Page 3 of Valentine Dare

2

Trent

“Stop staring at her,”Brent, my brother, said as we went to the entrance. Jenny was sitting in the middle of the exit crying, and I knew any second now security would have her removed.

“I can’t believe you paid the bill.”

“Shit, she can’t do it. And look how they all left her, including her mom who jumped into her convertible and rode off as if she was bloody Thelma or Louise!”

“Who?”

Suddenly, I remembered that my brother didn’t watch old movies, not like I did, and that one was a classic.

“Anyway, we can’t ignore her. It’s not right. We’re not built like that. Not like her family.”

He agreed. “I know, but this is not our problem. She’s been going out with Kurt ‘stuck-up’ Johnson for how long? You know I can't stand the shit, and I really don’t want to think about going out and rescuing his girlfriend. She’s not better than him; she can’t be to be dating such a shit. She deserves what she gets.”

I shook my head, thinking he was right about Kurt but not about Jenny. “Bro, when did you become such a jerk?”

Sure, she dated him, but it seemed to be more of a curse. She never looked happy when he was around, not that I’d been stalking her or anything, but something was clearly wrong with their relationship. It was obvious, from where I was standing, that it had to do with her being with someone like him and for all the wrong reasons.

“The last fight I had with Kurt…seriously guys like him. shouldn’t even be out on the street, let alone dating anyone. I’m a jerk for not wanting to rescue his girlfriend, but what about him?”

I shrugged as I remembered what happened last month, when we finished our shifts and we caught poor Lacey, one of the girl’s in our school, crying in the corner of the kitchen. She’d been attacked by Kurt, how far he went, no one knows, only Lacey. She just said Kurt hurt her, but we don’t know if he roughed her up or did something far worse. Brent is the one of us three with a fiery temper, so when he found out why she was in a corner, he didn’t hesitate in showing Kurt the other side of his fist. Especially seeing as Kurt and his family are not our favorite people.

As for Lacey, she refused to go to the police and file a charge against Kurt. Unfortunately, she’s like us. Not one of the rich kids in school, she knew Walter would sue her family in a heartbeat, and her dad would lose his job. He just happened to work for Walter, and even if her dad left, the Johnson’s would make sure he couldn’t get another job. It was a shit world in Boston High School, and I couldn’t wait to get out of it.

I walked up to Jenny. She had to move before security threw her out. Brent was beside me. We had twenty-minute break, and so far most of it was spent paying her bill and not agreeing on if we were going to help her.

“Hey.” I smiled as I bent down to face her.

Her make-up was smudged, and her once white dress was now covered with her fading black make-up which she had moved from her face to her dress. I waited as she finished wiping the last of her tears on her dress.

Jen was the kind of girl that came into a room and turned heads. She didn’t think of herself as a stunning beauty, but I heard the girls talking about the pale green dress she wore on Friday, how they wished that they had a figure like her. It was one thing I noticed, not about many girls, but with Jen, she’d gone from having wide hips and perky breasts to losing all of it. She was getting thin. Not the type of thin which meant she’d lost a few pounds, she’d lost a few more than that, and I wondered if, like Lacey, she too was afraid of Kurt.

“Sorry, I’m a mess. I need to go and pay the bill.”

I shook my head. “All taken care of.”

She put her hand on her mouth. “Who? Mom did she come back?” Her dark eyes lit up, and I hated being the bearer of bad news, but it wasn’t good to give her false hope.

“No.”

“So, you did it. You took care of it because I can’t think who else would do it.”

“Here,” Brent said as he stuffed a Kleenex in her hand and then walked away. He was a hygiene freak and probably watching Jenny clean her face with her dress was a clear no-go for him. People were walking in and out, starting to point, and as usual, everyone liked a good gossip, especially this country club - they thrived on it.

“They all know,” she sniffled, and unlike before as I tried to drag her from the exit, she was walking with a limp. The stiletto heels that she walked in no longer made her glide across the room, but they were so high and strappy, which I didn’t notice before, that it looked as if they were hurting her ankles.

“Take them off.”

She shook her head. “I can’t. They’re nearly glued to my feet.”

She held onto my arm as I pulled her to the side into the janitor’s closet. I knew it wasn’t the most romantic setting, but I had to take her somewhere.

“Is it all over social media?” she asked once I shut the door. We had never spoken before, but it was as if she felt relaxed around me anyway. I felt a little weird, with us being in here, so I started to search for the light.

“Silly question. I saw some people filming it. That’s all people know how to do, film people’s misery, not help them.”

---