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Never Said Goodbye 10
by Rebel Goddess (no login)
I disclaim.
Chapter 10
Belle had waited all week for a chance to talk to Shawn, and if she was very lucky, to talk him into taking her to the Fall Ball, but it had never come. Now, she was going with Henry and couldn’t believe that she had even considered it. Henry wasn’t even that sweet, except for the rose incident all he had done was stare at her body. At least when Shawn stared at her body, if she hadn’t completely mistaken what he had been doing, he had the decency to move his eyes back up to hers when they started talking. Henry kept looking a little too far down for Belle’s tastes. Still, she had a date and hopefully she would get to dance with Shawn that night and explain the whole thing was one enormous mistake, and that she hadn’t meant to scream at him as she had. She had merely been upset, distraught, overawed, perturbed, harassed and tormented. Maybe not all of the above, but she would have selected the right word at the time. Now she was stuck going to the first formal dance of her senior year with a boy who preferred talking to her cleavage and selfishly eating all of the Pringles to looking at her face and offering her a cupcake. God, did she miss Shawn. The world of chivalry was dead without him.
She curled her short bobbed blonde hair and plumped it out. Smearing a vibrant shade of lipstick on, and trying to find her shoes at the same time, she heard the door bell go, and prayed for Henry’s safety as both John and Brady went into their over protective father/brother roles. Mimi was going with Jan and Jason, feeling worse than ever as she was yet again part of a group date. Belle suddenly wished that she had asked her to come over and get ready with her so that she wouldn’t have to face Brady, John and Henry all by herself. She checked herself in the mirror, smiled, swirled her skirt and flounced down stairs.
Megan was euphoric. She looked great in her long dress and kitten heels. Shawn had never almost never looked so handsome in his tux (borrowed from Bo for the night) and her own dress swished around her legs, and she was consciously aware that Shawn kept staring at her in the most friendly way imaginable.
“Ready?” He asked her, staring at the vision of loveliness before his eyes and not quite believing that the girl standing before him was the same one who had fought for her life in that hospital room at the beginning of the summer, the same one who he had lived with and the same one he had carried up and down the stairs because she couldn’t manage them all for weeks after joining him in his apartment. Miserable because of his family, and occasionally Belle, Megan was a constant in his life that was as undeniable as the sun and as life giving to him. He honestly believed he might be dead except for her. He worshipped the ground she walked on, in a completely platonic way.
“Always, Tough Guy. Always.” She hooked her arm through his, stunned by how good he looked in a tux, and turned to walk through the door.
Hope suddenly yelled at them “Don’t you dare walk out of here!”
“Er, Hope, why can’t we go outside?” Shawn was rather embarrassed by his mother, and distracted by Megan’s figure revealed in her dress.
“I haven’t taken any photos yet!” Hope cried out, waking up JT who gurgled at his half brother and his friend. “I need photos!”
Feeling more and more embarrassed by the minute, Shawn put his arm around Megan’s waist and smiled idiotically for the camera.
Realising that the photos were going to come out very odd if Shawn was smiling like an idiot, Megan twisted her head around between flashes and said “Angelo, the KKK took my baby away.”
Shawn cracked up, remembering the old Pearl Jam and Johnny Ramone song, and the night they had caught her fifty two year old Headmistress rocking to it with the married Drama teacher, both half naked and covered in whipped cream in the kitchen of her old boarding school. They had a taken a picture, shown it to half the dorm and saved it for blackmail. Ever since then the song had reminded the pair of them of that night and cracked them both up no end. The pictures would come out beautifully, as Shawn couldn’t stop smiling and Megan was especially beautiful as she held him up and stopped him from doubling over.
When Hope was finally finished with taking the photos, she let them out, making Shawn promise to be good before he could go. Grabbing the keys to his father’s motorbike from the table before Hope could notice, he agreed and shot out of the front door, Megan running ahead of him and laughing. They had planned to take the bike from the beginning, and Megan’s dress had a long slit up the side so she could ride shotgun behind Shawn and not tear it.
Hearing the engine gun, and not realising that they were on the bike before they were halfway down the street, Hope first started yelling after them and then started laughing, thinking how strange they looked, and how much like Bo Shawn was. She was still laughing when Bo came home, and when she described the way Megan’s dress flew behind the bike like a banner, he had to forgive them for the theft and laugh as well.
The entrance of Belle Black to the Fall Ball was memorably spectacular, though not perhaps in the way she would have wanted. She arrived with Henry in his father’s car, primped and primed for a night of dancing and trying not to fall anymore in love with Shawn than she already was. Around her wrist was a beautiful corsage he had bought her and her dress was a dark lilac and hugged her slender form. Standing in the doorway of the gym, she saw Mimi huddled in a corner with Tweedledum and Tweedledee, pretending that she didn’t see Chloe dancing with Philip to ‘The Bitch Song’ by Bowling for Soup or Kevin staring at her and Jan from his place next to the refreshment table.
‘Fantastic,’ Belle thought sarcastically, ‘now all of my friends are ignoring me.’
Henry tugged her arm abruptly as they were walking towards the dance floor and she caught the side of her dress on the bleachers, pushed back for the night, and with a terrible ripping sound, tumbled to the ground. Henry stood to one side for a moment, admiring the expanse of her legs which was suddenly revealed, and half of the kids fell about laughing as the poised and elegant Belle Black fell on her butt to reveal Minnie Mouse knickers and a long ladder in one of her tights. Belle’s beautiful dress had a massive tear down one side, ruining it, and she bruised herself in her fall. Tears running down her face, Belle ran out of the Fall Ball, with Henry trailing pathetically after her and into the night.
Shawn and Megan’s entrance was as memorable, but a good deal less painful and certainly not as humiliating. The roar of the motorbike deafened their ears, and Shawn didn’t bother to ask Megan, knowing that she would agree to his idea of their entrance with delight. Just as the teens recovered from Belle’s fall, a new form of excitement stirred them all up as Shawn rode his father’s motorbike through the gym doors, scattering the kids, to a stand still in the middle of the gym, to Nirvana’s ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’, climbing off and then bowed to a grinning Megan, who curtseyed back, and they started to rock to the music.
They both acted like arriving on the back of a borrowed cough* stolen *cough motorbike and parking it in the gym was a totally normal event and everybody else couldn’t quite take it into start yelling either for them or at them. Philip was the first to break the silence by yelling “You rock, Brady! You totally rock!”
Then the whole gym, including the bemused chaperones, broke out into wild applause and cheering, the cheerleaders themselves started bouncing up and down and the jocks slammed into each other appreciatively. Shawn and Megan had to bow about a hundred times before they were allowed to go back to dancing to Shaggy’s ‘Angel’.
“Did you see there faces?” Megan asked Shawn, her head resting on his shoulder, clinging tightly to his muscled frame and wondering where Belle was.
“Yeah, funniest thing I’ve seen in months!” He laughed softly.
“This music’s a bit dull, though.”
“What do you think we should do about that then?”
“Oh, I have a few ideas.”
“They” Shawn pointed across the gym floor to the open doors where some shadowy figures stood, ignored by the kids in the gym but evidently waiting to be introduced, “wouldn’t happen to be one of them, would they now?”
Megan turned smiling, and her face lit up as she saw the band walk in. “Surprise number two?”
“Yep, but you had a little more to do with this one, I suspect.”
“Moi? Now why would I do that?”
“I know that I told you that they are Belle’s favourite band. You’re up to something. ’Fess up, Star Child, what did you do this time?”
“I just called in a few favours, and voila, one very cool band.”
“Any particular reason why this one very cool band should be attending our Fall Ball?”
“Am I allowed no fun? Is there some kind of ban on my asking a band to come?”
“Not a ban, but this is not over. Now are you going to announce them, or shall we just let them stand there for the rest of the night?”
Megan tossed her hair over her shoulder and gave Shawn a look that said ‘You know I’m going to win this argument, so shut up now while you still have some shred of dignity’ and walked to the temporary stage to announce the band.
“Horny teenagers of Salem High and our even hornier chaperones, I have the very great pleasure to announce, for our entertainment tonight, Blink 182!”
The noise was incredible as the three band members rushed onto the stage. Megan was almost deafened, and Shawn had to pull her through the crowd so that they could dance to ‘All the Small Things’ and not be crushed by football hooligans who were a little too excited about the band.
Jason had abandoned Jan and Mimi for a very hot cheerleader who wanted a guy to dance with to the next Blink song. Shawn and Megan, breathless from their wild dance, walked up to them smiling.
“Hey guys, why aren’t you dancing?” Shawn didn’t really like either Jan or Jason, and only had mild feelings of friendship for Mimi, but he didn’t mind being polite to them.
“Jason ran off with short skirt Cindy and some chick called Inara,” Jan spat. “The only thing more embarrassing than having your boyfriend run off with a plastic fantastic cheerleader is Belle’s accident earlier. Now that was funny.”
“What happened to Belle?” Megan asked, worried for her new friend.
“She walked in with Henry, all cute and giggling,” Mimi’s speech went at a mile a minute, “and then, bang! She fell on her ass, split her skirt to her Minnie Mouse knickers and stormed back out.”
Jan started laughing again, “You should have seen that bitch’s face! I swear she was as red as Chloe’s Last Blast dance dress!”
Megan took a deep breath, counted to ten and punched Jan in the face. She didn’t fight like a girl, she fought like a boarding school queen and the best friend to a football team.
“Come on,” Shawn pulled her arm, hauling Megan off the shocked Jan, and dragged her back to the bike.
“I need to find Belle.” Megan’s order was
unquestionable.
“Where did you think I was going?” Shawn handed her a helmet, kick started the bike and abandoned the band to the antics of a bunch of drunk teenagers.
Belle was ashamed, embarrassed and furious. She was upset with Henry for staring at her legs and not covering her up as a gentleman would have, at all the kids at school for laughing at her, but mostly with herself for being so stupid as to fall down and run out. She knew that she would now be known as the girl who wore Minnie Mouse knickers and couldn’t stay on her feet. At least Shawn hadn’t been there to witness her humiliation, or to help her. She wondered if he was coming, and, more importantly, if he had a date.
She feared what she had done to their friendship, if she had broken it irreparably or just dented it rather. She was so in love with him, and he was just too stupid to see it. If he did see it, he obviously wasn’t interested, or he would have said something. He had never, ever even whispered to her that he might be in love with anyone. Least of all her. He didn’t date, that was a comfort. In fact, she didn’t think he had been on a date since his return to Salem. Now Megan had come, and their already confused relationship was even more confused. Worst of all, there was JT. Perhaps the idea that they shared a brother stopped him from loving her, the idea of having even the slightest blood tie between a dating couple might be revolting to him. She hoped not. Every fantasy wedding she had ever had centred around her walking down the aisle with Shawn Douglas Brady. She had once liked Philip, but never in the same way as she loved Shawn. Nobody touched her heart in the same way as he did. Her heart would break if he didn’t love her, couldn’t love her.
Swinging herself gently, she thought of the days in the park when they were younger when he had pushed her on this same swing, where they had been together, inseparable and happy. She loved him so much that burned her veins, and she couldn’t sleep at night without dreaming of him.
Megan and Shawn dismounted the motorbike on the edge of the park, walking through the dark night together arm in arm, calling for Belle everywhere. They had seen Henry walking back into the car park, shaking his head, but he didn’t know where she was.
“She must be here somewhere,” Megan started, but Shawn silenced her as he saw Belle’s crouched form on the grass.
“Belle?” He called, and she turned slowly, presenting the pair with a tearstained face.
“Oh, oh.” It was all she could say. He had found her, but it had been with Megan, and that hurt her terribly.
“Belle, it’s Megan, are you OK?” Megan leaned down, kneeling on the damp grass, and wrapped her arm around the blonde’s delicate shoulders.
“Belle, did someone hurt you?” Shawn asked her so gently that she started to cry again.
“Oh,” she finally sobbed out, “I hurt you. I didn’t mean to, but I did. I shouldn’t have yelled at you like that, and then I promised Henry I would go to the Ball with him and I made a complete fool out of myself.”
“Belle, did someone hurt you?” Shawn repeated slowly.
“Yes, you did Shawn.” Belle lifted her head again and looked into his chocolate brown eyes with blue ones full of tears.
“Oh, Belle, I didn’t mean to, you are one of the two dearest creatures in the world to me.” Shawn was nearly in tears himself, and Megan was going to walk away, but Belle grabbed her hand and made her stay.
“No.” She said firmly, her voice only shaking slightly. “Stay, Megan. I need to say something, and you need to be here. Shawn, I’m sorry I’ve been so mean to you, but it’s been awful without you and I missed you so much. All of the problems with Brady and my Mom, and then the truth about JT’s parentage.” Belle didn’t know that Shawn never told Megan that JT wasn’t his baby brother, but Megan wasn’t about to interrupt her. “It all hurt, and you were the one I lashed out at when you should have been the one I turned to. I’m sorry to you, too, Megan. I was so afraid that Shawn would stop being with me when you came. I was jealous. I know that won’t happen now.”
Shawn took his two best friends’ hands and put them together between his own. “Swear this with me,” Shawn spoke slowly, almost caressing the girls’ hands, “that, no matter what happens, we will always be friends.”
They spoke their reply slowly, and Shawn made a small cut in each of their pinkie fingers, holding them together so the blood ran and mingled, and they couldn’t tell who the blood belonged to anymore.
“Always and forever.” Shawn finished, and the girls echoed him “Always and forever.”
Monday morning came too fast to Belle's mind. The weekend passed in a flash of shopping with Mimi, and picnicking in the park with Shawn and Megan. Their reputations, especially Megan’s, were phenomenal. Coming to the Fall Ball on the back of a motorbike that they rode all the way into the gym and then bringing one of America’s coolest bands to play had secured them legendary status among the Salem High kids. Already considered as very cool for having spent the summer in New York, Megan and Shawn were the new rebel King and Queen of Salem High, with only Philip Kiriakis coming anywhere close to their popularity. They were also completely unfazed and almost bored with it.
Belle, however, found herself rather snubbed and laughed at on Monday morning. Even the people who hadn’t seen her fall were jeering at her, and her face was the colour of a beetroot before she was half way to her locker.
She had collected her French book for after lunch, and was about to walk to class, when she saw Henry walking towards her. She managed a weak smile, unsure how he was about to treat her, and he leered at her in return.
A little strengthened, Belle lifted her chin and said “Hi Henry,” in a voice that came closer to her usual perky tone than she had managed in hours.
“Hi Belle,” Henry’s voice was low and she guessed he was going for sexy without getting there.
His hand slipped round her waist, he was pinching her side, and he drew her closer to him, as though to kiss her. Suddenly his other hand shot up her skirt, and she tried to wriggle away from him, but he had her up against the lockers, his lips close to hers.
“Get off me you jerk!” She exclaimed and pushed his weedy chest without effect. Henry kept coming closer to her, his lips almost on hers and his hand higher up her skirt. Belle was terrified, and had no idea why no one was helping her. She squealed out “Help me!”
Then it was over. A strong hand grabbed Henry by the shoulder, swung him around and punch him in the face, sending him sprawling over the floor. Belle looked up to see Shawn’s dark brown eyes fiercely staring at Henry, who lay inertly on the hall floor. She was thrilled to see him, and so grateful.
“Don’t ever, ever, touch her like that again!” Shawn growled so low that if he hadn’t been so menacing, Belle wouldn’t have heard what he said. He turned, and his eyes so fierce were full of concern. “Are you OK, Belle? Did he hurt you?”
“No, I’m fine.” Belle felt shaken, but Henry hadn’t done anything to her, and she didn’t want Shawn to beat him into a bloody pulp as she knew he would if she told him she was hurt. He was like Brady in that way. Overprotective to a fault.
“Are you sure?”
There he went again, worrying about her. She loved him so much for it, but now it was beginning to get annoying. Carefully keeping her temper out of her gratitude for his saving her, she replied, “Yes, Tough Boy, I’m fine. You don’t need to worry.”
The voices around them were raised, “I told you, man, now you owe me thirty bucks. Unspoken rule.”
“Hey, where’s Mattie? He owes he five bucks! I knew Brady would take Henry down!”
The bets on when Shawn was going to pound Henry were being resolved, and several of the kids were thrilled that Shawn had done it in the hall, so that it was indisputable, and there was a flood of offers to buy him drinks, CDs, and several girls offered him dates, and one slut offered something else.
Henry picked himself up off the floor, and turned, with blood running down his face, and turned to see their Principal standing behind him, along with a crowd of students who had witnessed the whole thing.
“Mr Brady, Mr King, Miss Black, I think we had better have a little chat.” Belle’s stomach fell into her feet, but her heart soared as Shawn put his arm around her shoulders and pushed past the other kids to follow their Principal into his office.
Belle felt awful. It wasn’t exactly her fault, but Shawn had a week of detention, including one on Saturday, because he had punched Henry and broken his nose. Henry, on the other hand, was suspended for a week. She did not feel bad about that. He had been a complete jerk. He had tried to kiss her the night of the Fall Ball, and as she had pushed him off, she thought he had got the message. Apparently not. She was only pleased that it had been Shawn and not Brady who had pulled him off her. If it had been Brady, Henry would have been in the hospital.
Her reputation was saved, Shawn instantly became every girl in the school’s knight in shining armour, and Henry was a social outcast. Not because he had felt up a girl against her will, but because he had been caught and subsequently pounded for doing it. The girls might not mind total jerks, but they generally drew the line at cowardly total jerks.
