The Nerd

Jaycob-

I sat in my usual seat in first period, History class.  I pushed my glasses, that seem to keep sliding down my nose, back to the brim.  Cursed things, maybe I should have the ear pieces adjusted.

“Or just get contacts instead of wearing nerdy glasses,” Jax, my wolf, taunted from my mind.

“You know perfectly well my prescription is too strong for contacts, jerk,” I retort as I cut the link.

I shifted nervously in my seat as I waited for her to come in.  The bell sounded and Mrs. Whitmore closed the door.  She began roll call and I kept glancing towards the door, waiting for her to burst through any minute now.  I felt like a child waiting for his parent to come collect him from school and internally cursed myself for being such a twit.  Just as I was about to give up hope and conclude that she would skipping this period again, the door swung open.  I heard Tara giggle as she gave her idiot of a boyfriend a quick peck and turned around.  It was as if the world was in slow motion.  Her bright blonde hair swayed softly and practically twinkled under the bright lights of the classroom as it hung freely around her shoulders.  It was getting so long as she had started letting it grow out.  But it was her eyes that I loved the most about her.  They were shiny blue crystals surrounded by thick black lashes.  Her cheeks tinged a bit of pink as my eyes wandered to her rosy, plump lips.  Her skin was practically ivory, in contrast to my tanned one.  Her figure was as equally as amazing.  She filled in her pink flannel shirt too well.  It almost seemed like she just needed a bigger size.  And the blue-jeans she wore hugged every single curve of her body, showing off her superb backside and toned legs as they hugged her all the way down to her ankles. She was the most beautiful woman I had ever laid eyes on and my heart raced every time I was in her presence.  I felt my hands get clammy as I pried my greedy eyes off of her.

“Stop being a pussy and tell her how you feel,” Jax taunted once more.

“Shut. Up. Stupid mutt,” I said as I pushed him back.

Mrs. Whitmore seemed impassive at the unsurprising disruption, “Nice of you to join us, Mrs. Ravenwood.  Please see me after class for detention.”  Tara rolled her eyes and took her seat next to mine, her cherry-orange fragrance filling the room.  I smiled shyly at her as she gave me a short wave.  I felt my stomach flip at the interaction.  The girl who had been sitting behind her seat, slapped her arm lightly and giggled.  She was her closest friend, Laura Foster.  She was almost the complete opposite of her.  Where as Tara had blonde hair and blue eyes, Laura had black hair and dark brown eyes, almost black.  “Let’s turn to Chapter 14 and continue from yesterday,”  Mrs. Whitmore called out as she walked in front of the board.  I flipped to the page quickly and began following along with Mrs. Whitmore.  Tara called to me silently, “Psst.”  I turned to her as she sat facing forward, her eyes fixed on the board, and handed me a note with her hand held low.  I did the same, grasping the folded note, trying not to blush as my fingers brushed hers, and opening it underneath the table.

I have questions about Marylin.  Let’s meet during PE?

I smiled, meeting her eyes and nodding.  That is one of the things I know about Tara that no one else does, not even that stupid Alpha boyfriend of hers.  Tara was a bookworm like me.  It was a few years ago, when we were 15, that I found out.  We had grown up together, always playing together outside around the pack forest, but grew apart when her father became more strict with her free time, so we naturally grew apart.  I still saw her around school, but she belonged to a different crowd and we hardly had any classes together until this year.  She had caught me reading one day on the bus back to the pack house.  It was one of the very few times she rode the bus.  I was sitting alone, like always, and had my nose in my book.  I was reading The Creature Within at the time and she surprised me by plopping down right next to me.

“I didn’t know you were a fan of Kevin Kingsley,” she said, as if we had never even stopped being friends for a whole year. My heart leapt when I lifted my gaze from the pages to her crystal blue eyes.

“I didn’t know you enjoyed reading, Tara,” I said with a smile.

She shifted in the seat nervously, looking around for any prying ears, but everyone was happily talking with their own companions.  She leaned in close to whisper to me.

“I don’t really like for people to know,” she said and I nodded my head.

It wasn’t my place to judge others and we were still friends no matter long we hadn’t talked for, so I respected her wishes and never spoke a word about it to anyone else.

“I can keep a secret,” I whispered back as we indulged ourselves in a conversation about the series.

PE was the last period of the day and, like me, Tara despised it.  Mostly because her father made her train rigorously every morning before school and then she had to come to school and do more training.  She said she felt it wasn’t necessary for her.  As for me, I’m not athletic.  I know basic training because it’s required, but that’s as far as I go. You would think with having a wolf it would be easy for me, but I’m an Omega and Omega’s aren’t very strong.  When I’m not at school, I help my father at the pack house.  We are in charge of grounds keeping, which why my skin is tanned.  We work outside, mowing the lawn and landscaping.  We also help whenever the Alpha has a project, building something new or repairing something broken.  I get enough of a work out just doing that.  The hours tick by and finally it’s the last period of the day, PE.  We begin running laps around the track and I am searching for Tara.  She said we would meet me, but now I don’t see her anywhere.  I wonder if she skipped instead.  As I rounded the track, there was a small fire on a piece of the grass on the other side of the track.  The coach was busy stomping it out as the others gathered around to see.  She ordered someone to get someone water and I was about to head that way to check it out, when someone grabbed my arm and yanked me off the track and underneath the bleachers.  My glasses twisted sideways on my face and I couldn’t quite make out who my abductor was, but I knew her scent anywhere.  It was both a sweet and tangy scent of oranges and cherries.  Once we were hidden beneath the bleachers, she adjusted the glasses on my face, making me blush.  Her kind blue emeralds looked at me fondly and inviting, making me feel warm all over.  She was so beautiful.   It was then that I realized she still held onto my arm and I looked down at it instinctively.  She promptly removed it, “Sorry,” her voice like smooth delicious silk, my ears could drink it all day.  “Come on,” she said as she patted a blanket she had laid out on the floor.  I tried to keep my gaze on her face, but my eyes kept wanting to wander down to her exposed legs.  The uniforms for PE for the girls were short red shorts and a white t-shirt.  I really don’t know who’s bright idea that was.  The boys could hardly concentrate on anything other than all the long legs and curves of the girls.  I wasn’t popular whatsoever and I only had my small group of nerd friends that I hung out with, other Omegas.  But we were sometimes broken up into girl and boy groups and the boy groups didn’t restrain any talk about the girls whatsoever.  So I would have to endure the other guys ogling Tara and talking about how much bigger her chest was than the other girls and how much her ass cheeks hung out of her shorts.

I sat down next to her, keeping a safe distance, but she seemed to scoot closer, so close, her knee was touching my leg.  I gulped and wiped the sweat that began to drip from the sides of my temple.  She pulled out her copy of The Wizard’s Accomplice and threw it open on the blanket to where she had a few yellow tabs sticking out, saving a few spots for easy finding.  She played with a lighter, flipping the top open and closed in one hand.  “Did you start that fire?” my voice a bit higher than I would have liked.  She smirked, “Maybe.”  I couldn’t help but stare at her.  I had never met anyone like her.  She was a rebel yet she was so kind.  There were so many things about her that I wanted to figure out.  She laughed, “We needed a distraction,” she said, playfully pushing my arm.  “It was a small, controlled fire, Jayce.  Please don’t scold, me,” she said teasingly.  A smile filled my face and I found myself laughing.  “You really are something else,” I reply, looking down at the open book.  “So, I am so confused.  Marylin finds out that Remus has been lying to her the whole time, but then in this chapter, she sleeps with him.  I don’t understand,” she says while showing me the next tab.  I smile at her eagerness, “You don’t remember the gift that Remus gives her in the third chapter?  A ring, forged in Dolos, the place of lost minds, rectified by the Keeper?”  She nods her head as she flips back to the third chapter, “Right, it was a birthday gift.”  “Yes, and remember Rosalyn later says that the Keeper went by many names, including Apate, goddess of fraud and deception?” I say, trying to lead her to her own conclusion.  Her brows furrow in concentration and I swear, it is the sexiest look on her face.  “Are you..are you saying that asshole, wiped her memories?” she says with a look of disgust.  I grin and nod, “With the ring on her finger, he controls her mind and chooses to erase the memories of his betrayal.”  She slams the book shut, “That asshole!  He can’t do that!”  I laugh at her little pout over a book.  “Everything works out in the end,” I say as she sighs heavily.  “Well it better.  Or I am holding you personally responsible for my heartache,” she says giving me a playful grin.  I laugh when I am suddenly shoved into the ground.

My glasses are shoved into my eyes and I can feel where the blood has begun to spill from the scratches.  “You asshole!” Tara is shouting at someone and I can hear several guys laughing.  I finally get to my feet and adjust my glasses to see that it’s her idiot boyfriend, Mason and his two friends that follow him around like puppies.  “I don’t want to have to tell you again, Preston.  Stay away from my girl,” he growls as the other two try to look as intimidating as possible.  I’m not scared.  I know I will never be able to beat them, I am not as strong as they are, but I’m not afraid to get my ass kicked either.  I’ve been bullied all my life, I am used to it by now, although things have gotten a bit better now that we were in high school and Tara was always quick to defend me.  “I swear to Goddess Mason, if you don’t leave him the fuck alone, we are through!” she said sternly.  Mason looked shocked as he stared into her eyes, “You’re seriously gonna break up with me for this nerd?”  “I will seriously break up with you for being an asshole, Mason.  Jaycob is my friend and he deserves respect same as anyone else,” she spits as she stares daggers at her boyfriend.  He scoffs, looking between the two of us and then saunters off muttering to himself, “Whatever.”  His minions follow him and when they are out of sight, Tara walks over to me and pulls my glasses off, wiping them clean.  “Oh Jayce.  I am so sorry about him.  He can be an asshole sometimes.  I swear I’ve talked to him about laying off you, but..” she takes my hand in hers and leads me back to the blanket.  I can’t see a darn thing due to my incredibly bad eyesight, so I allow her to lead me and trust her not to let me trip on anything.  “Sit,” she says as she takes both my hands in hers.  All I can see is a figure behind a foggy window as I allow her to guide me to a sitting position.  “You’re bleeding, Jayce.  Let me heal you,” she says as she brings her hands up to my face.  “It’s ok, Tara.  You don’t have to.  I will heal soon enough,” I say.  It’s not that I didn’t want her to heal me because that meant she would touch me, but it seems like when she heals me, I become a bit…turned on.  I don’t know if that’s normal because no one else really knows that she has healing powers.  She says that I am the only one who knows besides her parents.  Her parents thought it would be better to keep the secret hidden from everyone and I only know by accident.

We were ten at the time and we used to play together a lot.  We were climbing a tree when my glasses fell off.  I tried to climb back down to get them when I misplaced my footing and ended up falling down about ten feet.  I landed on my arm and I knew it was broken instantly.  A searing hot pain ran up my arm and I couldn’t move it because of how much it hurt.  Tara came down and gave me my glasses.  She felt like it was her fault that I broke my arm and felt so bad, she was crying.  She held her hands over my broken forearm, mumbling about how it was all her fault, when it began to glow.  We both looked down in astonishment and then my bone snapped back together.  It hurt slightly, but it was just like new.  We ran back to her house to tell her parents and they decided that we would keep it a secret.  I vowed that I would never speak a word of it to anyone and I have kept my word ever since.  The second time she healed me, I was sixteen.  I was working on one of her father’s projects, building a new housing complex for pack members.  There was an accident with the nail gun and I ended up with a nail in my foot.  For Omegas, the healing process took longer and so I had to miss school the next day.  Tara came to check on me afterward when she noticed I didn’t go, figuring it had to be due to some kind of emergency because I never missed school. She found me lying in bed with a bandage around my foot.  She scolded me for not calling her as soon as it happened and healed me instantly, but as soon as the magic drifted into my foot, this hot sensation ran up my leg straight to my groin and felt myself awaken suddenly.  I was so embarrassed at the moan that left my mouth, but Tara just thought that she hurt me.  I played it off as that and have never told her what really happened.

“Please Jayce.  I feel so bad, let me at least do this for you,” she said softly as her gentle hands cup my face.  I’ve always loved the nickname she had for me and her sultry voice didn’t help the butterflies in my stomach.  I blushed under her gaze, “O-okay.”  She closed her eyes and her hands became warm, I knew they were glowing that weird yellowish color like the other times she had done it.  I could feel the cuts on my face healing and that all too familiar warm sensation travelled from my face down to my groin, making me groan.  Her job was done, but her hands lingered on my face, tracing over the areas that were once broken.  The funny thing about when she healed me was the fact that she also temporarily healed my vision.  It was strange.  Her eyes opened as she studied my face, a soft smile forming in her expression.  “I wish I could heal your eyesight permanently.  You have the most beautiful caramel eyes.  They glow golden when I heal you,” she says, making me blush and shift uncomfortably in my shorts.  Her eyes shifted between my eyes and my lips as she slowly leaned forward.  I lick my lips on instinct, my heart pounding away so loudly in my chest I fear everyone will be able to hear it before she shakes her head slightly as if breaking out of a trance.  She removes her hands still holding my face and scoots away, clearing her throat and I instantly miss her warmth.  “Here you go,” she says gently as she hands me my glasses.  “Thank you, Tara,” I say as I slip them on.  Did she almost just kiss me?  Tara?  Kiss me?  I shake my head internally.  Tara was of an Alpha bloodline and I was an Omega.  She would never be interested in me in more than a friend kind of way.  She deserved to be with an Alpha, like Mason.  She smiles as we hear the coach’s whistle and know that it’s the end of class.  “I’ll see you tomorrow, Jayce,” she says as she gathers her things in a hurry and bolts for the locker rooms.  It was almost as if she couldn’t wait to get away from me.  Maybe I made things awkward.  Sometimes my nerdy side kind of scared people away.  But Tara seemed to always find me without me initiating contact.  I sigh as I stand up and collect the blanket, adjusting my shorts that strain against my swollen penis.