Jessica's POV
I couldn't pretend to not be irritated by how frequently Chase branched out.
What we had was a somewhat open relationship. And it was fine if he wanted to hook up with someone else from time to time
But his taste in girls has been so disgusting. I'm the only reason anyone ever respected him.
I was a fucking model, I trained my whole life to be one.
I saw the way he had been looking at Emma and Lily, and I knew there was something more to it. He just never learned.
Even when we bullied them, he was either somewhat held back, or went so far that I had to stop him.
Once, he went as far as citing her as an example of Social misfit in the school magazine.
I enjoyed it, but somewhere within me, I felt it was an itsy bitsy little too much. I let it go either way.
Slapping me in the middle of the whole school was it for me.
Chase was gonna pay for the trash he did, hard.
"Why would he even do that?" Monica asked me. Monica had always been one of my girls. We've been close for about ten years, we were family friends too.
"He's paying for this." I was mad at Chase, but I was also mad at myself.
I had a shoot after school, but half my face was red and swollen, with marks.
Chase had been acting strange for days now.
Maybe it was hi time we really went our separate ways.
"What will you do now?" Monica asked.
"Focus on getting this face back to normal, stupid." She was a darling, but could be irritating sometimes.
Days went by, and the Senior Trip day drew closer.
Before it all went downstream, Chase and I had made arrangements to stay in a suite, so he couldn't change that. The trip was in a week, and it was my last chance at getting him back.
Monica and I went shopping. I was going to outdo every female in the class, as I always did.
It was a big store, where we ran into one of our teachers.
Mr Rudd was rumored to have slept with about half the girls in the class. But I could not be bothered, because everyone knew it was an exchange. They were really not as smart as their results claimed.
Apparently, he was shopping at the unisex boutique too.
"Her Mr Rudd." We greeted him in our chirpiest voices.
"What are y'all doing here?" He asked, smiling and walking towards us with his arms wide open for an embrace.
It would have been quite inappropriate to do so in school, but we weren't on school property, and Mr Rudd was quite an eye candy himself.
He was a fresh graduate, so many girls liked him.
"Fishing snakes and hunting fish." Monica said in a whisper to my ear.
I almost laughed out loud, but it would have embarrassed Mr Rudd.
He was obviously shy, and our meeting was awkward.
"Oh. We just wanna get some new clothes." I said like it wasn't already obvious, after hugging him.
I don't know what fragrance he had on, but it was etched into my memory for weeks to come.
He felt so soft, and his hair, really silly.
"Y'all have fun then. I'm outta here." He headed to the checkout counter and queued.
They had a lot of fancy clothes to pick, but because it was a school trip, I couldn't do anything too fancy.
We had picked out more clothes than we intended to buy, when Monica suddenly started acting funny. Like she was hurrying me to leave.
"Girl, why are you acting all fidgety?" I asked her
I never knew her to be in a rush when shopping. Retail therapy was her addiction, and she did it well.
We once spent two days on clothes shopping, just clothes shopping.
"I'm not. I just think we've got all the stuff we need. There's no need to go back to that rack." She said, looking at the section like it had skulls instead of clothes.
"Alright. Let me at least get a pink bag to go with these pants." I said while holding the pants up. They were a cute pair of denims that I was sure only a few people would've been able to afford. How I hate matching clothes.
Most of my clothes were custom made, so I rarely had to deal with that.
"Let's do that quickly." Monica pulled my hand away and rushed to the section for purses.
She took out a sweet baby pink purse, it was the nicest of the lot, and the only one that didn't have a second too, so I didn't argue.
Next she dragged me to the counter where we ended up just three persons behind Mr Rudd.
"You didn't say we were speed shopping today." I said to her, while checking out my new purchases.
"Well, it is what it is." Monica gave a really crooked and fishy smile, but I was too hooked on checking out my clothes to care.
My arms were beginning to hurt anyway, from all the clothes and we already had what we needed.
There were a number of people at the store, so the queue was taking longer than normal.
I soon got bored of checking and rechecking my clothes, so I looked up to watch other people shop.
Monica wasn't exactly at my back, one minute she was, the next, she was by my left, then she was by my right, just everywhere, literally.
"Girl, are you pressed?" I asked her.
"What do you mean?" She said, laughing. "I just don't fancy standing in one place for too long. You know that."
"Whatever." I brushed her off.
"Those too look quite familiar." I said, calling her attention. I had dropped my medicated glasses on the car for my sunglasses, so I really couldn't see so far.
"Girl, without your glasses on, I'm so everyone looks familiar." Her tone was shaky, and the humor was dry.
It was going to be our turn soon, so I just stayed in line.
If we were any further back, I'd have gone to see for myself.
"Hold on to these. Let me see for myself." I watched them for about two minutes, but I still couldn't make out a clear picture. I dumped my clothes on Monica and headed straight to where they stood.
I had gone barely five feet when I saw who they were.
Emma and Chase, with Lily tagging along far back.
My primal urges overtook me as I walked in Emma's direction and slapped the clothes out of her hands without looking back.
Chase didn't even run after me to confront me, it was at that point I kinda knew I had lost him.