R.E.M. Part 3

When Kevin stomped down the stairs and out the front door, Todd knew that it was time to put his plan in action. Marty was alone in Kevin’s room--drunk, defenseless, and ready to be taught a lesson. Zach was coming toward them, and Todd lunged to grab him and tell him that they were going to bring the party back to the Party Girl.

Zach intercepted Todd’s hand and put a fresh bottle of beer in it. He handed another bottle to Blair. “Nice,” he told Todd with a broad wink as he ran his eyes over Blair.

Blair took a drink. Todd watched her lips on the mouth of the bottle and forgot about his plan just long enough to let Zach vanish back into the depth of the party.

“He your wingman?” asked Blair, more amused than offended by Zach’s unhidden commentary on the situation.

“Yeah. I guess.” Todd had been getting less and less articulate as the night went on, and being presented with a gorgeous woman who knew how to drink and take a joke and who looked interested in him was more than his addled brain could comprehend.

“He’s good at it,” said Blair judiciously.

They were unceremoniously backed toward the corner of the room. Some of the partiers had left off dancing in favor of chicken fights, and the rest were cheering them on. They looked ridiculous. Todd almost wanted President Kevin to come back in and scold them for being idiots, tell them that you could get your neck broken doing that.

The girl on Davy’s shoulders gave the girl on Powell’s shoulders a hard shove, and Powell and his girl went tumbling onto the couch together.

Hmm. Well, Todd wouldn’t have objected to that part of the game. But he wouldn’t have lost, so he wouldn’t have gotten to that point.

“Powell’s footwork sucks,” Todd told Blair.

“Like you could do better?” she challenged.

“Best defensive back on the Lions,” he told her. Then he felt sick. It wasn’t true anymore. It wasn’t true, and it was Marty’s fault, and he should have taken his revenge on her when he’d had the chance.

“All right!” Blair yelled at the preening victors. “We got next!”

“No way!” Todd jerked Blair back toward him. He didn’t know when she’d taken his hand. He didn’t necessarily mind; he just wasn’t the kind of guy who went in for chicken fighting in the middle of a party. Or anywhere.

“Todd.” Zach was in his ear again. “When a pretty lady says she wants to wrap her legs around your neck, you always say yes. I don’t know if we can be brothers anymore if you don’t do this.”

Todd wasn’t concerned about the state of his brotherhood with Zach, but he did have to concede that Zach had made a fair point.

“She’s too tall, anyway,” Emily bubbled up. “The person on top in a chicken fight can’t be heavy. The person on the bottom can’t move that way.”

The double insult to Todd’s strength and his new friend’s looks did it. He squatted down so Blair could get on his shoulders. The floor shook with the beat of the music.

I'm a low brow but I rock a little know how

No time for the piggies or the hoosegow...

“The idiot’s right about one thing,” he warned Blair. “You’re gonna be up way higher than the others. We need to use that to our advantage. Don’t mess around with them. You hit them fast and hard. I’m gonna get you at an angle so you can get a clean hit sideways, but you need to make it count because they’re all gonna gang up on us if we can.”

“Too bad Todd didn’t put that much thought into his calc final,” said someone, and Todd would have turned around and hit him for practice but Blair slipped her thighs over his shoulders and whatever blood was supposed to have made his fists clench rushed off to more exotic locales.

He walked Blair into the impromptu fighting ring. There were three other couples ready to start, and the defending champions called go.

Give it away give it away give it away give it away now

Give it away give it away give it away give it away now

Give it away give it away give it away give it away now

I can't tell if I'm a kingpin or a pauper...

If there was one thing in the world Todd knew how to do, it was intercept another moving body and stop it from getting where it wanted to go. He went right at the champions first and hoped Blair was taking this seriously. She was the one who had wanted to do it, after all, so she’d better do it right. She’d better not be up to female tricks like Marty, building Todd up just to humiliate him in public.

Blair’s thighs tensed around his neck and he lost his train of thought. By the time he regained it, the defending champions were sprawled on the floor. He crossed the room sideways, doing his best to maneuver so that the other two couples couldn’t attack them at the same time.

With two more jerks, hard and fast, the other couples were on the floor.

Davy looked up at Todd, wounded and drunk. “It ain’t that serious,” he protested. “You trying to kill us?”

Someone produced a water gun and started shooting at Davy while Todd let Blair off his shoulders. Blair’s eyes were wide. “You have some kind of pent-up aggression thing going on?” Todd asked. Blair didn’t answer. “It’s okay if you do. I could dig that,” he assured her. He could dig everything about her, as long as she wasn’t some plant Kevin had hired to keep him away from Marty. His blood stirred uncomfortably at the thought.

Kevin chose that moment to burst back into the party, summoned by Davy’s continued protestations of his impending demise.

“Todd, what are you-- Blair, what are you doing here?”

Todd clenched his fist. So Blair did know Kevin. Kevin had actually been so motivated to protect Marty that he had found another girl to distract Todd. Kevin and both of his girltoys would pay for this, and Todd didn’t have much time left.

“You know him?” Todd asked Blair, hoping she heard the implied threat.

If she did hear the threat, she wasn’t impressed. “My aunt used to be his... step-grandmother?”

Kevin handwaved the explanation. “You don’t want to know. But I want to know what Blair is doing here.”

“It’s a party. I’m partying,” mumbled Blair, not loudly enough to be heard over the music. Todd only heard her because she was still pressed against him.

“You,” Kevin addressed the party at large. “Try to act like grownups. You,” and he pointed at Blair, “come outside.”

Blair rolled her eyes but followed obediently. Todd followed Blair. He certainly wasn’t going to miss this.

The front porch was surprisingly quiet. No one was pissing or puking into the bushes yet, probably because they had all seen Kevin standing guard.

“Did you just tell a bunch of college kids at a fraternity party to act like grownups?” Blair asked Kevin.

“It’s been a long day,” Kevin told her. “I thought Cassie said that your aunt wanted you home tonight.”

“Who’s Cassie?” Todd demanded.

“My cousin,” said Blair. “Kevin’s had a crush on her since she used to baby-sit him.”

“That’s not the point,” said Kevin.

“I found it interesting,” said Todd.

“Blair,” pleaded Kevin, and he looked so exhausted that Blair took pity on him.

“Aunt Dorian won’t shut up about wanting me to go to grad school instead of staying here and starting my own company like I always wanted, so I decided to get back into the swing of school events by coming to your party. When you told Cassie and me about the party when we saw you at the store, it sounded like everyone was invited.”

“All hot people are invited. So you’re okay,” Todd told her.

“So you just came here to tick off your aunt?” Kevin asked Blair.

“Yeah,” said Blair. “That a problem?”

“No,” said Kevin. “But you’ve done what you came to do, and the party will be wrapping up soon, and obviously you don’t want to spend all night hanging around with some college boy you don’t know...”

“College boy?” Todd echoed. He looked hard at Blair, which wasn’t easy between the dark night and the amount of alcohol he had consumed. Obviously Kevin was trying to warn Blair off of him, but it was the way Kevin went about it that was interesting. “How old are you?”

Blair ran one manicured nail from Todd’s temple down his cheek and along the line of his jaw. “Old enough to know better,” she told him huskily.

At that moment, Todd threw away his plans for Marty once and for all. If this was his last night of freedom, he was going to spend it with Blair.

“There you go,” Todd told Kevin. “The lady knows better, so you have nothing to worry about when she and I take a little walk and get to know each other.”

“You can’t take a walk in the middle of a thunderstorm,” Kevin told them.

“Sure we can. We have an umbrella,” said Blair brightly. She produced said umbrella from nowhere and handed it to Todd. He snapped it open and found that it was big enough to cover them both comfortably.

“Fine,” said Kevin. “Blair, be careful. Todd’s drunk and he’s been in a mood all day. Todd, be careful. Blair’s aunt is a psychopath who kills people who threaten her family.”

Blair responded by flipping her long blonde hair over her shoulder and snuggling closer to Todd. They stepped together into the wet night.

“So your aunt,” Todd said. “Is she really a psychopath?”

“Pretty much,” said Blair. “But she’s amazing and she loves me and I love her.”

“What about your parents?”

“Not in the picture.”

“So you’re like Marty.” He had sworn off Marty not two minutes before, but he couldn’t help but notice the similarities. Marty and Blair were family friends of Kevin. Marty and Blair had no parents and were under guardianship of an aunt. Blair was even tall like Marty, with tons of long blonde hair.

But Todd had never heard Marty growl the way Blair did when she snatched the umbrella away and left him to get soaked.

“What’s the big idea?” he yelled at her.

“Did you just compare me to Marty Saybrooke?” Blair hissed.

“I guess.”

“That’s the most insulting thing anyone has ever said to me in my entire life. Members of Marty Saybrooke’s fan club do not get to share my umbrella.”

She turned on her heel and made for the parking lot down the street. Todd gave chase and grabbed the umbrella back. “Wait a damn minute,” he told her. “If they ever made a Marty Saybrooke fan club, I’d be the last person to join. I was just going to give her what she deserved when you showed up and distracted me.”

“Yeah?” Blair raised a curious eyebrow. “What is it that Miss Marty deserves?”

“To be put in her place. Humiliated. Sitting in her big mansion all by herself crying because no one can stand her and she can’t stand herself because she’s a bitch.”

Suddenly the umbrella was back in his possession and Blair had looped her arm around his waist. “Tell me more,” she cooed.

“You first. Why do you hate Marty?”

Blair scowled. “She tried to ruin Cassie’s life.”

“Your cousin.”

“Yeah, but she’s more like my sister. She always has been, ever since-- well, ever since I came to Llanview to live with her parents. She could have been jealous or angry about her life being invaded by a little kid, but she wasn’t. Not ever. And Marty... Marty just does whatever she wants and everyone ends up feeling sorry for her no matter how bad it was. It started with Andrew, okay? Andrew is Cassie’s husband. He’s a minister.”

Todd snapped his fingers in recognition. “I heard something about this. She said he was molesting teenage boys.”

“Right. But even after that, Andrew felt bad for Marty. He made her his reclamation project, because she had so much potential or whatever. So Marty started telling Cassie that Andrew didn’t want her any more, that Andrew only wanted Marty. When Cassie and Andrew got married, Marty snuck into the bride’s room and threatened Cassie. Then Marty went so hysterical that they had to drag her out of the wedding screaming. Because she had to take the most important day of Cassie’s life and make it all about poor poor Marty, couldn’t hook a man by trying to ruin his reputation and his career. It was pathetic.”

“She’s pathetic,” Todd agreed. It was nice to say that to someone who agreed.

“Your turn. You promised to tell me what you were going to do.”

Todd looked at Blair, a beautiful woman walking through the park alone with a man she didn’t really know in the middle of the night. Something told him that she wouldn’t think his plan was such a good one even if she hated Marty almost as much as he did. “Well, what I already did, was, see, I needed help with my calc final so Powell got her to come tutor me. She was up in my room all night. Then I told this guy she was starting to date, Suede, that we weren’t studying in my room if you know what I mean.”

Blair clapped her hands in glee. “Serves her right. Beat her at her own game. So Suede just believed you?”

“I had some of my frat brothers back me up. They really played it up, like they didn’t want to tell Suede but if he was going to drag it out of them...”

“Perfect.” Blair smiled a devilish smile, and the night’s alcohol must have hit Todd harder than he’d thought, because he could have sworn that that was the instant the rain stopped.  

“Not enough, though,” Todd mumbled. “I didn’t pass.”

“She probably gave you the wrong formulas,” said Blair.

“That’s what I said!” Everything inside of Todd lept up at once. Finally, someone who not only believed his theory but came to the conclusion on her own. Finally, someone who didn’t think Marty was a Goddamn saint and Todd was lucky that she’d even tried to help him.

“I wouldn’t put it past her at all.” Todd couldn’t help but notice that Blair was hot when she was angry. He was getting the idea that she was hot pretty much all the time. Blair patted Todd’s arm like he had been wronged-- which he had, he reminded himself. He leaned just slightly into her touch. “Was it an important test?”

“It’s why I’m on academic probation. They’re talking about expulsion. They’re talking about summer school. Summer school! Would you ever go to summer school?”

“It wasn’t that bad,” she said quietly. She wandered over to a park bench and made to sit on it. Todd stopped her and shucked off his KAD sweatshirt, then used it to towel off the bench. The rain might have stopped, but the puddles remained.

“Thanks,” said Blair. “I wasn’t thinking. This isn’t something I talk about much.”

“Summer school? Your aunt’s a hardass about grades?”

“No. I mean, she can be but that wasn’t what it was about. I was eleven when I came here and I could barely read. When I was in the orphanage... there are too many kids and they can’t pay a lot of attention, especially to the quiet ones. I used to daydream all the time. I’d dream and I’d get so into that fantasy that I’d give myself a migraine. They thought I was special needs. Once you’ve been written off, the teachers and the social workers, even the good ones, give everything to the ones they think they can save. Once Aunt Dorian knew for sure I wasn’t special needs, she wanted to give me everything I needed to catch up. I spent that whole summer with a tutor. But the next fall I was back in class with the kids my own age. It was worth it.”

“It wasn’t your fault, though,” Todd said.

“It’s not your fault Marty sabotaged you.”

Todd didn’t know what to think about that. “What did you dream about?” he asked instead. “When you were in the orphanage?”

“Well...” she drew the word out, obviously deciding how much to tell him. “I used to have this dream that this handsome man would one day come to the orphanage and give me this key, this golden key. And he’d say ‘Blair, I’m gonna unlock all the doors for you.’ And then he wouldn’t just end up being my father, he’d end up being the king, too.”

“And that would make you a princess.” What was it with chicks and their princess fantasies?

“Yes it would. That’s me.”

“Nice fantasy. Somehow I don’t think my life’s gonna wind up being such a fairy tale.”

Blair refused to be embarrassed. “You didn’t have any silly dreams when you were a kid?”

“Not allowed in Peter Manning’s house.” Todd sat up straight. “Don’t be a dreamer, be a doer,” he quoted.

“And your mom?”

“She’s dead,” Todd admitted bluntly. He had long been in the habit of saying ‘my parents’ this or ‘my parents’ that. None of his frat brothers actually knew that he didn’t have a mother. Poor little half-orphan didn’t fit the image he wanted to project. But the day had been so long, and Blair was someone he didn’t have any real expectation of seeing again. Who knew why a park bench in the middle of the night demanded honesty?

“I’m sorry,” said Blair.

“I didn’t see her for a long time before she died. The divorce wasn’t pretty.”

“Are they ever?”

“Probably in Kevin’s family they are.”

Blair shook her head. “They’re more of a mess than they like people to think.”

Todd couldn’t help laughing. He didn’t have to worry about anyone finding out how much of a mess he was. His mess was so deep and so bad that no one would understand it even if they knew. A change of subject was in order. “So what’s the business that you want to start that your aunt thinks is a bad idea?”

“She doesn’t think it’s a bad idea. She thinks it’s a good idea-- which it is. It’s just that when she gets a picture in her mind about how things should be, she doesn’t always adjust to how things really are.”

“So what is it?”

“I’m going to call it Melador, after my mama and her sisters. Aunt Melinda and Aunt Dorian, and mama is Addie.”

“So you have a good name. You have a good business plan?” he challenged.

By the time she got done answering, he was almost ready to ask her for a job and a few hints of gray sunlight were peeking into the park.

“I have to get home,” Blair said. “There’s irritating Aunt Dorian, and then there’s terrifying her. I don’t want to do that.”

Todd swallowed his sigh. Even if he’d had a home to go to, he wouldn’t have wanted the night to end. This was the best night he had ever spent with a woman that hadn’t involved sex. (A tiny voice at the back of his brain suggested that it had been better than most if not all of the nights that had involved sex, but he told it to shut up and not act like a girl.)

“You left your car at KAD,” he told her. “I’ll walk you back.”

“Okay.”

“And we can stop in at the house and I’ll show you my room,” he added, because it was always worth a try.

Blair flipped her eyes at him in a been-there-seen-that way, but didn’t answer.

“I can buy you breakfast, though, right?”

“The only place that’s open this early is McDonald’s.”

He took issue with the distaste in her voice. “Egg McMuffins are the hangover cure of champions.”

“Then maybe you better save them all for yourself and your frat brothers.”

It wasn’t a terrible idea.  If he walked in the door with a bag of greasy hangover food, he would be the conquering hero and Kevin wouldn’t be able to bitch at him that he should help clean up the mess. There was no way that Todd was going to help clean up the mess.

Blair veered off toward the parking lot, walking too fast for Todd’s taste. She barely called a “good luck” to him over her shoulder before vanishing.

The night should have ended with more ceremony. He shoved half of an Egg McMuffin in his mouth and swallowed it without chewing.

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