One of the Guys (6 page)

It was probably a coincidence, but
it was as if he’d organized their training to coincide with mine.
That would be so sweet to do that.

“
Hey Chase!” He
said with a smile as I sat in my seat. “Looking forward to
your
spa
session?” He grinned.

“
Not in the
slightest.” I said, narrowing my eyes at him. He still found it
amusing that I’d caved and agreed to go with my Mom. I
was
not
looking forward to having somebody filing and buffing my
nails. If I wanted to do that, I could do it myself.

“
What are you going to do when your
Mom is getting a rub down?” He smirked.

“
I’ll call you and give you a
step-by-step description of what a manicure feels like. Down to
every last file and polish.” I smirked back.

“
No! Anything but that!” He said
with a mock horrified look on his face.

“
You know you
want me to.” I teased. “In fact, I think you should go with my Mom.
I bet you’ll just
love
that.”

“
Like, oh my God! That would just
be so awesome!” He said with a girly voice that made me snort out
loud and the teacher glared at me. The pair of us chuckled quietly
with Logan pretending to file his nails like a woman.

“
I have baseball practice later.
Are you coming to watch?” He asked after the lesson
ended.

Whenever I watched them play, Logan
would do well and he would say that I was his good luck
charm.

I wasn’t, even though it made me
all fuzzy thinking that I was that significant. He’d played well
when I wasn’t there, but he didn’t know I knew that. I think he was
just trying to make me feel part of the whole group.

I wanted to, but I was more
interested in being
with
Logan than ‘one of the guys’.

“
Yeah sure. I’ll bring my books
with me and study.”

Baseball wasn’t the kind of sport I
was into. I wasn’t really into any of them, except gymnastics, but
I supported Logan with his.

“
It wouldn’t hurt to watch
sometimes.” He said, with a smile but I knew he wanted me to watch
them play. The thing is; I couldn’t do it. Not much anyway. I’d see
him running round, his muscles flexing under his T-shirt and his
thighs tensing under his pants as his legs powered around the
field. My mouth watered just thinking about it.

“
I
do
watch. All the time.”
I lied. “I just have to study too so I’m multi-tasking.”

“
Ok, sure.” He said as we walked
along the corridor to our next lesson. “Free period after lunch.
Ok?”

“
I’ll be there.” I said, and then
we went our separate ways for our different subjects.

“
Chase the Ace!” Poppy, my lesson
partner greeted me when I sat down.

“
Hey Poppy. How are
you?”

Poppy wasn’t like me. She didn’t
hang out with guys, and she wasn’t into rock music or ‘guy’ stuff.
She was a typical girly-girl, but she was one of the nice ones. She
didn’t care that I looked completely different to her and she never
tried to get me to ‘girl up’ whatsoever. She liked diversity and
thought that everybody had a right to be what they wanted to be,
and she wanted to be girly. I liked her a lot, but we never got
together out of school because we actually didn’t have any other
common interests that would bring us together.

“
I’m great, thanks!” She replied in
her enthusiastic tone. “So, I heard that you and Sian had a bust up
last night.”

“
What? What do
you mean
a bust
up
?”

“
Oh, apparently Lex dumped her
because she was mean to you, and then she called him to give her
another chance.”

“
Oh God.” I groaned.

The gossip had already spread and
that was one thing I hated in school. Everybody talked about
everybody
.

“
Who told you?” I asked her. It
obviously wasn’t Sian. She wouldn’t willingly make herself the
topic of conversation if it made her look bad.

“
Well, Sian told Gretchen, and
Gretchen told Charlotte. Charlotte told me.”

Gretchen was Charlotte’s ‘BFF’ but
that didn’t matter with those girls. If it were juicy, they told;
regardless of the friendship status.

“
How nice of her to gossip about
her friend.” I said, sarcastically.

“
Come on, Chase. Everybody
talks.”

“
I don’t talk about my friends.” I
told her. “It’s nobody’s business what anybody does.”

“
I suppose guys are more secretive
than girls.” She said with a shrug.

“
Excuse me?”

Did you just say I was a
guy?!
I thought.

“
I mean guys in general.” She
laughed nervously, obviously realizing what she’d said. “I know
you’re not a guy, Chase.”

Well that just pissed me off. The
night before, after the Sian incident, I was happy. Now, I was
annoyed.

I was so sick of being labelled
because of how I looked or whom I chose to spend my time with, or
not.

I know Poppy didn’t mean to sound
like she was calling me a guy, but it hurt all the same. I clenched
and released my fists, taking a deep breath to calm myself
down.

I tried to listen to the teacher,
as she started the class, but I couldn’t focus.

I barely heard Poppy when she
started talking about cheerleading and holding tryouts for junior
members when the current squad moved to seniors. Her voice sounded
as though it was coming from the distance as I tried to block out
exactly what I was feeling.

I felt alone.

*****

“
You’re quiet
today.” Logan said as I sat on the bleachers, ready for his
baseball practice. “Is everything ok?”

I hadn’t said much through lunch. I
hadn’t even heard what anybody was saying. All I could hear was
what Poppy had said to me earlier.

“
Yeah. Everything’s fine.” I hated
lying to him, but the last thing I wanted was to show my insecurity
about how he saw me.

“
Chase.” He
said, looking me right in the eye. “Everything’s
not
ok.”

Shit. He saw right through me, and
now I was going to have to explain myself. Not there on the field
though, not when there were other people watching the
practice.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw
Sian and her followers sitting down to watch the game. Of course
she would. Lex played baseball too. So did the other
guys.

I took a deep breath.

“
I’ll tell you later.” I
sighed.

“
You will.” He said, and then the
guys called him to practice.

Why was it so hard? Why did I have
to have feelings for him? If I weren't friends with Logan, then I
wouldn’t be hanging out with them. I would be by myself. Sometimes
I thought I would be better off, and then I wouldn’t have to go
through the hormonal roller coaster ride every time I laid my eyes
on the perfection that was Logan Blackwood.

As he ran across the field, his
tight ass moving as his legs shot him forward towards the benches
where his other friends sat, my eyes were completely fixed on
him.

I tried not to watch as Logan
stepped up to the mark, swinging his bat over his shoulder, getting
ready to hit the ball that Pike was about to throw.

Pike lifted his leg, brought his
hands together, taking his arm back until her threw the ball right
towards Carl who was the catcher. The ball was fast, but Logan
swung the bat round and hit the ball hard. It flew right through
the left field, I think it was called, and away. It was a home run.
He practically strolled around the bases.

It wasn’t a full game, just a
practice. The full games, with more in the field, were a hell of a
lot faster.

Logan grinned and looked over to me
as he passed third base.

“
Logan
is
so
hot!” one of Sian’s friends said.

I didn’t want to look, but I knew
it was Carly Range. One of the junior cheerleaders and probably the
head when we go up to senior year. Her long legs were crossed in
front of her, that much I
could
see, and I knew she’d be twirling her pink hair
round her fingers.

Her hair wasn’t
bright
pink, like you’d
expect. No, it was the same color as cotton candy.

“
Yeah, I’d jump him at the drop of
a hat.”

Now, I knew who
that
was. It was Cassie
Hastings. Or ‘Cass’ to her friends. The same girl who was caught
with her pants down, with somebody else, under the very same
bleachers we were sitting on. She never seemed to have any one
group of people that she hung out with. She kinda just went with
whomever took her fancy that day.

I smiled back at Logan, and I felt
the girls’ eyes on me. I knew they were whispering about
me.

God
I was
so sick of high school, and we hadn’t even finished junior
year.

Looking down at my text book, I
couldn’t focus on the chemistry symbols. I just wanted to get up
and leave.

“
Logan! Wake up!” I heard Carl
shout, and I snapped my head up to see what had
happened.

Logan was in the field, and the
ball was behind him as he was running to get it.

“
Stop eyeing up the girls and keep
your eye on the ball!” Carl said with a smirk in my
direction.

They were quite a bit away from me
but not far enough for me to miss their expression. Sian and the
girls started giggling and I felt my stomach turn. My face heated,
and I looked back down at my books.

“
I think he was looking at me.”
Said Cassie.

“
I think he was.” Giggled Carly. “I
bet he wouldn’t mind getting under the bleachers with
you.”

“
I’d be more
than happy to get
on
his wood under
this
wood.” She purred, patting the
seats.

That made the three of them cackle
like old ladies.

These ones are made of steel, you
dumb ass.
I thought to myself.

“
So what’s up?” Logan asked after
school. He was giving me a ride home so I could meet my Mom for our
spa session.

Oh yay. Not.

“
It doesn’t matter anymore.” I
said, looking out of the window. After the baseball practice,
hearing what the girls had said, I wasn’t in the mood to
talk.

“
Chase. It matters. Now tell me
what’s wrong.”

Logan’s tone sounded a little
snippy. He wasn’t happy either.

“
You wouldn’t
understand.”

“
Try me.”

I rolled my eyes.

Logan made an expression, signaling
that he was waiting for me to answer him.

I huffed out a breath and told him
what Poppy, had said.

“
You don’t really care what people
say do you?”

“
I don’t…usually.” I said with a
shrug. “But, it’s getting annoying that people refer to me as a
guy.”

“
They don’t
Chase.” He said, trying to assure me. “I
do
understand, though, but I think
you’re wrong.”

“
I’m not, Logan. For example: Sian
said that I look like a ‘fat boy’.”

“
You don’t…”

“
Let me finish.” I interrupted him.
“The girls today… They were whispering, but I heard them saying
that I wasn’t a real girl. So, when Carl told you to stop ‘eyeing
up the girls’…” I held up my fingers in emphasis “… He was gawking
at Sian, Carly and Cassie. Who, by the way, explained in detail how
she would be happy to have sex with you under the
bleachers.”

After my little rant, and feeling
disgustingly sorry for myself, I crossed my arms over my chest and
looked out of the window.

“
Ok.” He sighed. “Firstly, I wasn’t
eyeing up those girls; I was looking at you.”

My eyes snapped to his and I felt a
little glimmer of hope take root in my chest.

“
You looked as
though you were trying to set fire to your book with your eyes. It
was funny. Secondly, I wouldn’t go anywhere
near
Cassie. I can’t
stand her.”

Ok, so saying he can’t stand Cassie
wasn’t the same as ‘she’s not my type’ but I was glad nonetheless.
At least I could cross her name off the long list of girls who
wanted him.

“
Is that
what’s
really
bothering you?”