Free Last Call by Michele G Miller Page B

keys and ran towards my car, dangerously close to tears. Daniel yelled my name but I didn't stop. I fumbled with the keys and jerked the door open right as he grabbed my arm.
    "Savannah, what did you expect? That I would dump Mary Anne for you? Come on, I can't do that - I love her."
    " Love her?" I hissed in disgust. "What a funny way of showing her your love."
    "Baby, come on. Don't be that way. I love you too. I'm just confused. I didn't expect you to feel this good.” Daniel leveled his puppy dog eyes on me and whined, “I saw you today and I couldn't think straight. I needed to have you. We can work things out. See each other on the sly until I can figure out what’s best."
    "What’s best for who , Daniel?"
    "For all of us," he murmured, pulling me back against his chest. "We're all grownups here. Who says we can't still see each other?"
    I yanked away from his grip and swung around to face him; tears glittering in my eyes. "How about Mary Anne for starters, and me? I'm not going to be your little sex toy."
    "Oh, you know you enjoyed it. What was between us when we were in high school was great, baby, but this - this moment," he pointed towards the blanket. " That was incredible. I didn't expect it from you."
    "Am I supposed to take that as a compliment?" I almost gagged on my humiliation. “What? Was I a horrible kisser when we were together?”
    "Come on, Savannah. You've always been so reserved; so proper and perfect. Tonight you were like a hell cat. Someone has really taught you well."
    And there it was. The moment when the horror at what I'd done became anger. Red hot, fire breathing anger. I stood there in front of the person who had just changed my whole life without even knowing it. The person who’d ripped out my heart, threw it on the ground and then stomped on it when he’d walked into my party with Mary Anne on his arm nine months earlier. Now he had the audacity to compliment the person he assumed taught me in bed.
    I leaned forward and crooked my finger at Daniel to get him to come near me; a small smile playing on my lips. Placing my hands on his shoulders, I pulled him down to my mouth and whispered into his ear. "You will NEVER touch me again, or Mary Anne will hear every last, dirty detail of this day." I breathed sweetly into his ear. Then I raised my leg and gave him a swift knee to the balls. He went down with a wail and I climbed into my car, slamming the door behind me.
    I hadn't been to a family event since.
    Candace looked like she'd seen a ghost when I finished the horrid explanation of that fateful Easter break.
    "I went home, showered and climbed into my bed; cold and numb. But I never cried. Instead I replayed over and over what he’d said, and noticed that there was one thing that kept sticking out in my mind. He’d complained about how proper I was, how much like my mother I behaved, and that was the one point I couldn't argue. I was tired of being the perfect little country club debutante belle that my mother raised me to be."
    "I remember when you came back, and it was like you flipped a switch. You loosened up and started to hang out more," Candace remembered. Then she chuckled and pointed out, "That's when we met Sara and bless her, she pulled you the rest of the way from that cocoon you'd been in."
    I laughed. "Yeah she did. I wanted to be my own person, Candace, and I've tried very hard to be. I still have a ways to go to finally get what I want, but I'm working on it."
    "So why haven't you dated? I mean, girl - so many guys have asked you out over the past two years…why haven’t you ever said yes?"
    "I think I’ve just been scared of getting screwed over again. It's not solely about Daniel." I stopped myself and tried to figure out how to explain the rest of my story. "There was another guy. It was the summer before our freshman year, while I was still nursing my freshly broken heart from Daniel's defection. It's a long story that I'd rather not get into right now, but