Decadent (2 page)

“Here you go.” Lachlan passed him a can of diet coke, so he took it gratefully.

“Thanks mate.” He watched him for a moment. He wasn't thirsty, but he popped it open and took a long drink to make it look like he actually wanted it. He wasn't at all surprised that Lachlan took his seat, picked up his homework and got back to work without a fuss. It always amazed him how overly nice he was; smiling because he was doing his homework and had asked for a drink. It seemed illogical that they should be so different and so close as friends.

Konnor shut off the engine and craned his neck forward to look out the front window of the car. It was bucketing down outside. “Maybe you should wait until tomorrow night?” he suggested.

Lachlan wasn't going to allow that; he wanted to be alone so he had some privacy while he talked to Orion. He could walk home.

“I can't do this if I know you're out here waiting for me.” Lachlan sighed and tried to make him see sense.

Konnor turned to glare at him. “Fine. But call me if you need a ride home. I'm going to go home and sit in my car for half an hour…or maybe until the rain stops.” He was talking mostly to himself as he self-consciously reached up to touch his hair.

Lachlan tried to hide his smile as he opened the door and stepped out into the rain. Konnor might have been a hard ass, but he was a hard ass who liked how he looked and liked that girls liked how he looked. He closed the door behind him and bolted for the newsagent’s door.

A second later he was inside the dry store, watching Konnor drive away through the window. Nervous and unsure about how he was going to say what he needed to say
, Lachlan shook himself to get the rain off his clothes. He was soaked through and freezing cold.

“Lachlan?” He turned to find the owner, Newman smiling at him.

“Hey, I was wondering if I could have a quick word with Orion?” he asked, moving over to the counter. Newman frowned at him and looked around the shop in a way that made Lachlan uneasy.

“She's not here.”

“What do you mean? She said she was working every night this…” Lachlan let the sentence trail off, now realising why Orion had been acting so weird at school. That awful feeling he had that something was wrong magnified until he felt his heart speeding up. There was something nagging at his brain, as if he knew what was going on, but he couldn't remember right at that moment. It frightened him. “Why isn't she here?” he asked finally, hating the sympathy he saw seeping into Newman's eyes.

“I'm sorry Lachlan, but Orion quit her job here four weeks ago. She told me she needed more time to prepare for coll
ege and work on her school work,” Newman apologised.

“Four weeks?” He checked that he'd heard him correctly, his heart sinking when the owner nodded. He didn't know what to do with that information. He didn't know what to think. “Have you seen her, at all, in those four weeks?” he asked, wondering if there was anything else he needed to know. When Newman sighed and looked at the floor for a long time, he knew there was.

“I'm afraid I have, Lachlan. She…Orion wasn't alone,” he confessed finally.

Lachlan wasn't aware of doing anything until he found himself standing outside the newsagent's door, getting drenched by the rain. He turned his head up to the sky, closing his eyes to let the rain wash away the tears he shed. He was finally realising that Konnor was right. Maybe he was too sensitive, open and respectable to everyone. Maybe he was too much of a push-over. Maybe he was too trusting and too serious.

“Hey!” He turned towards the voice and wasn't even surprised to find Konnor sitting in his car, leaning over to speak out the open passenger window. “Get in the fucking car!” he shouted over the rain.

Lachlan didn't hesitate. He opened the door, took his seat and let Konnor drive off back to his house. Neither of them said a word. He felt like a drowning rat, so the minute they got in the front door he wasn't surprised that his arm was grabbed and he was dragged upstairs to his bedroom. He was deposited in the en-suite bathroom while Konnor left the room for two minutes and returned with fresh towels and a change of clothes.

“Have a shower. Get changed and get warmed up,” he said, leaving him alone to follow his instructions.

Ten minutes later, Lachlan stood in the doorway of the bathroom in his new clothes, feeling a hundred times better. “You never left, did you?” he asked.

Konnor was sitting on the bed and there were two coffee cups on the bedside table. He patted the bed with a sigh, shaking his head at something; probably him. Lachlan trudged over and lay down to stare at the ceiling, feeling so entirely hopeless that he barely knew what to say.

“You want to tell me what happened?”

“Newman said she quit four weeks ago,” he began, dubious about what else to say other than to recount what Newman had told him. It wasn't fair to assume it was all the truth until he had a chance to talk to Orion about it. But that didn't stop it from hurting.

“She's been in the store twice since then, to buy stuff. Both times she was with the same guy, holding his hand and flirting with him. Newman said he'd asked her what happened between us and she told him we broke
up ages ago,” Lachlan explained all the things that he'd been told that had, ultimately, made him want to run out of the store.

He didn't blame Newman. It wasn't his fault that Orion was a selfish cow. And it wasn't his fault that she hadn't told him she was leaving him to be with someone new. Now he could understand why Newman had been surprised to see him.

“So the little bitch dumped you and didn't even tell you?” Konnor asked, outraged on his behalf.

Lachlan managed a smile in appreciation for that.
“Seems like it.”

“Did
Newman say who she was with?” he wondered.

“Nope. So you can quit planning to rearrange his face. It's not his fault…it's hers.” Lachlan stopped Konnor before he could even suggest getting payback. As far as he saw it
, everything was all Orion's fault. If she had told him how unhappy she was, that she wanted to be with someone else, he would have let her go. He wouldn't want anyone to be stuck in a relationship that made them miserable. But he couldn't see how it was his fault either.

He knew that was what he was supposed to do, blame himself, but he couldn't see how. She had chased after him, hounding him with flirtations and innuendos for weeks, showing up wherever he was, getting close to his friends to get close to him. Eventually he'd given in and agreed to go on a date with her. Konnor had called him a wimp for falling for her scheme. But in the end he enjoyed her company, so they'd gone out again and again. Within the space of a week they were inseparable.

Orion was the nice, popular girl with everything going for her. Corking looks, great brain, a healthy balance of insecurity and arrogance. He'd fallen hard for her. Now she was keeping secrets from him and dating someone else behind his back.

“Do you think she wants to date us both? Do you think that's why she didn't break up with me? Or am I supposed to take the completely invisible hint and get lost?” he asked, wondering if, in Konnor's years of skirt chasing, he'd ever encountered anything like this before. Or even if he had an idea what it all meant.

“No idea. The girl is cracked, Lachlan. Don't expect to make any sense out of this.” He sighed and sat back against the wall. “I may as well confess.” Konnor cleared his throat as Lachlan turned his head on the pillow to look at him. “I only asked you for a drink when we were doing our homework to get at your phone. I sent Orion a text saying you wanted to talk to her first thing tomorrow, before school. I think we should go together and tell her that you know,” he suggested.

“I know.” Lachlan smiled to himself in amusement.

“Know what?”

“That you took my phone. I left it facing me and when I got back it was side on. I figured you were trying to set up a backup plan
in case I chickened out tonight,” he explained.

“Fine. I did. But if you weren't such a tot
al nerd, you'd never have known,” he grumbled.

They stood outside the front doors of school the next morning, waiting for Orion. It was Konnor's plan, so that she couldn't slip past them as they waited for her. They watched her car pull into the parking lot and the girl in question step out. She walked to the front doors, texting on her phone and smiling to herself in a way that made Lachlan want to turn and run. She was texting
him.
Whoever she was seeing now. And it killed him.

Konnor's hand appeared on his shoulder, grounding him and stopping him from running. So he stood there, waiting as Orion took step after interminable step towards him. She was about to walk past them, too focused on her phone to notice them standing there, when Konnor cleared his throat. She looked up and instantly froze.

“Lachlan,” she said.

He watched as, almost mechanically, she stepped forward and tried to kiss him. He took a step back with such a raw mixture of emotions that he felt like breaking something. He was angry, hurt, lost.

“Is something wrong?” she asked, looking so innocent that he was speechless.

“You
've got some nerve, asking that,” Konnor practically growled at her.

“Lachlan, I don't understand. Y
ou said you wanted to see me?” she reminded him with a seemingly sweet smile.

“I know,” he told her. He wasn't going to lie and he wasn't going to play nice
. “I know and I hate you for it,” he said.

There was a tense silence after he said the words. Konnor stood there, smiling in triumph, while Orion stared in shock. Lachlan had no idea where the words had come from. It was as if they burst from his mouth without any thought. But now that he'd started he wanted to have his say.

“I hate that you chased after me and made me want you. I hate that you lied to me, over and over again. I hate that you couldn't trust me enough to be honest. I hate that you made me fall in love with you. And I hate that when I tried to tell you that I love you and think we might have a future together, I find out you're cheating on me,” he said the words and watched the colour drain from her face. “Most of all, I hate that instead of breaking up with me you spent four weeks lying, sneaking around behind my back,” he said, letting out a ragged sigh.

Lachlan grabbed his school bag from between his feet. He wasn't going to stick around to hear any more of her lies. He slung his bag over his shoulder and walked away. He went into the building and across to his locker. Today was going to be a crap day.

***

Konnor sat there, looking at Orion as she stood across the hallway, giggling at something Ed was whispering in her ear. Neither one of them cared what it was doing to Lachlan. He was so confused that he wasn't certain what to do, until he turned back to his group of friends. Hayes, Jax, Justice and Coly. The best friends he'd had since he was a kid.

He couldn't make sense of it; why would a pleasant girl like Orion chase after Lachlan so relentlessly just to go and sabotage a solid future with him? She kept acting like she was insecure, as if she had no friends and nothing for anyone to love about her. He knew for a fact that was what made Lachlan love her so much. She was innocent, naïve and she desperately needed him to love her. Why put love, marriage and a solid life at risk?

“
Hey.” Hayes walked over, digging his hands into his pockets. “Where's Lachlan?” he asked, looking around for him. That was when Konnor realised that no-one knew yet and they couldn't see Orion, behind them, flirting with some other guy.

“He's in registration already. That stupid cow has been cheating on him. He was going to tell h
er that he was in love with her,” he explained what he could as he tried to put the pieces together.

“Oh, please don't say that's why I saw her arguing with Ed?” Hayes asked, with a devastated look. Konnor stared at him, intrigued by this new notion. He could tell he was already blaming himself for not speaking up before.

“Explain,” Coly insisted, glancing back to sneak a peek at Orion.

“I saw them arguing in gym class the other day. When I asked Orion about it, she said he'd been bad mouthing Lachlan. I figured since he's such a douche and Lachl
an's a decent guy it made sense,” he explained, making his stomach churn.

Konnor couldn't stand to hear any more. Ed was the resident bad boy in school. If Orion was dating him
, then it wasn't an innocent mistake on her part; Ed didn't date high school girls. All he could think was that she had been up to her usual tricks again. She wanted Ed so she hounded him until she got her claws into him. Once he was hers, she didn't have to lose Lachlan because both of her boyfriends moved in separate social circles.

“He was probably pissed because she was still with Lachlan,” he realised. Coly nodded, so he knew his new theory wasn't completely left field. But at the same time he was actually relieved. He knew it was wrong and a betrayal of his friendship with Lachlan to think it, but he'd always know
n there was something off about Orion and now he had proof. He was right. She was a two-timing, egotistical bitch.

He let out a sigh of relief. She was finally out of Lachlan's life for good.

***

Lachlan stuck by Konnor all day, going from class to class and not speaking to a soul unless he had to. The whole time he kept thinking about what had gone wrong and how he had never noticed his own girlfriend was cheating on him.

He and Ed were so different. Ed was short like Orion, blue eyed with blonde hair and a sense of humour. Lachlan was dark haired, dark eyed and serious. He liked literature where Ed liked comic books. Lachlan listened to any style of music while Ed preferred classic rock and indie. Lachlan worked, he had responsibility, he stayed within the lines.

Ed broke all the rules and laughed while doing it. He was dangerous, exciting and unpredictable. He acted on instinct while even Lachlan knew he was different. He was aloof without being isolated, courteous
, but a little boring, independent, intelligent, logical, straight forward. He was everything Orion
should
want. But clearly Ed was everything she
did
want.

Lachlan took his seat in the cafeteria. Every one of his friends stared at him, but he didn't care
. He didn't care about much anymore. Everything he'd felt and thought and planned for his future was a lie. He couldn't be in love with Orion anymore. It would hurt too much. And she certainly wasn't going to be the girl he married and spent the rest of his life with. She was in love with someone else now, so that was never going to happen.

“I saw them…Ed and Orion. He was showing her off to anyone who would look
earlier,” Lachlan explained lifelessly, hoping to put an end to the discussion. He got it; he really did. It was over. The 'perfect' high school couple had broken up and now little innocent Orion was dating the bad boy. The whole world was talking about it, but he would rather they talked about it elsewhere. Somewhere far away from him.

He dipped his spoon into the soup Konnor had bought for his lunch and watched the gooey liquid run off the back and drip into the bowl. He had lost his appetite. He'd lost everything.

“I was telling the boys about our agreement. About how you promised I could get you arrested this summer.” Konnor tried to change the subject, but Lachlan lifted his eyes from his soup and looked right through him.

“Not much point now, is there? It's not the last act of madness
before I settle down, is it?” he asked, dropping his spoon and getting up from his seat. He frowned to himself as he tried to figure out what he needed to do. All the answer he could come up with was alcohol. But he didn't drink. He'd never had alcohol in his life; he figured maybe now was the time to start.

Konnor always said it was ideal for drowning sorrows and changing perspectives. So, without leaving himself any time to hesitate, Lachlan lifted his bag and left the cafeteria. He kept walking until he was out of the main building and halfway along the parking lot. Then he realised that he didn't even know where he was going. So he went to the one place where he knew he'd be safe, even if he got guttered out his head.