were off. My team started out with the ball, and as it was passed over to me, I ran past Greg, throwing my shoulder into his chest as I went. I saw him stagger as I flew by. Within a minute, I had scored a goal.
On my way back to my starting position, I smirked at him. "Ya like that, sucker?" I said in a low voice that only we could hear. He glowered at me, rubbing the place on his chest where my shoulder had connected. I grinned to myself. I hadn't felt this satisfied in a long time.
The game progressed like any other backyard game of soccer. People argued over sidelines and corner kicks and who last touched the ball before it went out. Duke seemed to be having a great time, but truthfully, I couldn't say much more than that about how he felt about it. I spent the entire game running Greg Valerio into the ground, sometimes literally. By the time we were nearly done with the twenty-minute game, I had discreetly elbowed him in the ribs more times than I could count, plowed into him with my shoulder on several occasions, and he was covered with grass stains from all the times I'd knocked him to the ground when jostling for possession of the ball. Hardly anyone but Greg and I knew I was doing it on purpose. Hardly anyone.
Eunice blew the final whistle, and my team had won. I walked to the patio in search of water, and Greg came up behind me, glaring so hard that a muscle in his forehead was twitching. He was sweaty and filthy and royally pissed. I felt wonderful.
"That was so much fun, Greg. Really, thanks for playing," I said, patting him on the shoulder. "We'll definitely have to do it again sometime."
I half expected him to start screaming profanities or something, but he just kept glaring at me. I smiled sweetly back at him. It was only then, in the midst of my triumph, that I saw Olivia approaching from behind Greg. I knew instantly from the angry, confused expression on her face that she'd seen the whole thing and knew my being extra physical wasn't just part of the game.
Shit, I thought. I hadn't anticipated this. I just wanted her to see what an idiot and a loser he was, and now it looked like she was ready to defend him. I decided to beat a hasty retreat and find somewhere to hide, preferably someplace dark where I would never have to face Olivia. Ever.
I turned and almost jogged into the house, and with one quick look over my shoulder I saw Olivia put a hand on Greg's arm. The despair that I had tried to ignore earlier now became like a boulder in my stomach, and what was worse was the fact that it had ceased to be just about Duke and our problems and now included the anger Olivia had directed toward me. Not even when I was dressed as a guy and trying not to crush on my male roommate had I felt this upset and screwed up. The difficult emotional fallout of the Viola-Sebastian debacle was nothing compared to this.
My room upstairs was starting to look really good when Kia suddenly appeared out of nowhere and pulled me into an empty hallway with her.
What now?
Her forehead was creased with concern and worry. She was still holding onto my arm.
"What's the matter, Kia?" I asked, trying to move this, whatever this new wrench in the works was, along.
"I should be asking you that," she said in a serious tone.
I laughed it off. "Don't be silly, I'm fine—"
"If you were fine, you wouldn't have tried to kill Greg in front of everybody."
"I didn't—I wasn't—"
She arched an eyebrow at me and crossed her arms across her chest. "Oh, come on, Vi. You're being so totally obvious about it that I'm surprised Duke hasn't figured out what's going on."
Everything inside me suddenly went cold. Obvious? Going on? "W-what do you mean?"
A sudden wave of sympathy took over her features, and she slowly and pityingly shook her head at me. "I'm also really surprised that you don't know what's going on, either."
A little voice in the depths of my mind was yelling at me that I knew exactly what was happening, but the other, louder voice was trying to hang onto being clueless. Ignorance of the truth was my last lifeline to my picture-perfect life, and I had it in a vise grip. I shrugged my shoulders and gaped helplessly at Kia.
"Viola…" she gently began. "I think you hate Greg because you're jealous of him and Olivia. Because you like her."
My stomach now felt like ice. "What? That's crazy."
"I'm not going to tell anybody, but I think you should figure this out before things with you and Duke get serious or something."
"How do you even know any of this? N-not that I'm saying you're right, or anything," I sputtered, narrowing my eyes at her.
"I know you, and I also know a girl-crush when I see one. Although I'm pretty sure you have more than a crush on Olivia. And it's not really that crazy, Vi. I mean, she already has feelings for you that she's been carrying around, and you've been attracted to a girl before—"
"That was junior high!" I hissed at her, looking around to make sure no one had heard that. "And you and I both got over that. It has nothing to do with how I feel now."
"Whatever. The point is that it's happened before. And I think you know how you really feel about her, but you're just in some serious denial."
"You're really wrong here, Kia," I said in as firm a voice as I could, but in my head I was hearing myself talking about my…preferences with Olivia some months before:
"And I've never—well, maybe not never, but, like 98 percent of the time—I'm not usually attracted to…um…girls."
I had said that, and it was the truth, but that didn't mean that Kia was right. Sure, I'd had some problems lately with keeping my feelings straight when it came to Olivia, but that didn't necessarily mean that I had those feelings for her. So what if I had enjoyed kissing her? What did it matter that being near her sometimes gave me butterflies in my stomach? Who cares if I thought she was pretty? Forget that stupid hole in my heart. I was having trouble with my boyfriend, Olivia was my friend and I knew she liked me, and it must have confused me.
"If I'm so wrong, then why were you being such a bitch to Greg?"
I opened my mouth to vehemently insist that I was just looking out for Olivia, but I didn't get the chance. Olivia herself appeared next to me and took hold of my arm, quite painfully in fact. She flashed a strained smile at Kia before pulling me down the hall to the empty guest bedroom.
"Sorry Kia, but I need to ask Viola that same question. In private."
Oh god.
I looked to Kia for help, but she just shrugged and watched, the worry once again creasing her brow.
Olivia gave me a push into the guest room and shut the door behind us. Immediately, she rounded on me, eyes still flashing with anger, confusion…and pain.
"What the hell was that, Viola?" she demanded, eyeing me expectantly.
"What?" I said, trying to play dumb. I regretted it the second it came out of my mouth.
"What! You practically tried to kill Greg out there! You might as well have just used a baseball bat, for god's sake!"
"Well, he was asking for it!" I had now raised my voice to match her near-shouting level.
"How was he asking for it? What did he ever do to you?" She was really shouting now, and I will admit that I was pretty damn nervous. Olivia had never yelled at me like this before, and I was at a loss as to how to handle myself, especially in light of everything Kia had just said.
"This is not about me, it's about you!"
"How is this about me?" she said, her eyes widening in disbelief.
"You just don't seem to get what a creep that guy is, Olivia. Always staring at you, following you around. Just like Malcolm! How do you not see that?"
"I can't believe you," she said, quieter now, and that turned out to be worse than the yelling.
"Who knows what he's really after? I mean, he could just be trying to nail you so he can brag to all his disgusting friends about it. And you—you must be blind or something, because if you realized what a zero Greg is, you wouldn't be chatting him up after class and laughing at his stupid jokes, and you definitely wouldn't have brought him to this party!"
Something came over her then that I couldn't describe. It was a terrible mixture of frustration and a lot of pain. Tears had begun to form in her eyes.
"God, Viola," she choked out. "Why do you do this to me?"
"I don't—"
"I did it for you!" she half screamed, half sobbed at me. All the air went out of my lungs, and I found it very hard to breathe. "I was in love with you, and you had a boyfriend, so I tried to move on and get over you!"
"With Greg?" was all I could manage to say. She was really crying now, and I was terrified.
"Yes, with Greg! He's funny, and nice, and he likes me! You're with Duke, and I thought that if I could just find someone else, I might forget how I felt and then you wouldn't have to be uncomfortable anymore, and we could just be friends like always," she said, pressing a hand to her chest as she tried to calm down.
I was dumbstruck. All I could do was look at her. She was so vulnerable, so beautiful, and hurting so badly.
"Isn't this what you wanted? For me to go back to normal? I thought you would be happy that I was moving on, but it seems like I was wrong about you—again." She paused, trying to catch her breath. Her eyes pleaded with me. "I was only trying to make you happy."
You do make me happy.
And right then, something inside me snapped, or broke, or collapsed like a tired old wall that couldn't keep Olivia out anymore. Or maybe it was just my heart tearing itself open and letting her in. Whatever it was, the truth of Kia's words only minutes before was now glaringly obvious. I was jealous of Greg. And that meant that I really did have feelings for the beautiful girl standing in front of me, trying to stop crying. I was never so scared in my whole life.
I stopped thinking completely and let instinct take control. Even though my body was trembling all over, there was no hesitation. I took her face in my hands, pulled her toward me, and kissed her, hard. She stood so still with shock for such a long time that I thought I might have a heart attack from the fright it gave me, but then she started to kiss me back. Rational thought and reason disappeared, and all I could think or feel or smell or taste or care about was Olivia and her lips on mine. She had kissed me before, but this was entirely different from that.
Then, I hadn't felt this kind of ecstasy and pure, untainted happiness. The way she was kissing me, I could tell she was pretty damn happy too. She tasted like cherry lip gloss and something minty. Hands were everywhere: my back, her waist, her hair, my neck, my hips, her face, her stomach—somehow, my fingers ended up inching toward the string that tied her halter around her neck, and a chill shot up and down my spine when I felt her hand on the skin of my lower back underneath my shirt.
I was pretty familiar with sex by now. Justin and I had done it a couple times, and it had been kind of unpleasant. Duke and I had gotten close to doing it a few times, but I never felt ready. Now, breaking the contact of our mouths so I could kiss along Olivia's jaw line and down to her neck, I wanted her like I'd never wanted anyone before. That made me panic a little bit. My rational brain was coming back, urging me to slow down before we did anything too permanent.
But I couldn't stop. Ignoring the part of me that couldn't believe what I was doing, I let my hands roam over the smooth, bare skin of her back and held her as close to me as possible. Olivia pulled me up from where I was kissing every inch of her neck and covered my mouth with hers once more. Kissing Duke in the beginning had felt something like this, but I never imagined that kissing Olivia would surpass that feeling.
Eventually, we had to stop to breathe. She had her arms around my neck, and her forehead rested against mine. I kept my arms wrapped tightly around her waist.
"Do you have any idea how long I've been wanting to do that?" she said in a voice just above a whisper. We were both breathing hard, and it made talking somewhat difficult.
"Since we met six months ago?" I replied just as softly, smiling at her.
She giggled (and it was the giggle) and smiled her happy smile. "Yeah."
I wanted to stay like that forever, but the reality of what had just happened was starting to sink in. My mind began racing, trying to make sense of it.
What does this mean? What do we do now?
The next thought hit me like blow to the head.
Oh my god, what do I tell Duke?
Olivia and I were still wrapped up in each other when the door to the guest room opened.
"Hey Viola, we're gonna cut the cake—" My brother stopped dead in the middle of his sentence. Olivia and I flew apart and to opposite ends of the room, but the damage had been done.
We both stared at Sebastian in terrified silence, waiting in agony for his reaction. His mouth had fallen open, and he was slowly looking back and forth between Olivia and me. Finally, he spoke.
"Whoa," was all he said, and a slow smile began to spread across his face.