Dan Western Stole My Girlfriend

Dan's POV

Avery’s question about the bruise on my face really ticked me off. It was his fault that I had it, after all. If he hadn't attacked me, I wouldn’t have been given detention, the letter from the principal wouldn't have been sent home and my dad wouldn't have found out I'd been fighting with my mother’s best friend’s son over a girl – a girl who I was only saying I'd seen naked to piss Avery off.
Holly and I had barely even kissed, let alone done anything else that doesn't require clothes. I like to let people think I'm some big man-whore who can get any girl he wants but really, only the second part is true. Girls tend to throw themselves at me – and I can't blame them; I'm sexy as hell – but I've only actually been with two. The last time was a while ago, so Holly isn't one of them, and I wasn’t planning on her being one. Surprisingly – or maybe not so surprisingly – I didn’t actually have romantic feelings for her at all. I mean, she's cool, and attractive and all that stuff, but I didn't want to bang her. She's not really my 'type’, although sometimes I really wished she was. So really, Avery attacked me for absolutely no reason, and I had to pay the price.

Dad normally avoided my face because he knew that bruises attract attention, but he had been hitting the booze hard last Thursday evening and forgot. He was pretty pissed off that I'd been fighting – and not because Avery busted up my beautiful face, but because there would have been a mark on my record if Mr. Hamilton had decided to suspend me for it instead of just giving me detentions.

I'm not allowed to blemish my record. The reason? He wants me to get into a program so that I can play soccer at a college in the United States – the University of Virginia, to be exact – and attend his old Alma Mater. My dad’s American and he’s very proud of having attended the UVA, even though he hasn’t even been back to the States since he moved out to Australia the moment he graduated college to be with my mum, who he met when she was on exchange for her own university course.

Dad was also a very good soccer player, who played on the college team when he was attending the school, until he busted up his right knee three days before the final game of the season in his Junior year and hasn’t been able to play since. That’s why, as soon as I started showing serious potential in soccer around the age of thirteen, he became obsessed with me getting into this program called NSR (I have no idea what it stands for and I never bothered to find out). Lucky me, I’m the chosen one who gets to live out his dream of one of his sons following in his footsteps, even though I would rather eat a live grenade than go to college simply to play a stupid sport.

Don’t get me wrong; I love my dad and I want to make him proud of me, but I don’t even like soccer all that much. I've tried to tell him once before that I don’t want to play collegiate soccer but I chose the wrong time and he broke my rib, so I'm not going to argue with him about it anymore. It isn't worth it. It just means that I need to do everything right until the time comes for when scholarship applications can be sent out, although Avery punching me and getting me on detention with him didn’t help matters.

Avery in general didn’t help matters. He was so confusing. One second he's being a sarcastic asshole like normal and then the next he's concerned about my bruised jaw and asking where I got it. And honestly? For a split second, I actually wanted to tell him. For a split second, I wanted to open up to him about my dad and his ridiculously high expectations.

I actually found it difficult lying to him and lying is something that comes to me pretty easily. I've been doing it throughout my teenage years on a regular basis, but with Avery... I don’t know. I almost couldn’t do it, and that was fucking scary, because my dad would kill me if he found out I told someone he hits me.

So, instead, I shut Avery out like normal, with the same bullshit lie I told everyone else and a glare on my face. He hesitated for a few seconds, but obviously decided I wasn’t worth the effort and ended up going back to his designated stall.

We didn’t speak again during the rest of detention, although I did hear him humming softly to himself while we painted. I didn’t recognise the tune, but I was surprised at how nice his voice was. Impressed, even. I knew that he liked singing and playing guitar but I didn’t know he was actually good at it. He could give some of the singers you hear on the radio a run for their money, that was for sure. At one point, I actually opened my mouth to say something to Avery about it, but quickly snapped it shut again. There was no way he would let me live it down if I complemented him on something I had teased him about since we were kids – I was always saying that liking music over sports was “girly” (not that I really believed that; I just wanted to make Avery mad) and that Avery should have been a girl instead. Yeah, I was a dick to him… although it would have made things a lot easier for me if Avery was a girl. Then the stupid skips that my heart randomly made every time I interacted with him wouldn’t be so much of a problem.

“Right!” my Ancient History teacher, Mr Shaw-Cox, yelled as he bounded into the room, jostling me out of my thoughts. I realised that my hand that was holding the paint brush had been hovering in front of the wall of my stall, rather than painting it. I leaned down to put the paintbrush down into the bucket of paint next to me and walked out of the stall at the same time Avery did. We glanced at each other briefly before turning to Mr Shaw-Cox. “You’ve been at this for an hour. Let me see your progress.”

Avery and I waited for Mr Shaw-Cox to finish inspecting our paintwork in silence and I was happy to learn that our work was up-to-par and the two of us could leave for the day. Avery and I took our paint cans and brushes back to the storage area, and then we were finally able to leave the school. Avery marched ahead of me and I followed behind, watching as he got into the white Corolla that was waiting in the car park, driven by his brother Jamie.

I’ve always liked Jamie; liked him a lot more than I’ve ever liked my brother Martin. Where Jamie is kind and considerate, Martin is, and always has been (to me, at least), a massive jerk. I never understood why they were friends, since they were so different, but maybe that saying “opposites attract” came into play with their friendship.

Jamie waved to me as I walked past his car, and I returned it with a smile, before Avery caught his attention and I continued walking to my own car, which I unlocked with a click of a button. My red Holden Commodore, Shirley, is my pride and joy. I absolutely adore her. She was named by my mother after Shirley Manson, the redheaded singer of Garbage. Mum’s a big alt-rock fan, so she was thrilled when the name stuck. I never intended to name my car, but now she’s almost exclusively referred to as Shirley, and as lame as it might sound, I treat her as though she’s a part of my family.
I put my key in the ignition and Shirley purred to life. My trip home took slightly less time than usual because I didn’t have to worry about the school traffic or slowing down in the multiple school zones I had to pass on a daily basis to get to and from school.

Once I pulled into my driveway and got out of the car, I gave Shirley a little pat on the bonnet before I made my way up to the house. I guess I’m pretty lucky that my family is quite wealthy. We have a larger than average house, with big bedrooms, two full size bathrooms and lots of entertaining space. It’s great for throwing parties; not that I have parties too often. Most parties I tend to go to are hosted by the twins, Adam and Kevin, whose parents are legit multi-millionaires.

When I entered the house, I could hear Mum clanging around in the kitchen, so I went in there to let her know I was home. I found her with half of her body stuck in one of the bottom cupboards, clearly looking for something.

“Mum?” I said softly, hoping not to scare her, but she jumped anyway and hit her head on the cupboard. She swore loudly before extracting herself and looking at me with a glare.

“Dan! You scared the crap out of me,” she yelled, holding her sore head.

“I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to,” I replied. “Are you okay?”

“If having a concussion is okay, then yes, I’m fine. How was your day?”

I shrugged. “It was fine.”

“What did they have you do in detention?”

“Paint toilet stalls to get rid of the graffiti,” I told her, rolling my eyes.

“I suppose that explains the paint on your hands. Did anyone ask about the bruise?”

“Yeah, but I just told them some guy at soccer hit me. I don’t think they thought anything of it.”

Mum nodded slowly, frowning. She knows what my dad does to me, but the one time she tried to get in between us, he ended up hitting her, so I told her to let me handle it. I don’t want to see my mother getting hurt if I can stop it.

“I’ll talk to him, Dan. It’s not right what he’s doing,” she told me. I nodded in reply, but I knew that nothing would come of it. She’s made that promise dozens of times before and nothing has changed so I’ve learnt not to expect anything.

Changing the subject, I looked around the kitchen. “What were you looking for in the cupboard?”
“Oh, just the large saucepan. This kitchen is a mess.”

“Didn’t you use it yesterday? Is it in the dishwasher?”

Recognition flashed in her eyes, and she dashed over to the dishwasher and opened it up. Sitting there, nice and clean, was the large saucepan.

“What would I do without you, Dan? Thank you.”

“You’d be missing a lot more cookware. I’m gonna go get changed,” I said, showing Mum a smile before I left the kitchen.

To get to the stairs, up which was my bedroom, I had to walk through one of my house’s multiple lounge rooms, where I came across my father sitting on the couch with a beer in his hand, watching some game show on the television. He glanced at me as I entered the room.

“You’re home,” he grunted, before turning back to the television.

“Yep,” I replied unnecessarily. I continued into the room, hoping to get past him without any more conversation, and thankfully, he didn’t say anything more to me.

I ran up the stairs two at a time and then walked the short hallway to my bedroom. It was dark in there, since my dark blue curtains remained drawn throughout the day, so I flicked my light on as I entered. I flung my backpack at my desk (and missed) and flicked the door shut behind me so I wouldn’t be walked in on while I was changing. I pulled off my school uniform and left it crumpled in a pile on my floor while I got re-dressed in a t-shirt and basketball shorts.

I didn’t want to go back downstairs until I had to for dinner, so I spent the next little while lying on my messy bed, scrolling through my phone and replying to text messages from Holly. I honestly didn’t know how Avery put up with Holly’s constant messaging. If it wasn’t texting, it was Facebook messages, and if it wasn’t Facebook messages, they were random photos on Snapchat accompanied with yet more messages. It drove me crazy sometimes, but it gave me something to do, so I didn’t mind too much for the moment.

Before long, I was called down to dinner, which turned out to be curry, one of my favourite meals. I sat down across from my father and waited for Mum and Martin to join us before we all started eating in silence. This isn’t unusual. My family, when we’re all in one place together, aren’t the best at conversation.

Once I finished eating, I stood up from the table and started packing up everyone’s plates and brought them into the kitchen, where I placed them into the sink and went back out to collect the glasses and cutlery.

“Do you have homework?” Dad asked me suddenly while I was reaching over to collect his glass.
I nodded vaguely, not wanting to inform him of what I had to do so he couldn’t ask me about it later.

“Any tests coming up?”

To anyone looking in and following the conversation, they would think that my father was just asking me about my school work because he was interested in my life, but I knew better. He didn’t care about my life, only my grades so that I could get into his stupid program.

“A physics test in a couple of weeks,” I replied.

He nodded. “Good. Get up to your room and get on with it, then. Don’t fucking fail.”

I clenched my fists in irritation, but I didn’t want to get into another fight with him, so I simply finished clearing the table, and headed up to my bedroom.

I ran into Martin on the stairs, who had left the table in the time I was conversing with Dad.

“How was detention, loser?” he asked, barging into me with his shoulder as he walked past. He snickered as I rubbed at where he had hit. He’d managed to get me right where I had a bruise from the other night. “Don’t be such a pussy, I didn’t hit you that hard.”

I rolled my eyes, not bothering to reply to his question, and pushed past him. Martin laughed again, but didn’t say anything else, so I kept going to my room.

I had no intention of studying or doing my homework that night. Dad had pissed me off. Martin had pissed me off. Avery had pissed me off. I just needed to relax, so instead of settling down at my desk and opening my books, I went into my bathroom (well, technically I shared it with my brother) and took a long, hot shower. Once the water started to run cold, I got out and dried myself off, dressing in a pair of boxers before I headed back into my room.

I grabbed my iPod off my desk, slipped my Beats headphones over my ears and switched on my music. I flopped down on my bed and stretched out, closing my eyes and getting lost in the sound of Lorde’s sultry vocals. That was how I eventually fell asleep; finally relaxed and feeling 100% like myself for the first time all day.