FIRST DATE

Zacky’s POV

Lunch time came quickly, and Jimmy didn’t complain about it. The gang came to the cafeteria and jimmy proved his skills as a troublemaker. The five guys were now installed at a table, and were having small talk conversations.

“Have you heard the new, guys?”, Jimmy asked, trying to contain his laughter.

“The new?”, Brian questioned back, raising his eyebrow.

Even Zacky looked confused.

“Yeah, a kind of…funny new..”, Jimmy explained.

“Go on, Jim.”, Matt encouraged him, rolling his eyes.

Jimmy looked slowly at everyone who was at the table, and set his gaze on Zacky.

“Zee has an admirer!!”, he shouted.

It was Zacky’s turn to roll his eyes, realizing what was Jimmy talking about.

“Uh…yeah, nothing surprising about that”, Matt said, not really understanding what Jimmy’s point was. “I mean, there are plenty of girls who would do everything they can to be with Zack…”, he continued.

“Nah, that’s not the same thing here…”, Jimmy smirked. “This admirer is special, isn’t she, Zacky?”

“Shut up, will you?”, Zacky answered, obviously annoyed.

“So, who’s she?”, Brian asked, starting to get bored by this conversation.

Jimmy waited a few seconds…

“CHELSEY-NERD!!”, he shouted, laughing hard this time.

Everybody remained silent before joining Jimmy in his laughter. Everybody except Zacky.

“That’s not funny, guys!”, Zacky complained.

“Fuck yeah it is!”, Brian managed to say, a hand on his stomach.

The four teens continued to makes jokes about Chels’ crush, which pissed Zacky off even more.

****few moments later****

The guys were climbing the stairs to the classroom.

“So, Zacky, are you impatient to see Chels-nerd in this class?”, Matt joked, causing Brian, Johnny and Jimmy to giggle.

“Aren’t you bored to talk about this? Come on, you’re not 5 years old anymore. Grow up, guys!”, Zacky said angrily.

“Wow, Mr. Baker starts to be aggressive..”, Jimmy teased.

“FUCK OFF!”, Zacky shouted, before walking faster than the four other men.

Zacky arrived in the corridor, frowning in anger.

His eyes went wide when he saw Jamie forcing Chelsey to enter in a classroom. He decided not to make any noise, and followed the two discretely.

“Will you finally understand, Chelsey?! You’ve got no choice! You’re MINE!”, Jamie threatened. He has his hand strongly wrapped around Chelsey’s arm for her not to get away.

At this point, Zacky started to feel a strange feeling in his stomach. He hadn’t a name to put on that feeling, but he knew that all he wanted to do is to beat the shit out of this Jamie guy.

He looked discretely in the classroom and saw Jamie put a hand behind Chels’ neck, forcing her to come closer to him. Their faces were millimeters apart, and Jamie leaned to kiss her.

“What do you think you’re doing?”, Zacky suddenly asked, entering the room.

Jamie opened wide eyes, before forcing a smile.

“What are you talking about, Baker? I’m just having a good time with my lovely girlfriend, and you came to disturb it…”, Jamie lied.

“Okay, so why are you holding your girlfriend? You’re afraid she would run away from you?”, Zacky asked again, ironically.

Jamie frowned. “What’s your problem, dude? Who cares about what I’m doing with her?”

Zacky realized that maybe he shouldn’t have intervened in this… He looked at the door, and saw the rest of the gang, who were just arriving.

“What’s up, Zack? You look so pissed off…”, Brian asked. “Oh, hi Jamie …uh…Jamie? Why are you so close with...uh …her?”

Jamie and Zack rolled their eyes.

“This is MY life, okay? Stop annoying me! “, Jamie shouted.

“Wow, calm down, dude. I was just randomly asking.. it wasn’t mean..”, Brian retorted.

“Yeah yeah, but your friend had a quite aggressive tone..”, Jamie pointed.

“My friend?”, Brian asked confused.

“Yeah. Baker’s your friend, right? And he went to yell at me because I was with Chelsey here..”

Brian looked at Zack almost in disbelief.

“Why did you do that, dude?”, Matt asked.

“I-I…just heard some yelling and…I-I had to make sure everything was okay in this room..”, Zacky hesitated, blushing really lightly.

“Bullshit, you wanted to defend your little princess!”, Jimmy joked.

Zacky opened wide eyes, and looked at Chelsey quickly. She looked at him questioningly.
The bell rang and Jamie suddenly left the room.

“Sooo, humm, you have French Class right now Zee, right?...Meet at mine this afternoon, okay?”, Brian proposed.

Zacky simply nodded.

Chelsey’s POV

The girl was really confused. First, she was surprised that Jamie came to see her again after what she did to him. But this was nothing compared to the second thing which was surprising her. Jimmy said “little princess”, and Zacky looked really pissed off about this… Does that mean…? No, she couldn’t suppose stupid things like this. She had to concentrate on her work.
The first class of this afternoon would start soon… and it was… French class. She sighed and headed for the right classroom.
For once, she wasn’t the first one to enter the room. Almost everybody was already installed at a table. Her favorite place, in front of the teacher was already taken. She looked all over the room to see where she could sit. She looked almost sad when she saw that only two places were still free. The first one was next to Zack, and the second next to Joyce, or “Ultimate Silly Bitch”. She wasn’t mean or something, she was just strongly stupid. But it was maybe better to sit next to her, than next to Zacky, Chelsey thought. She approached the table, but stopped when Joyce talked.

“No way, Chelsey. I don’t want to ruin my reputation by you sitting next to me. Look, there’s another place next to the freak”, she said, looking at Zacky.

Chelsey looked at her almost pleadingly but Joyce put her purse on the free chair.

“Well, it seems like you’ve got no other choice, Carter…”, said Joyce, looking away.

Chelsey sighed and made her way next to Zack. She avoided to look at him, and sat down on the chair.

Mr. Blanchet arrived into the class.

“Bonjour tout le monde, asseyez-vous, nous allons commencer ! », he said smiling.

Seeing that everybody looked at him curiously, he explained: « Oh, I just said that we should start.” He looked at his notebook. “Okay, so for today I ask you to write a short text, about 300 words. It can be about anything you want. I’m here if you need any help for the vocabulary or something. Oh and I will keep what you’ve done at the end of the class.”

Chelsey took her notebook and started to think about a subject. She forced herself to be concentrated, in order to forget that Zachary Baker was centimeters away from her.
Yet, she glanced at him quickly, and noticed he was already writing something on his paper. She was surprised.
Chelsey had a lot of imagination and she was pretty good when it came to find a story to write or anything like this. But today, she couldn’t focus on her work. She sighed in frustration.

“Do you need help, Miss Carter?”, Mr. Blanchet asked politely.

“Oh… no... not really. I just can’t find something to write about...”, she confessed.

“I understand. You know, you can write about anything. You can just write what’s on your mind right now…”, he proposed.

“Uh…I’ll think about that. Thank you Mr.”, she replied, forcing a smile.

“Mr. Blanchet, can you come over here, please?”, Joyce asked.

“Absolutely.”, he responded, and left Chelsey’s table.

Chelsey looked once again at Zack.

“What?”, he questioned, quite harshly.

“Uh… nothing. I’m just surprised. You seem so…inspired...”, she said.

Zack rolled his eyes. “If you say so.”

“Oh and Zachary?”, she asked shyly.

“WHAT?”, he asked back, an angry expression on his face.

Chelsey looked at him with fear. She just wanted to say thank you, for his intervention when Jamie forced her to follow him in the classroom. She didn’t mean to bother him. Oh…but yeah, last time he said she had no right to talk to him or something like that.
“Nothing, I’m sorry”, and she looked at her notebook, biting her lip.

Zacky’s POV:

He looked at her. She really seemed disappointed or something. Zack asked himself if he should apologize for being so harsh… Hell no! He was Zack Baker, and Zack Baker never made apologizes. But she looked so hurt, so fragile…

“Please, tell me”, he finally said.

“W-What?”, Chelsey replied.

“I know you wanted to say something. Come on, say it.”, he encouraged.

“Okay... I-I just wanted to thank you for...you know…earlier”, she explained.

Zack couldn’t help but roll his eyes. “Please don’t talk about that. It was a mistake, okay?”

He looked at her and noticed that small tears started to form in her eyes. She nodded and started to write something on her paper.

Chelsey’s POV

Asshole. That was what Chelsey thought. She started to believe that maybe he wasn’t so mean …but obviously she was wrong. Zachary Baker would always be a jerk to her.
She realized she hadn’t written anything on her paper. But she had to. She decided to talk about a really random subject: global warming. She didn’t need to concentrate much, because TV news and Newspapers talked everyday about it, so she had plenty of things to say.
She was good in French Class so she didn’t have any problems with the vocabulary or anything. She quickly finished her essay.

“Have you already finished Miss Carter?”, the teacher asked.

“Yes.”, she responded, handing him her paper.

“Okay..so I guess you can go. See you next week.”

Chelsey smiled and put her belongings in her purse. She exited the room.
The corridor was empty, but it felt good. She was released. She was no longer with Zachary. He couldn’t say those mean things to her anymore. She had no class after, so she decided to come back home.

Normal POV

Zacky hurried to finish his work, handed it to the teacher, who allowed him to go too. He quickly took his bag and exited the class.
He had to talk to Chelsey.
She was at the end of the corridor.

“Wait!”, he said quite loudly.

Chelsey looked back and a disappointed expression came to her face. She thought she wouldn’t have to deal with him again for today… Well she was wrong.

“What to do you want?”, she simply asked while he approached her.

“Look, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean what I said earlier and… I hope Jamie won’t bother you again.”, he said, looking everywhere but at her.

“I don’t care if you’re sorry or not. You’ve always be that way with me, and I know you won’t change. You’re not obligated to make me believe that you’re sorry, cause I don’t believe you. You’re right, it was a mistake. I don’t know why you came in this classroom where Jamie took me, but it’s obvious that you didn’t do it in order to help me.”, she said seriously.

Zack’s jaw almost dropped. She never responded to him in that way. She sounded so …hurt and upset at the same time. But she was right, he and his friends had been jerks toward her since her first day at school.

****flashback****

It was the first day of class. Zacky and the gang were at the cafeteria, laughing and talking about the past summer.

“Look” Jimmy said “this is the new student!”.

They all looked at her in disgust.

“She looks like a nerd.”, Zacky stated.

Everybody agreed with that.

When Chelsey walked a few feet away from their table, Zacky put his foot in her way, and she fell on the floor. All her food what on the floor, and she was crying.

“You’ve got to look at where you’re walking, nerd!”, Zacky said.

The five teens laughed at her, until she disappeared of the cafeteria

**** End of flashback****

Zacky bit his lips. Sometimes he felt bad for being such an ass toward people. But what could he do? His friends were just like that, and he loved them. He couldn’t just change his way of acting. His friends wouldn’t understand.

“You’re right”, he said to Chelsey. “I know I’ve been an ass toward you, but you know… I don’t hate you…”, he admitted. He rolled his eyes to how stupid he sounded.

“Really?”, Chels asked surprised.

“No… Uh.. I mean yes, it’s real, and no I don’t hate you”, he said laughing nervously.

Chelsey looked at him suspiciously. “Okay.”, and she started to walk away.

“Hey, wait”, Zacky said. She stopped. “Is that all you’ve got to say to me?”, he asked in disbelief.

“What did you expect me to say? Okay... You don’t hate be. There’s no big deal about that.”, she responded, like she didn’t care about it.

In fact she wanted to smile and to dance, but she wanted to hurt him, like he had hurt her.

“But you may hate me.”, Zacky said, putting his hands in the pockets of his jeans.

“I don’t”, she replied. The green-eyed male raised his eyebrow at her. “I’m use to what you and your friends do to me. I hated you at first, but not anymore.”

“What made you change your mind?”, he wanted to know.

“I don’t know. Maybe I just realized I don’t care about that... or something like this.”, she shrugged.

“It makes sense… I’m not a bad guy, you know”, he started.

“Sure you’re not!”, she responded ironically.

“Let me prove it to you…”, he proposed.

“And how will you do that?”, she challenged.

“Hmm, I can walk you home for example…”, he responded.

Chelsey’s heart was beating fast,… really fast. “O-Okay..”, she managed to say.

They started to walk, talking about classes. Chelsey didn’t live far away from school so they were at her house in a short time.

“We’re arrived.”, she said.

“Okay… So, am I still a bad guy?”, he smirked.

“I’ll be honest with you. It’s not because you once walked me home that I don’t think you’re an asshole anymore. Let’s just say that… you’re in progress…”, she answered, blushing lightly.

Zacky felt suddenly happier. He didn’t know why. And he didn’t know why he had needed to prove her he was a good person. But for the moment, he didn’t want to think about that, cause she smiled to him.
She had a really gorgeous smile, and her eyes were sparkling.
It was the first time Zack saw her that happy. Zacky looked at his watch and his eyes went wide.

He had forgotten that Brian wanted he gang to meet at his place after school.

“Uh…yeah, excuse me but I have to go. See ya!” he said almost running away.

Chelsey looked him disappear, and she felt a little disappointed. She wanted him to stay a little more. It was the first time he acted like this with her, and she didn’t complain about it.
Maybe things would start to get better between the two of them…