Young Annabelle Series: Young Annabelle, the Truth About James, What My Heart Wants (60 page)

It was…amazing…his touch alone gave me butterflies.

He stared deep into my eyes, pushing my body deeper into his. “Keep me in your arms, baby. You
warm
me, Annabelle. You know that?”

Wow….he said my full name.

“You said my name.” I smiled, feeling my heart beat wildly, on the verge of rocketing out of my chest.

“It’s a beautiful name.” He murmured, pulling me into a deep kiss, tension leaving his body with each bite of the lip, each stroke of the tongue, each caress. 

After a beautiful few minutes of feeling his skin on me, this afternoon’s scandal invaded my mind again. I felt as though he’d calmed down enough that I could ask him about it. “James?” I stopped kissing him and pulled away a few inches. “Do you know a person named, Dougie?”

James cringed, blinking back his shock. “What?” He moved up, into a sitting position. He kept me straddled to him by placing his arms around my waist. “Why do you ask?” He asked, timidly.

“I was in the bathroom after school. I used a different one, just in case there was another scene with Donna. Well, surprisingly, right after I entered another one, like two hallways away, Donna came inside, crying and on the phone to a married man named Dougie. She was crying about you.”

“Wonderful.” James groaned, closing his eyes. He leaned his forehead against my bare, yet slightly scratched shoulder.

“So you do know something. Tell me.” I urged him.

“You don’t want to know this, trust me baby, it’s disturbing.” James groaned again.

“What’s going on?” I asked him. “Is this the complicated bit you couldn’t tell me before?”

“Yeah,” James murmured. “I wasn’t sure of a few things when I first started on the team last summer. I heard some stuff from the guys, but nobody really confirmed anything. It was Peter who actually spilled some really disturbing information and it changed the way I had to do a few things.”

I sighed. “Who is Dougie, James?”

“His name isn’t
Dougie
to us.” James explained, sounding exhausted.

“What is it then?” I asked, getting nervous.

“It’s Coach Doug, from the Baseball team.” James explained and my eyes widened.

My eyes bulged. “What!”

CHAPTER 50

So yeah….I found out some stuff…some crazy stuff.

Miss ‘use to be’ Queen B, apparently was having an affair with the Baseball team’s coach.

Since the last half of the tenth grade….I know shocking!

When she said that the Baseball team came with her, she had really meant it. ‘Dougie’ or Coach Doug had done whatever his little lady requested and that included keeping her on top of the popular food chain by nonchalantly threatening the players on the team with their spots. Basically, he had told them that if they wanted to stay as top dogs in the school, with permanent spots on the team, they had to have a certain company around them. Popular boys had to be around popular girls. That also meant there was no room for anybody else, especially if Donna found out, and then it was cry – cry – cry to her ‘boyfriend’ who’d quickly nip those idea’s in the butt. That meant last summer, James started having weird conversations with Coach Doug, feeling a certain implication was being expressed without being actually stated.

That meant me.

That meant an open relationship with me was out of the question, not if he wanted to keep his spot on the team without trouble from Coach Doug.

That also meant keeping Donna happy, even if it meant making me unhappy.

Now that I think about it, having a relationship with James in
that
situation would have been next to impossible. If I had known what I knew now back then, I’d have told him to choose the team. Baseball was and is his life. How could he have continued to play his favorite sport when there were evil people, like his Dad, like Coach Doug and like Donna on his back constantly about doing what they wanted him to do?

There didn’t seem like a way out, one that would make both sides happy. So ‘our’ thing had to be a secret.

That was a sucky time for us…one that I couldn’t understand at the time, no matter how hard I tried.

There was a light at the end of tunnel. Coach Doug was getting married and going on a long six month vacation with his new, unsuspecting wife.

He got married
that
Friday, you know the half day.

The entire team thought they were finally free, especially James. But when he and I got together that Thursday (You know, when I lost my virginity!), somehow Donna found out and called her ‘Dougie’ to complain about my involvement in ruining her life again. Coach Doug decided to give Mr. Lawson a call, complaining about James’ performance in the practice game, even though James had won that game for our school. Mr. Lawson came back home to pick up a forgotten item and to give James crap about his performance, based off of what Coach Doug had said. It was the only way ‘Dougie’ could stick it to James for upsetting Donna, one last time before leaving for his vacation, which was, you guessed it, the Saturday after James spilled the beans about the scandal.

Oh and that bogus meeting during the first half of lunch on that Friday, yeah, that was all Donna. She conspired with ‘Dougie’ to keep James and the rest of Baseball team busy while she could find a way to corner me somewhere and make me go away herself. What she didn’t count on was Latisha texting Jenna about the situation in the washroom and having Jenna come to my aid and kicking the crap out of them.

By the way…..my best friend is awesome! 

So…..yeah.

Now Coach Doug was officially gone, and that meant Donna’s ‘power’ was all gone.

That’s what James meant when he said that Donna didn’t run things anymore. James and the entire Baseball team were free of Donna’s forced reign. Surprisingly, most of the guys on the team didn’t even like her, claiming she was a catty, evil ‘bitch’.

James made me promise him to keep the scandal a secret forever. If it got out, who knew what would happen, good or bad.

Probably bad….

Now it was two weeks later… at our school’s Halloween Dance

“Becky, I can’t believe you’re wearing that.” Jenna snorted, fixing her hair in front of the mirror in the school’s washroom. It was crammed with overly excited costumed girls, trying to get a spot in front of the mirror.

Not on Jenna’s watch.

Becky smirked, shimmying in her extremely tight French maid costume. “What, this old thing?”

I laughed loudly. “Pulease, you just want to make Johnny jealous.”

“Correction, I want to make Johnny jealous, but its Peter’s eyes I want popping.” Becky grinned.

Jenna eyed the two of us through the mirror. “Ladies, please keep it down. These secrets of the art of manipulation should be for our ears only. We can’t have all the girls in school know the ‘secret’ to mastering the art of life.”

She could be on to something.

Jenna straightened her Xena costume and smirked ‘evilly’. “I dare a ‘hot’ girl to mess with me in this.”

Becky clapped her hands enthusiastically. “The guys would totally love it if that happened. In fact, they’d probably pay to watch!”

Jenna turned from the mirror, snapping her fingers. “Oh – oh – oh, new business opportunity! We should totally do it!” We all laughed at her enthusiasm and exited the washroom, heading back to the Halloween dance in the gymnasium. Becky and Jenna skipped ahead while I adjusted my witch costume. It was basically a long cape that covered a tight black, long sleeved dress. It went to my knees and I paired the outfit with six inch black heels, that I guilt tripped Mom into buying for me last weekend. I’d say after the way she and Dad had treated me, I totally deserved them.

And they made my legs look….UH-mazing!

“Hey Anna,” Dana called, beside me all of a sudden. She came as a vampire…going to a beach party? She had on fangs, a tight red halter top and peach colored cut off shorts. She looked hot. Perhaps she knew of the ‘secret’ as well.

“That for Roy?” I smirked, eyeing her outfit once more as we walked side by side through the people going and coming from the washrooms.

She sighed. “Would it make me a hypocrite if I said yes?”

I shook my head, giving her a small smile. “No, it only makes you human.”

“I’ve got to pull all the stops, especially now that Latisha’s been following him everywhere.” Dana mentioned, going pale from the memory.

We stopped at the opened gym doors. “Yeah, she’s around a lot. She’s crazy about him.” I told her, gazing inside and finding Latisha in her little…..sexy devil costume? It was basically a tight red satin dress that looked to be more appropriate for sleepwear than a Halloween dance filled with horny lower class-men and seniors.  She had on a pair of red heels, and a devil horned head band. It was kind of hard not to look at her. She had the attention of the entire gym and was clearly
loving it.

Since she was, kind of, the new Queen of the ‘hot’ girls since Donna’s dethroning a couple of weeks ago.

“Look,” Dana faced me. “I just wanted to say I’m sorry for last time. It wasn’t me. I was so messed up after seeing you sitting with the guys. I was jealous and I was angry. I hope you don’t hate me or something.”

“I don’t hate you.” I smiled at her. “I’m over it.”

“Good, I’m glad.” Dana smiled back.

“Anyways, I gotta find James, you know just in case he gets into it with Matthew again.” I told her.

“Especially in that costume, right!” Dana giggled. “How’d you get him to wear it?”

I smirked, giving her knowing eyes. “Easy, it was part of his punishment for when he acted like a crazy buffoon earlier in the month.”

“Oh yeah, I remember now. Well, he certainly looks like he’s in pain.” Dana laughed, walking in with me.

“Duh!” I laughed. “Good luck with Roy.” Dana smiled at me and went towards her fellow Swim team members, minus Jenna. Jenna was hanging out with me tonight.

Well most of tonight.

So this was life for now. My problems at home since that horrible fight two weeks ago have dimmed down. My parents, especially my Mom have cooled down on the parental duties concerning my bad habit.

What else could I say besides I’m working on it.

I still have to remind myself to eat more and to not count calories on a daily basis. But it might take some time before I’ve flushed the bad part of that habit away completely. James’ problems with his dad continues to this day and it’ll probably continue till he moves out, which he plans on doing once he gets that Baseball scholarship to Florida State University. It was great that he wanted to go there, because that’s where I wanted to go too.

Anyways…enough of that stuff. Right now, I wanted to dance with my man.

I headed to my new group of friends. Jenna was already there with Becky laughing up a storm, pointing at James’ costume. His punishment which he’d accepted gracefully only because it was going to help him get closer to being in Jenna’s good books. But even though he looked funny in his costume…in my eyes….he still looked beautiful. 

“I can’t believe she’s making me wear whiskers,” James grunted, eyeing the room as they snickered obviously at his costume, a fluffy tiger onesie. “I look like a _”

“A pussy?” I grinned, wrapping my arms around his waist as the DJ played
‘Stand by Me’ by Oasis
. “Don’t worry Tiger, it doesn’t make a difference to me.”

James wrapped his arms around my waist and gave me his signature ‘cocky’ grin. “You like what you see, Fireball?”

I eyed the room for a second, and the right moment presented itself just in time. Donna stood beside the refreshment table catching the attention of freshman, sophomore, junior and senior boys in her tiny, barely there, boobs out ‘sexy’ nurse get up.

Besides her provocative costume catching the attention of almost every boy in the gymnasium, there were a few that barely looked her way. And unfortunately for her, they were the players from the Baseball team. My man included. James was ignoring her and she was staring daggers at me because of it.

I smirked. “Yeah…yeah, I do.” I wrapped my arms around James’ shoulders and pulled him down to me. I pressed my lips against his, moving them on top of his passionately and exaggeratedly, giving a new visual description to the term ‘PDA’.

Howls of laughter and cheers erupted around us. I released his lips, reluctantly. After a few seconds, I slowly opened my eyes to a frozen fluffy Tiger.

After a few seconds to come back down to Earth, James pulled back slowly. “What was that about?” He blundered, opening his eyes, looking dazed and extremely satisfied. He grinned, his green eyes blazing with desire. “Not that I didn’t like it.”

I eyed the gymnasium for Donna again, quickly finding the back of her tight Nurse costume as she stormed out of the room with Stacey hot on her tail in a stripper/Matrix-like mini dress. I grinned as they exited the room, chuckling afterwards at my outlandish, daring behavior.

But hey, when you’ve got a point to prove, you should do it, especially when your preferred audience (Ahemmm Donna!) is watching with tears and daggers in her eyes, soaking in bitterness that she lost for the first time in her life. “Just making a point.”

“And that is?” James asked after I met his gaze. He was shaking his head, smirking.

He knew why.

I grinned again. “That you belong to me.” I exhaled, feeling happiness in every pore in my body, mind and soul. The music circled us, singing the right lyrics to highlight the moment even more. “Right?”

“Baby,” James whispered, leaning his head against mine. “I’m only yours.”

The End.