Piece of Work

When I woke up the next morning, I winced when I saw the large bruise on my face with a long scratch through it. The skin was extremely tender, and it hurt like hell.

"I can fix this," I whispered to myself hopefully. But no matter how much concealer and foundation I used, it didn't completely cover the bruise. It just covered it up enough to make it so it wasn't completely obvious. The scratch couldn't be fixed but...maybe everyone would just think that I walked into something? Maybe.

"What happened?" Mom gasped when I walked downstairs.

I shot her an angry look. "Now is that really any of your business?" I hissed.

"Faye, come on. This isn't fair. I'm just worried about you." She took a deep, shuddered breath. "What happened to how we used to talk all the time? What happened to the old you? Did your father take her away?"

My head snapped toward her at the mention of my father. "No. She grew up and moved on." Without another thought, I grabbed my bag and walked right out of my house to my car.

As I was driving, I had fast flashbacks of the night before, of Ben's rough hand hitting my face, the feeling of his nails digging into my skin.

My eyes started to water a little again, but I blinked them away before they could fall. I didn't need them messing up my makeup.

The second Olivia saw me, her eyes grew as wide as saucers. "What the hell happened to you?" She got close to my face to examine the lesion.

"You'll never believe me," I laughed. It kind of freaked me out how casually I could lie about this, but an excuse just popped into my head. "You know the pillow that I have that used to be a massage pillow, but it broke?"

"Yeah?" Olivia didn't seem to catch the connection.

"I went down to lie on it last night...and the wire was sticking out. It scratched me. Brutal, huh?"

"What about the bruise?" Obviously, she didn't buy my reason completely.

After a second more of thinking, I shrugged. "I guess it just must have scratched a little too close to my eye." I shut my locker door, the sound ringing through the hallway. "That's all."

She gave me a suspicious look, like she was trying her hardest to see through my lies, but I kept a straight face, careful not to show any weakness.

"Hey, babe," Ben said, coming up behind me and wrapping a hand around my waist. He shot Olivia an annoyed look, and she got the message.

"I guess I'll talk to you later," Olivia muttered angrily, storming off down the hallway. I felt badly that she was being pushed away from me, but I also...was kind of afraid of Ben right now.

Ben turned me around so I was facing him, but his arms were still around my waist. "Listen," he started, and I could feel his warm breath on my face, "I'm so sorry about yesterday. I just...I had a hard day and I lost my temper. But I meant what I said, alright? I know that you haven't had a lot of experience with boyfriends, but you're not supposed to be talking and flirting with other boys, okay?"

I nodded, not even bothering to explain that I didn't think of Dan as any more than just a friend. "It's cool. I completely understand."

Without warning, Ben cupped his hand around the back of my neck and kissed me. This was the first time that he'd actually kissed me on the lips, and it crossed my mind that it was a weird place to do it, but it felt right at the same time.

"Get to class or you get detention," a teacher I didn't recognize warned in a stern voice.

"Guess I'll talk to you later," Ben expressed with a light chuckle. "Lunch?"

"Yeah...See you then."

"Oh...and don't let Olivia sit there. She's kind of...um...boring and too goody-goody. Just...I don't like her, and I don't really want you to see her."

That hit me hard. I had been friends with Olivia for so long, and something inside me told me that ditching her just because my new boyfriend, whom I'd just met, said so was wrong.

He was just staring at me, waiting for my answer, before I finally breathed, "Sure, fine. Yeah."

"Good. I'll see you later." He kissed me again before disappearing down the hallway. Then, the shrill bell rang loudly, echoing in my head.

"Shit," I muttered under my breath, starting to run down the hallway to get to my class, which just happened to be on the third floor while I was still on the first, before too much of class passed.

"Late, huh, Faye?" my Spanish teacher questioned, raising an eyebrow at me. "There's only a few days left of school, so you wouldn't want to start getting detention now, would you?"

"No, I wouldn't," I replied with a smile. I always had this way of making teachers go easy on me. It was like a gift.

She let it go and smiled back. "Just don't make it a habit."

The rest of the day went off without a hitch...that was...until lunch. Olivia was sitting at our normal table, starting to unpack her lunch. Telling her to get lost wasn't really going to be easy...

"Hi, Olivia. You know that I love you more than any person in the whole world, right?"

She narrowed her eyes. "What do you want?"

"Um...can you...move tables?"

"What?!"

"Just um...move tables. Ben's going to sit with me today and..."

"He doesn't like me, huh?" Olivia didn't sound too happy, which was a very rare occurrence. She didn't like getting angry at anyone.

"Um..."

"Fine. I'll just sit alone." When she looked down to gather her stuff, I noticed a gleam in her eye travel down her cheek.

"Liv, I'm so sorry."

"Save it. It's fine. You just...you have fun sitting with your boyfriend, since he's obviously more important than me."

She got up and walked across the cafeteria, not looking back at me. Her head stayed facing the floor, probably so no one could see her cry.

"Good job, babe," Ben cheered as he planted a kiss on my neck softly. "Way to stay strong."

When I sat back at the table after buying my food, I felt guilty. Ben seemed to sense that, so he leaned forward and kissed me. "It's okay," he whispered. "Just relax. You're too good for her anyway."

I shrugged and took another French fry out of the small bag in front of me. Too bad I knew, deep down, that it was her that was too good for me, and yet she stuck with me through all these years...she didn't deserve to be hurt like that.

"I guess," I humored him. But, no matter how hard he tried, he couldn't get my full attention. I kept staring across the cafeteria, watching Olivia alternate between dabbing her eyes so she didn't mess up her makeup and taking sips of her water. Her food was left untouched.

I paid for that later with a nice purple bruise on my jaw. In apology, Ben showed up to school with a bouquet of twelve red roses, grinning widely while he kissed me.

"You have the best boyfriend," a girl I barely knew sighed when she saw the display.

"Oh, the greatest," I smiled fakely. I knew it wasn't natural to be afraid of your boyfriend, but I couldn't help it.