Belonging to Lust

The rest of Zaiyia’s day went pretty smooth despite the trouble she was pretty much asking for walking around the school on Alan’s arm. The very same Alan who technically started all the bullying. Throughout the entire day, he followed her around like a puppy any chance he could between classes. At the same time, he’d chatter endlessly to her about himself. As if she wanted to know more about him than she already knew. No, what she really wanted to know was about Alice. Finding out more about her enemy through her past lover boy was a good spot to fish for information. Zaiyia wasn’t sure when she should ask him about her, so she took advantage of every short gap of silence between them to try.

“….so yeah, that’s when I started playing football more seriously.” Alan finished his sentence, his eyes ahead of him as he walked her to one of the lunch tables outside the cafeteria. They each took a seat with their tray of food, and began to eat.

Zaiyia continued to let him blabber away, nodding every once in a while and laughing when it seemed appropriate. She was waiting for that gap of silence that would surely form between them when Alan didn’t have anything else to talk about, and had to bide some more time to brainstorm some other conversation topics to rant about. Unfortunately, Zaiyia realized earlier on that day that those same gaps were SUPER rare to come by, but didn’t mind the waiting too much. What else did she had to do anyway? Her eyes lifted to Alan’s face when she realized he had gone quiet. This was it, this was the gap she had been waiting on. Having already prepared her questions, she shot out the first one swiftly before he could get to rambling again. “Tell me about Alice.”

Alan tensed up immediately, his smile dropping as he lifted his eyes to hers. “Who?”

“Alice.” Zaiyia repeated, watching the emotions dance behind his eyes at the mention of her name. “Tell me about her.”

“W-Why would you wanna know about her?” Adam asked her suspiciously, his brows furrowing.

Zaiyia gave an innocent shrug, trying to appear like she didn’t have an ulterior motive as to why she wanted to know other than simple innocent curiosity. “Oh, I don’t know. You’ve been telling me so much about you all day, and yet you haven’t mentioned her once. I thought if maybe I’d simply ask, you’d tell me. After all, today has been all about you. Don’t I get what I want too?”

Alan couldn’t deny she had a point. All day he’d been talking about himself, never once asking about her life or even going as far as to talk about the weather. Most girls would say that’s unfair, and as desperate as he was to get her to know as much about him as Alice did, he didn’t want to risk losing Zaiyia when he finally had her in his snare. No matter how much he wanted to avoid the topic of Alice, Alan gave Zaiyia a nod of acceptance. “Okay…what do you wanna know?”

“Where does she live?” Zaiyia started out as she pushed her empty tray aside and rested her arms on the table top. “Tell me about her family. Are her parents a bunch of rich folks, or what?”

“Actually, no.” Alan answered. He sighed as he pushed his tray aside as well and stared down at the table. He hated thinking about Alice’s life, especially because it wasn’t the fairytale he always knew, even now, that she deserved. “Alice lives in the poorest area in town. She has a little brother and sister that depend heavily on her, not her parents. They all live in this broken home, with a broken family, and broken parents.” His fists tightened at the memory of his one visit to her house. And that ONE visit scarred him deeply.

Zaiyia couldn’t help but frown at that information. She thought she was the only one in this school that came from a broken family. No one else seemed to wear the burden of the world on their shoulders like her, and yet here Alan was saying that Alice, THE Alice, did? “How was her family broken?”

Alan closed his eyes, even though he had been staring at the table top, and took a deep breath. “I never met her mother. All she’s told to me, and only me, was that her mother was a junkie that had abandoned her family a year before I met her to go on a drug binge that ultimately ended up killing her. Before that she had went off several times to go on these random binges that would last weeks, months, and sometimes a full year. Her father is just lowlife scum that physically abuses her whenever the mood suits him. He doesn’t beat her black and blue, or breaks her bones, nothing that extreme, but he still hits her. She has bruises. Far in between, but bruises all the same.”

“I see.” Zaiyia spoke softly, finding it difficult to digest all of this. Sometimes, not all the times, but sometimes people that come from difficult lives such as theirs tend to take it out on others. Much like Alice was doing to her now. Has she always been one of those types of people? “May I ask you what you saw in her when you two got together? No offense, from my personal experiences with her she’s a fucking bitch ass cunt if I ever met the epitome of one in my whole goddamn life.”

Alan shook his head and dismissed that idea with a swift hand. His painful eyes finally lifted to look up into hers, and he spoke straight from his heart. “No! No, Alice was NEVER ever like that!” He lowered his voice to not upset Zaiyia because he was coming off overly defensive over his exe. “Alice…despite the bullshit she goes through at home, was completely loved by everyone in this school. Including the teachers! She was genuinely a good person then.” His eyes became misty as he got lost in not only his words but his memories of her. “Oh my god, Zaiyia, if you only could have met her then. She was the kind of girl you wanted to protect, to be around all the time, to look after. She literally lit up a room, a stadium, hell even the entire mall every time she walked in. The happiness, the love, and genuine concern she had for her people was a pure and moving as anything I had ever felt. She was everything. Everything and more…everything, and…”

…and the idiot was in love with her still, Zaiyia mentally finished for him. She shook her head in disappointment at him as she crossed her arms over her chest, not understanding why this nitwit was trying to get into her pants when his heart clearly belonged to another. Literally, she couldn’t wrap her mind around it. More than anything she wanted to reach across the table and slap the common sense back into his head, because that’s what this poor boy needed. But she didn’t. Instead she agreed with him, feigning a friendly agreeable smile. “I’m sure she is, Alan. I honestly believe you and what you’re telling me about her.” She pointed behind him towards the cafeteria where her group of haters were surely watching them closely. “That person in there is not Alice everyone remembers, but a trouble broken girl in need of good honest help from the people that love her most.”

“Y-Yeah.” Alan nodded in agreement, avoiding his eyes as he furiously blinked his tears back before lifting his eyes to her, and giving her an appreciative smile for her being so understanding. “She really does.”

What were the odds that her enemy wasn’t all that different from her? Both of their mothers are out of their lives and their fathers weren’t really that much of father figures worth being proud of. Zaiyia herself had experienced physical abuse by men in her life too, the only difference was she fought back, and/or disappeared out of sight. Unlike Alice, Zaiyia couldn’t have a happy life with friends and classmates, not when her mother jumped from state to state faster than the Easter bunny. All in all, they both had dysfunctional lives, and yet they’re at each other’s throat for two totally different reasons. Alice thinking Zaiyia took her man, and Zaiyia wanting revenge for being jumped in the first place.

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At the end of the school day, Zaiyia and Alan headed over to his car after they spilled out of the building among the sea of teenagers. She made a deal with him that she’d let him drive her home if he’d give her more information about Alice, and he had. “Do you wanna stop for dinner? I discovered a diner near your house, we can go there, if you want.”

Now brought out of her thoughts, Zaiyia glanced at him and shook her head. “No, thanks. I must get home, and make dinner. Don’t wanna get in trouble with Mr. Grumpy Butthole back at home.”

Alan laughed immaturely at her silly nickname for Heath, and unlocked his car door. “Ha, Grumpy Butthole! That’s funny. Also sounds pretty appropriate for him, don’t you think?”

Zaiyia laughed then, but not because she agreed with him. No, she was highly amused at the thought of what Heath would do if he was standing right behind Alan when he said that. Poor boy would have been knocked right out of the parking lot. However she wasn’t going to share that with him, and so she pretended to concur with him. “You know with the way he’s been acting, I can’t help but agree with you.”

“Can’t blame you there.” Alan winked at her before opening his car door, and sliding on in.

Zaiyia reached out to grab ahold of the door and pulled hers open, but before she could slide herself on into the passenger seat, the hair on the back of her neck rose. Someone was watching her. Lifting her eyes up, Zaiyia searched around, following the eerie sensation to the large concrete stairs that led into the entrance of the school. By those stairs stood her sea of haters watching her…and the alpha among them, Alice. Zaiyia was surprised, and mumbled beneath her breath as she turned to face them. “Well, I’ll be damned.”

She hadn’t seen Alice in a while, but despite that she didn’t look happy to see her. Even from a distant, Zaiyia could see that there was tears in that broken girl’s eyes even though she was trying to appear as the pissed off leader of the group of her delinquent friends. Normally, Zaiyia would have sympathized with this poor girl, and probably would have offered a hand in helping her in whatever way she needed. But that was before she got jumped in the locker room. Whatever pity she would have given this girl in the past it couldn’t find a way to seep into her cold hard heart now. She’s been fucked over one too many times by this girl, and on top of that she was living with a broken heart, literally!

Basically, she couldn’t give this girl two fucks about her problems, even if it was in her best interest to try. Zaiyia fearlessly lifted her hand, and flipped the whole group off. A smile came to her lips at the distant sound of them all gasping at her offensive gesture. Bending down, Zaiyia slipped into the car seat beside Alan, and closed the door behind her. As she buckled her seatbelt, she kept her eyes on her group of haters even as Alan drove past them. She prayed with all of her heart that her response would encourage those girls to bring it the next time she saw them. She NEEDED them to bring it. The sooner she could feel physical pain instead of all this weak sappy heartbreak the better.