Last Round Romance

After homeroom, Curtis went downstairs and checked in to study hall and then asked if he could go back up to his locker. The teacher nodded and dismissed him. Curtis took off out of the cafeteria and went to look for Kaylie; he wanted to make sure that she was okay for now at least until he could talk to her about whatever was going on.
He caught her while she was putting the last few things into her bag for the first half of the day. She turned around and was a little startled to see him. Curtis gave her a quick-once over to make sure that she hadn’t been hurt or anything. It was then when he realized how much she had changed since the last time they had talked or hung out, or even really looked at each other. The Kaylie he used to know lived in baggy band or sport t-shirts and basketball shorts and ripped jeans with converse. The girl that was standing in front of him now though, she was a totally different person. She had pink flip-flops on with a pair of white short-shorts and a pink halter top. She had her jet-black hair pulled up into a high ponytail with a white headband that had a flower on it holding her bangs back. She mad mascara and blush and a little bit of silver eye-shadow on her deep, dark green eyes. Curtis had never seen her like this; even when she had gotten dressed up for the dance in eighth grade she hadn’t put that much effort into how she looked. She was still beautiful, but a very different kind of beautiful than what he remembered.
Kaylie was feeling much the same way about Curtis. When she had last hung out with him, he was always wearing band t-shirts and camo shorts. Now, he stood in front of her in a hoodie and a pair of brand-name jean shorts, something that he had always picked on when they hung out back in middle school. He had the sleeves on the hoodie rolled up and she saw the scars on his arms; those weren’t there the last time they had spent time together either. He also had gotten his hair cut. He used to rock the swooped-bang look, but now it was almost a buzz-cut, it was kind of like how men in the marines had theirs cut. It seemed that the only thing about him that hadn’t changed was the look in his eyes that were always changing from green to hazel to gold and back again. They still had the same challenging, mysterious, hurt look about them that they always had. They had a little less of a sparkle to them, but she figured that he had just matured out of that in a way.
Once they both got over the initial shock of actually being face to face again, Curtis spoke up. “Hey,” he said somewhat awkwardly, “I just wanted to make sure that you were okay and stuff.” She smiled at him, “Yea, I’m fine. There’s just something I want to talk to you about after school today. Do you think that I could take the bus or something to your house?” He nodded, “Yea, definitely. Inside seat like always?” She blushed a little, “Yea, just like always.” Kaylie loved that he remembered the little things like that from so long ago. Most people would’ve let those kinds of details fade from memory, but not Curtis. He cared about her too much to forget things like that. “Alright,” he said as he shifted his weight between his feet, “I’ll catch you later then.” She smiled and nodded, “See ya.” She watched him disappear down the hallway with a smile. It was nice to know that even though nearly everything between them had changed, he’d still be there for her in a heartbeat if she asked him.
Curtis slid back into the cafeteria and sat down next to Zach. He slammed his head on the table and Zach looked at him with a mix of concern and confusion. Zach nudged him but when he didn’t move, Zach just went back to finishing up his homework. He put one earphone in but left one out just in case Curtis decided to wake up and talk to him about whatever was going on. Zach knew that it was a long-shot, but it was worth hoping for regardless.
A few minutes later, Curtis slowly lifted his head up and looked over at Zach, “Hey man,” Zach said cautiously, “what happened?” Curtis shrugged as he reached down into his backpack to grab his math folder to do his homework, “Same old shit.” Zach nodded but he knew that Curtis was lying. Zach slid his folder over to Curtis that had all of the homework done. Curtis sighed and forced a tired smile, “Thanks man.” Zach shrugged, “No prob man.”
Curtis drifted through his next few classes, saying as little as possible and trying his hardest to go unnoticed. He felt exhausted in every sense of the word. He just wanted it to be over, school, life, whatever it took. He was sick of being tired and in pain all the time. He hated that no one ever took the time to ask him for his side of things. It was like his opinion didn’t matter, like the truth didn’t matter. He hated it. He kept one earphone in and when teachers looked at him questioningly, he simply glared at them and they left him be. If he was going to be stuck in the school he wanted to go back to his homeroom with the one teacher that he actually got along with. None of the other teachers really cared for him; they fed into and believed the rumors just as much as the students did. He thought that that was unfair, but he knew that there was nothing that he could do about it. It was like seeing Kaylie and how much she had change made him realize how much everything had changed. It made him realize how unfair it all was that he lost everyone, including one of his best friends because people fed into drama more than the truth. It made him sick to his stomach. He spent the day shuffling through his favorite mellow songs and silently gliding through the hallways.
By the time sixth period came around, he was ready to shoot someone, either another student or himself, it didn’t matter. He walked into study hall and his teacher said hello, but Curtis didn’t respond in any way. He just glided over to his table and sat on it and laid down on his back. He closed his eyes and turned his music up. He just wanted to drift away, he didn’t really care where to at this point, just anywhere but where he was. He needed to get out of his school, out of his home, out of his town. He just needed to get out and get away.
He sat up when he felt someone gently touch his arm. He turned his head and saw that Maria was standing next to him with a small smile on her face. “Sorry to wake you up,” she said sheepishly, “but I wanted to draw over here.” Curtis rubbed his hands on his face as he nodded, “Oh, yea, sure no problem. Go for it.” She smiled as she sat down in one of the chairs at the table, “Thanks.” She set her books and pencils on the table as Curtis situated himself so that he was sitting cross-legged and his iPod was placed in his lap. He cocked his head to the side to get a better look at what she was drawing. He took one of his headphones out, “What’s that for?” he asked as he gestured at the page she had it opened to. She looked at it quickly before turning her gaze back to him, “It’s just an art project, nothing major. Just some extra credit stuff.” Curtis nodded as he looked it over; it was a drawing of a gravestone that was cracked in half and had mist coming out of it, but it was being bound back together by thorn-covered vines that had dripping red roses on them. It had an eerie feel to it, yet one filled with love at the same time. It was the kind of drawing that made you think about life and death and appreciate it all at the same time. He looked closer at the gravestone and realized that where the name should’ve gone there were three simple letters, “M.I.A.” It was broken so that half of the “I” was on each side of the stone. He looked at it some more and slowly started to realize that the gravestone was done in a gray camo pattern and the mist that was coming out of the crack had the faintest pattern of the American flag shaded into it.
Maria was watching him study the drawing. “I was going to gradually use less and less color as you go farther up the picture, I thought that it would look cool if I started out with really saturated reds and greens and slowly faded it all into grays.” Curtis nodded, “That’d be cool,” he paused, “Actually, it already looks really cool haha.” She smiled and tucked her hair behind her ear nervously, “Thanks, it’s nothing really though.” Curtis just chuckled and shook his head as he shuffled back through the songs on his iPod.
Maria was shading in the grave and sky when she asked Curtis, “Were you okay this morning? You seemed quiet.” He looked at her, but she hadn’t averted her eyes from her drawing. “Yea, I’m fine. I’m not an overly talkative person in general.” She nodded understandingly but didn’t say anything more. They spent the rest of the period in relative silence, only ever broken by an odd question here and there.
When the bell rang, Curtis slid off the table and started to walk to lunch when Maria caught up with him, “Can I ask you something?” Curtis turned to her a little startled, he hadn’t heard her walk up behind him. “Umm,” he said, trying to regain his cool, “yea sure. What’s up?” She looked down at her hands for a moment before looking him in the eyes again, “What’s your take on Harrison and Shawn?” Curtis instinctively clenched his fists, “Why?” She looked at him with a pleading look, “They asked me to hang out with them and their friends before the dance on Friday. But, I don’t know if I should.” Curtis sighed and ran his fingers through his short spikey hair, “Look, personally, I have no use for any of them whatsoever. But, you might want someone’s opinion that hasn’t been totally fucked over by then.” Maria looked a little taken back by his blunt answer, but that was the nicest way that Curtis could phrase it at this point. It took every ounce of will power in him to not swing at those two boys every time they passed each other in the hallway. Maria nodded and said okay, but her quick departure betrayed how nervous she really was about the situation.
He silently sat through lunch and the last few classes that he had that day. Once the final dismissal bell rang, he went to Kaylie’s locker so he could walk to the bus with her and they could grab a seat together. She was walking towards him as he turned the corner of the hallway where she was. She smiled and walked up in front of him. He looked up from his iPod and his eyes grew wide in shock since he didn’t notice how close she had gotten to him. He flashed her a quick smile, “You ready?” She nodded and smiled at him but her silence made him feel a little uneasy.
Curtis walked up onto the bus and to the back where he normally sat. He stood in the aisle and waited so Kaylie could sit on the inside she same way she had always done when she came over to his house when they were still really close friends. He sat down next to her and gave her a small smile, “So, what’s been up?” She laughed and shrugged, “Oh, you know, same old same old.” Curtis chuckled and leaned his head back against the seat, “I doubt that. The last time we really talked was in the eighth grade…things must’ve changed since then.” Kaylie laughed, “True. Well, I don’t know. I mean, the thing that had changed the most is just who I hang out with. I spend more time shopping than I do at the skate-park or whatever.” Curtis looked at her, “Don’t you miss it?” She shrugged, “Sometimes. But I mean, at least I get to spend time with my friends and stuff, you know?” Curtis nodded but didn’t say anything; he had lost a good portion of his friends, including Kaylie. He looked at her as she pulled her phone out of her bag and checked her hair and makeup. A few years ago she had been sitting in that same seat and she had been making fun of girls who always did that. She had become what she used to despise so much. But, in a way, he had too. He knew that, but he still hated seeing how Kaylie had changed so much.
Maria walked onto the bus and sat down in the seat across from the two of them. Curtis nodded to her and she gave a small wave before taking out her iPod and putting her earphones in and turning to face the window. The three of them didn’t really talk much on the ride home; the tension could be felt in the air. Curtis didn’t want to talk to Maria and have Kaylie feel like she was being ignored, Maria didn’t want to talk to Curtis and make Kaylie mad, Kaylie didn’t want to talk to Curtis about anything while Maria was listening, and Maria didn’t want to talk to Kaylie simply because they didn’t really know each other. It was like slowly walking through a field of mines. One wrong step or words and everything could end up blowing up. So Maria kept looking out the window, Kaylie messed around on her phone, and Curtis just leaned back against the seat and closed his eyes.
Finally, it was Maria’s turn to get off the bus. When she stood up she said goodbye to Curtis and he smiled and waved back to her. She gave Kaylie a small wave out of courtesy and Kaylie returned the favor. Then the silently slid to the front of the bus and got off and walked up the walkway and disappeared into her house.
A few more stops were made before the bus finally stopped at Curtis’ house. He and Kaylie walked to the front of the bus to get off. The bus driver looked at Kaylie, “Hey Stranger,” she said with a good-hearted chuckle, “long time no see.” Kaylie forced out a laugh, “Yea I know,” she said quickly before hopping down the steps after Curtis.
Curtis looked at his driveway and noticed that both of the cars were gone. That meant that either both of his parents were working, or one of them was working and the other had finally gotten kicked out. Either way, neither of them would be home for a while. Curtis looked back to make sure that Kaylie was still following him as he jogged up the walkway and opened the door. He held it open for her and she smiled at him and said thanks as she walked into his house.
They went into the kitchen and Curtis pulled a soda out of the fridge after tossing his hoodie onto the chair at the table so that he was down to just one of his cutoffs and shorts, “You want one too?” Kaylie looked at him curiously, “You got anything stronger?” Curtis raised his eyebrows in shock; the last time they had hung out, Kaylie didn’t like it if he even joked about that kind of stuff. He simply shrugged, “Of course I do, you know what my dad’s like.” He put the soda back down on the shelf in the fridge and pulled two beers out of the bottom drawer. He tossed one over to her and she cracked it open with ease. “Wow,” he said with a chuckle as he opened his own, “you’ve become quite the expert at this haven’t you?” She smiled as she took a sip, “Desperate times call for desperate measures Hon.” He set his bag down on the kitchen table and looked at Kaylie, “You wanna go upstairs and talk?” She smiled and nodded, “Yea, just like old times.” He nodded, “Yea. Only now we have alcohol haha.”
They went upstairs to his room and Kaylie handed him her beer and she belly-flopped onto his bed. She turned and looked at him but didn’t say anything. Curtis walked over and carefully sat down on the edge of the bed next to her. He handed her back her beer and she sat up and took another sip of it. “So what’d you wanna talk about?” he inquired between swigs out of his own bottle. Kaylie sighed heavily and took a long drink out of her bottle, “It’s Harrison and Shawn.” Curtis tightened his grip on the bottle to the point where he thought that it might break, “What’d he do?” he asked angrily from between gritted teeth. Kaylie rested her hand on his shoulder, “Curtis? Before I tell you, you need to try and calm down a little bit.” He turned to her with a fire in his eyes that she hadn’t seen since the day that he had actually fought Harrison. “Calm down?” he stood up and started to pace a little bit, “How the fuck am I supposed to calm down? Those guys totally fucked the both of us over and now they’re bugging you again. I can’t just “calm down” Kay. I just can’t.” Kaylie looked at him, her dark brown eyes begging him to try and keep it together and hear her out. Curtis reluctantly sat back down and looked down at his hands, “Sorry Kay. What happened?” Now it was Kaylie’s turn to look down at her hands. She toyed with the bottle a little bit before finally looking at him again, “Harrison snagged me in the hallway on my way to the bus yesterday and told me that he was gonna get back at me for all the trouble I had caused him over the past few years, and that I better be ready to do whatever he says or there’s gonna be Hell to pay. And after that he walked away and Shawn stepped closer to me and pinned me against the wall for a minute before walking away,” she paused and looked at Curtis, “I don’t know what to do Curtis…I’m scared.” Curtis gently placed his arm around her shoulders, “Listen to me, it’s all going to be okay. I promise you that Kay. I swear. I won’t let those guys hurt you.” He pulled her closer to him in a protective hug and she rested her head on his shoulder and took a deep breath to try ad calm down a little.
When she pulled back a little bit, Curtis brought his arm back to his own side. He asked her what had been going on between her, Shawn, and Harrison over the past few years that had gotten them so upset. So Kaylie started to explain to him all of the times that she had still denied everything that Harrison had said about the her and Curtis. She had even confronted him in front of a group of his friends when she overheard Harrison talking about the two of them. Even though everyone still believed Harrison instead of her, he still got angry with her because she was trying to make him look like a liar. And Shawn just got mad because she was accusing his best friend of being a liar. She also told Curtis about how both Shawn and Harrison had tried to hook up with her during their sophomore year and that she had rejected them for obvious reasons, but that made the two of them all the more angry. More so Harrison than Shawn though. He started to spread rumors that the only reason she said no was because she still had a thing going on with Curtis, and when she had called him out on that, everything just grew worse. For a while there was no way for her to pass the boys in the hallway without something happening, whether it was being pushed, shoved, or having something said to her by them or one of their friends. Over the course of a few months however, things started to cool down a little bit but you could still feel the tension in the air when it came to her facing the two of them. They hadn’t talked to or about each other very much since that whole ordeal happened, but apparently people would still ask Harrison about it and he didn’t like that. He didn’t like being reminded of his failures and mishaps. So that’s why he told her that she better do what he says or else. He had told her that he wasn’t going to accept another rejection. And, since Shawn was his hit man who basically did all the dirty work, she knew that if something happened that she was going to have to face the both of them.
Curtis looked at her with concern and anger written all over his face, “Neither of them came up to you today did they?” Kaylie shook her head but said nothing. They sat there for a while and Curtis reassured her that he would never let anything happen to her. “Not in a million years,” he said softly, “I’d never let them, or anyone ever hurt you Kaylie. Ever.” She smiled at him, “You’re the best.”
By then they had both finished their beers and Curtis tossed the empty bottles into the garbage bag that he had in his room. They both fell back onto his bed and stared up at the ceiling that he had decorated with posters and such. They laid there for hours and talked about all the good times they used to have when they had hung out in middle and elementary school and for a moment, it was like nothing had ever happened or changed. Back then, they were practically inseparable. He had been just as close with her as he was with Elliot and Zach. The four of them were great friends and they went nearly everywhere together. All four of them would go to the skate park together on weekends, or sometimes it would just be him and Kaylie. Even if it was just the two of them, it was never awkward. They were so close that it didn’t matter how many people were around, there would always be a level of comfort between them.
Kaylie rolled over onto her stomach and toyed with her hands. Curtis turned his head and smiled at her, “You know,” he said with a quiet laugh, “I actually did have a crush on you back then.” Kaylie turned to him with a shocked smile, “Seriously?” He nodded, “Yea, you were awesome. Well, you still are haha. But yea, I liked you a lot. You were the only girl who didn’t mind how messed up I was.” She smiled at him and took her hair down out of its ponytail and tossed her headband over onto his dresser, “You’re not messed up Curtis.” He snorted and Kaylie laughed, “Alright, maybe now you are a little bit haha. But back then you weren’t. You were just like the rest of us.” Curtis shrugged, “I guess so.” They laid there in silence for a minute before Curtis turned his head and looked at her, “You remember that day back in the beginning of eighth grade when it was just us two and we were coming home from the skate park and we took the path that led down to the stream?” Kaylie nodded and smiled, “Yea, the day you jacked my shoes from me and I had to chase you through the water barefoot to get them?” Curtis laughed and nodded as he stared up at the ceiling, “Yea, that day.” Kaylie leaned onto her side and looked at him, “What about it?” Curtis bit his bottom lip for a second in hesitation, “Well, you remember when we were just sitting on the bridge with our feet dangling over the side?” Kaylie nodded as she looked at him looking at the ceiling. “Well,” he said slowly, “I almost kissed you that day.” Kaylie felt her face get hot and she knew that she must’ve been blushing. “Well,” she started as she let her bangs in front of her face, “why didn’t you?” Curtis laughed and turned his head and looked at her, “Because I was in eighth grade and I was a pussy.” Kaylie laughed but said nothing more.
They laid there like that in silence for a minute, just looking at each other. Curtis reached forward and brushed the bangs out of Kaylie’s face and the smile on her face grew wider as her cheeks flushed red again. His hand slowly slid down her cheek and he leaned forward and kissed her. He had expected her to pull away, but she didn’t. She leaned in as he moved and wrapped his arms around her waist and smoothly pulled her up onto his stomach. She slid her hands around the back of his neck and he rested his hands on her hips. His hand crept up under her halter top and he felt her lips curl into a smile as they kissed. He left his hands lay on her back as hers traced down his arms softly, gently flowing over every scar. As she leaned more and more into the kiss her hair fell forward and draped across her cheeks. The smell of her perfume washed over Curtis like the most comforting of ocean waves. He felt his heart speed up and he could feel himself begin to smile as their lips reconnected over and over again.