Free Nothing Else Matters by Leslie Dubois

next flavor of the month? Someone he just wanted to try on for size then toss aside.
    She pondered this for a moment. This wasn't just any guy. This was Scottie. Her Scottie. The boy who would sneak over to her house in the middle of the night and read her a bedtime story when she couldn't sleep. The boy who, on the ten year anniversary of her mother's death, skipped school with her and took her sailing since she couldn't make it back to Puerto Rico. He would never hurt her. And deep down she knew she loved him, too. When he kissed her she had felt ... she felt … She couldn't even explain it. It was a sensation she had never experienced before. It was explosive. She closed her eyes and smiled thinking back to that moment.
    She made a decision. She was going to give Scottie a chance. As long as he'd broken up with Amber, that is. Just as she closed her locker and turned to go look for him, Derek Strong blocked her path.
    "Reyna, my queen," he said, leaning against the locker next to hers. He took off his sunglasses then looked her up and down while licking his lips. Reyna rolled her eyes. His arrogance made her want to puke. He wasn't half as important as Scottie was on the team yet he thought he was Terrell Owens or something.
    "Hey, Derek. What's up?" Reyna knew what was up. He was probably going to ask her out again, like he had every week for the past six months. Ironically, she refused to date him for the same reasons she refused to date Scottie.
    "Oh you know what's up, girl," he said, stepping so close she could smell his aftershave. It actually smelled pretty good.  Maybe she could buy Scottie some as a gift. "You and me, Fall Ball, what do you say?"
    "I say the same thing I've said to you the other fifty times you asked me out."
    "Come on Reyna. We look too good not to be together. I'm sexy as hell and you're as beautiful as an angel. We owe it to the world to ... unite."
    "That was perhaps the corniest thing I've ever heard in my life."
    "Well it doesn't change the fact that it's true."
    "Look, I will never ever —" Just as she was about to tell Derek how she really felt in no uncertain terms, she saw Scott walk by holding Amber's hand. Her breath caught. She was wrong about him. He wasn't her Scottie. He was the Scott Kincaid, the pride and joy of Charleston Prep. The entire weekend had been a lie. He didn't really want her at all. "Never ... um ... never ever ... um," she stuttered while staring at Scott's arm slip around Amber's waist. "What about Friday after the game?"
    ***
      Reyna sat in the Trainer’s office staring at her computer. She tried to focus on fixing the bugs in the computer program she wrote for the school wide election, but every two or three seconds she had to wipe away a tear.  She couldn't believe that she, Reyna Lewis, was crying over a boy. How could she let this happen? How could she let herself get so attached to him? Oh, who was she kidding? These feeling had been six years in the making. She loved him and there was nothing she could do about it.
      She laid her head on the desk and let the tears flow. She had finally admitted to herself what Scott meant to her and for nothing. He would always be a philandering womanizer. He had seduced her one minute, and then went back to his girlfriend the next. She still couldn't believe he could be so heartless.
      "Reyna, what's wrong?" She jerked at the intrusion. She hadn't even heard Scott enter the office.
      Without thinking, Reyna picked up a coffee mug filled with pens and launched it at his head.
    A lifetime of athletic training had honed Scott's reflexes so well that he was able to expertly shield himself from the projectile with his Calculus binder. The mug crashed to the floor while pens flew in every direction.
    Reyna brought her hands to her mouth and gasped. "Oh my God. I can't believe I did that. Are you okay?" She rushed to his side and checked him over for bruises.
    "Yeah, I'm fine. But why did you throw that at me?"
    Once