Remember Me

Around and around the crowds went as the music blared and laughs fell from her red stained lips. Her blonde hair a mess as it whipped around with the rest of her, whilst her body moved to the beat of the music. One arm raised with a glass held in the air, the liquid almost gone, as she demanded attention from everyone in the room. To most occupying the room, she was merely just a young woman having a good time. She was just someone enjoying herself, but to a man watching from the back of the room, she was a mess. A confusing mess that had yet to really understand the consequences of her actions.

His teammates didn't seem to mind the fact that she was Pascal's niece, and only twenty. They seemed to be encouraging the behavior, excusing it as just another Saturday night. Max even going as far as joining her on the dance floor. "If I didn't know any better, I'd say you liked the girl," a voice spoke, and he leaned his chin into the palm of his hand.

He sighed, looking over to another - but much more put together - blonde woman. Tyler Kennedy's girlfriend, Kelsey, who was in town for the week, found an empty seat at their group table inside the local bar. "You do!" she exclaimed, like she had just found the best new gossip in town. "Oh, this is so exciting!"

"Kels..." he raised an eyebrow, giving her a look as though to tell her to calm the hell down. "Stop acting like we're in middle school." His remark caused her to raise her hands into the air, backing off.

"Woah there, buddy. Touchy subject or something?" He shook his head, looking away and not bothering to answer her question. When Marc turned back to the dance floor, the main attraction was no longer dancing.



"Can I buy you a drink?" a rather tall, somewhat attractive man propositioned Alyssa as she pushed her way off the dance floor.

"Better luck next time," she laughed, rejecting him and getting pleasure from it as she skipped over to an empty table. Sinking into the seat, her head spun with the kind of euphoric feeling she once enjoyed. The feeling she had spent months aiming to get every time she went out with the kids she went to school with in New York, after her brother died. It kept her from feeling, and it helped her feel weightless almost. It was the best feeling in the world, at least to her.

"You ever let it down?" Alyssa took her hands down from her face to find Marc standing in front of her.

"Let what down?"

"Your forcefield. How's anybody supposed to get close enough to give you what you need?"

"Who says I need somebody?" The idea itself was laughable. For Alyssa to need somebody, it would mean that she'd actually be willing to put faith in someone to be there for her. For most of her life there had only been one person to ever live up to that expectation, and he ended up killing himself.

"Everybody needs someone." Marc was truly starting to see how opposite they were. Like two sides of the spectrum.

"Only weak people," she muttered, slouching even further down into the booth of the breakfast diner and pulling on the ends of her messy hair with her right hand.

"Is that why you don't have any friends?"

"I'm just not a relationship person," the blonde shrugged, not giving it a second thought. Even the people she spent her time with back in New York, she'd never really consider her friends.

"If you've never tried it, how would you know?"

"Because I've seen what relationships do to people, and I'd rather not ever go through that. I'm not stupid; I don't have to make the same mistakes other people do to learn from them."

"Not everyone turns out like that, y'know."

"My parents once said they 'loved' each other, and now they can't even be in the same room..."

"You're not your parents," he interrupted her, not letting her finish.

"Thank God for that..." she grumbled, picking at the edge of the table with her fingernail.

He ignored the remark, "You'd rather be alone than risk the chance of getting hurt?"

"For what? So you get three months of blissful idiocy and then years of being stuck in the same place with this person you can't stand, because you can't stand the thought of being alone? Why not just quit while you're ahead?"

"You have an extremely cynical outlook on life... yet you're so privileged and you're so lucky..."

"Are you finished psychoanalyzing me?" When he didn't say anything, she took that as her answer. "Because if you are, you can take me home." He looked at her, almost shocked that she was suggesting the idea. "Nobody's home." Her lips curved into a smug smile as she watched him sit across from her, suddenly speechless.

"Are you fucking kidding me?" He hadn't even thought the words through before they came tumbling out of his mouth. "There's something seriously wrong with you."

"Like I haven't heard that before," she rolled her eyes, tossing her hair out of her face. "Don't even try to act like you're not interested, Marky-Marc." She pushed herself up out of the seat, and patted him on his back as she started to head out of the bar.

Marc didn't move at first, his mind still reeling to figure out what exactly had just gone on. It wasn't until he rationalized taking her home himself was better than letting her find some horny, drunk guy who could quite possibly have herpes or something even worse, do it for him. He got up from his seat and left the bar, finding the blonde leaning up against the building waiting for him.

"Predictable," she snarked, grimacing at him.

"Promise to be nice?" he asked her, almost jokingly. Yet he also didn't want to spend the next twenty minute drive listening to her annoying comments about how his fashion sense was that of a three year-old, or whatever she had could come up with tonight. "Say it or you're walking."

Alyssa eyed him, trying to figure out if he was serious or not as she stood up straight and walked over to him. "Fine. I promise," she muttered before following him to his car.



"What? You're not gonna ask me out?" They had been sitting in silence for most of the ride to the Dupuis house. Aside from the constant shuffling of radio stations, and change of CDs the blonde had managed to find thrown around the sports car, the only sound coming from either of them was the tapping of Marc's fingers on the steering wheel when stopped at a red light.

As Marc-Andre pulled to an abrupt stop just at the bottom of her driveway, he reached over and flung the passenger side door open. Alyssa was bracing herself for a much different type of contact than the insinuation of "get the fuck out of my car."

"Alyssa, I'm not in the mood." Marc didn't even look at her. He didn't have to, the tone in his voice said enough.

Still, she pushed on: "What? Not in the mood for what?"

"Your smart ass comments. I already asked you out, and you just ignored me like I was an idiot. I like you, I do, but I'm not into being another thing you can check off, or use to piss off someone." He groaned when she refused to get out of the car.

"I thought you were all about persistence? Whatever happened to 'If at first you don't succeed, try, try again?" There was a smirk dancing around her lips, and he could hear it in her voice. She was enjoying this. This was, once again, just another game.

"There are some things that aren't worth it," he breathed out, only to have the car door slammed shut moments later and his car empty as he had wished it would be just minutes before.

Only the pit of his stomach told him that wasn't the right way to get it done.