A New Beginning

I was just putting on a bit of mascara when Santana burst into my room, crossing her arms in front of her chest.

“Don’t even tell me,” she snapped at me, taking in my outfit of a sort-of-dressy shirt and a pair of light-washed jeans. “Who the hell was stupid enough to ask you out?”

“Actually,” I snickered, putting my mascara away and putting on just a bit of lip gloss, “you’re pretty familiar with him.”

For about a minute, there was nothing but silence between the two of us. Then, slowly, she sounded out, “There’s no way you’re talking about who I think you’re talking about.”

“Well, let’s see. Who do you think I’m talking about?” I shoved my makeup bag back into my drawer before turning around and looking at her, not glaring for once, but just waiting for her answer to finally come out of her mouth.

Her eyes narrowed as she spit the word, “Puck,” at me.

“Really,” I laughed, letting her think that she was wrong, “I can’t believe that you only pull of D’s in school. Because, really, you’re a smart kid.” Crinkling my nose condescendingly, I slapped her lightly on the side of her face.

Santana just about exploded, shoving my hand away. “What the…Why would…What were you…?”

“Articulate,” I commented before pulling on my flats, leaning down to get the backs from under my heel.

“Why would he ever go for you when he has me?”

Shrugging, I sat down on my bed. “Maybe,” I lied, “he just wants one night with a classy girl? Is that so wrong?”

“Please,” she scoffed, sitting down on my bed and shooting daggers at me. “Puck does not want ‘classy’. Puck is all about the conquest. And we both know that you will never give it up to him. So he’s going to lose interest pretty damn fast.”

I kept my mouth shut, since she was right, and she would know if I objected her statement.

Confident that she had finally stifled any hope that I ever had for a relationship with Puck (not that I had any in the first place, so that was pretty useless) and squashed the little self-confidence I had, she flipped her hair over her shoulder and walked out of the room, shaking her hips as she walked out of habit.

She made me so angry that I could throw her through a wall. If I possessed enough strength, that was.

Sighing and closing my eyes to try to block the encounter with Santana from my mind, I shut my bedroom door with force, making sure that she didn't make the mistake of coming back into the room.

When I heard the beep from outside, it was just after seven, so I grabbed my purse off the side table next to my door and started down the stairs. The air was pretty cool, sending the goose bumps popping out of my skin and making me shiver.

Of course, Santana was leaning over through Puck’s window, her face really close to his. Puck’s face was being engulfed by a giant grin, and he didn’t even look at me when I climbed into the passenger’s side seat.

It was only once my seatbelt was on and my purse was sitting in my lap, that I finally could hear snippets of their conversation.

“So,” Santana whispered in a seductive voice, clearly making no effort whatsoever to be quiet, “if you just come inside after you finish with her, we can…” She leaned closer to his ear, as his face grew more and more excited.

I cleared my throat, starting to feel a little sick to my stomach. “Can the two of you stop? C’mon, let’s just go.”

“See you later,” Puck promised Santana before she backed up.

“You disgust me,” I told him matter-of-factly as we were pulling out of the driveway. “She’s my cousin. Why did you even want to go out with me anyway? I’ll tell you right up front that I will not sleep with you.”

He scoffed. “I figured, since Santana immediately offered. But that wasn’t the point, really.”

My mouth stayed shut as I stared at him, waiting for an elaboration. When he didn’t offer one, I nagged him a little more. “Then what was the point?”

His eyes stayed locked on the road, not wanting to face me, as he finally said, “Because you didn’t want to go out with me. And now, you are, so I win.”

Rolling my eyes and ignoring the sinking feeling I had in my stomach, I put my head against the window, the cold sinking through my hair and straight to my scalp. “Well, that’s slimey of you. So why don’t you just take me back to my house, and you can fuck Santana, and I can say that I went out with you? Everyone will win.”

“Not if I don’t finish taking you out,” he corrected with that stupid smirk.

Groaning loudly, I gritted my teeth together and closed my eyes for a second, praying that the date would go by as quickly as possible. Because, frankly, I didn’t want to spend another second with Puck.

“You know,” I snapped at him suddenly, causing him to jump a little, “I figured that, since I’ve seen you at your probably most vulnerable, you wouldn’t be such a jackass to me.”

That sunk in for a second, probably him remembering what little snippets he did of that night. “Yeah, well, if you knew me, then you’d know that nothing you do could make me stop being a jackass.”

“I hate you,” I informed him. “Just for future reference. I wish that I had left you there on the sidewalk so you could puke all over yourself and swim in it while everyone else snapped pictures and put them on blogs, making you a laughing stock. I really wish I had.”

“Ouch. Harsh.” And that was it. No comeback or anything. How irritating.

“And I really don’t want to be here right now, sitting in this car with you. We better not pass a cop because I’ll tell him that you kidnapped me.”

“Okay.”

“Where the hell are we going, anyway?” Though I wouldn’t let him know, my heart had picked up pace as the sign that said Thanks for visiting Lima! zoomed by us.

“You’ll see,” he answered with a shrug. I could see his knuckles turn white as he tightened his grip on the steering wheel, shifting a little in his seat.

“I’m seriously going to call 911 and say that I’ve been kidnapped if you don’t tell me where we’re going.” I swallowed back a scream and my tears as I reached into my cell phone, starting to type the number with weak fingers.

When Puck looked over and saw that I was actually going through with my threat, he slapped his hand over my phone, sending it falling to the floor. “What the hell? I’m not kidnapping you, Australia.”

I cleared my throat and sniffled for a second. Then, Puck smartened up a little and pulled over to the side of the road.

“Hey, are you okay?”

“Well, let’s see,” I mused for a second, steadying my voice. “You’re taking me somewhere I don’t know, and I don’t even know you very well, other than the fact that you’re a manwhore and a jerk. Oh, and you sleep around with my cousin all the time, and who knows what kinds of diseases she has?”

“It’s called a surprise. It means that you don’t tell someone where, exactly, you’re going.” He raised his eyebrow at me. “And wow…do you really think that highly of me?”

Narrowing my eyes, I resisted the temptation I had to spit at him. For a second, I thought that he might actually be caring enough to see just why he was freaking me out so much.

But instead, he just chuckled for a second before starting the car back up and pulling back onto the open road, putting more and more distance between home and me every second.