Chapter 16- The Normal Life

Bom's POV

Jiyong was still grinning. He hadn't stopped since our conversation this morning. Of course, I still wasn't speaking to him but his grin frustrated me so much that I reached over and turned the dial so that the music's volume would go up, hoping that Jay Z's ruthless lyrics would drown out his maddening smirk in my mind.

But it turned out to be no such luck.

Before the song reached its chorus, Jiyong reached over and turned the radio off, much to my displeasure. Part of me wanted to protest but I quickly remembered that I wasn't talking to him. I wasn't ready to acknowledge him anyway. Stubbornly, I crossed my arms and stared straight ahead.

"So," he began in a friendly, almost jovial tone, "Have you come up with a way to seduce, Taeyang?" I felt him looking at me from the corner of his eye but I refused to face him. Unfortunately my cheeks decided to betray me by turning red, which I knew Jiyong had noticed.

"You don't have to use a word like that." I muttered, keeping my eyes on the road ahead.

"Oh?" I heard him question as he raised an eyebrow, obviously enjoying himself. "What word would you use, then?"

"A phrase actually." I suddenly snapped, finally folding under pressure by turning to face him with a glare. "Fulfilling your own twisted fantasy because you're not man enough to act on your own impulses."

The car swerved but I barely noticed and neither did he. "Fulfilling my what?" He asked hoarsely, which made me erupt with laughter, after getting the vehicle straighten out. I couldn't even answer him because I was too busy laughing.

"Well," I started to say after I finally caught my breath, "With the way you reacted, there must be some truth to it."

Now it was his turn to glare at me, only in a more venomous way. "No." He stated, not even bothering to explain his denial. "No." Before I could imply anything further, he hastened to get the conversation back on the track he intended for it to be. 

My humiliation, not his.

"Since you obviously have no experience with guys-"

I quickly cut him off. "What are you talking about?" He only looked at me meaningfully, but that was enough for me to justify the truth in an effort to salvage my dignity. "I have had plenty of experience with guys." I said, lying straight through my teeth. My honest side, the part that had screwed me over in the deceiving department, was already getting nervous. And if Jiyong remembered what he himself had noted the very day he found out my true identity, me biting my lip, which I didn't notice I was doing until it was too late, was a dead give away.

Amused, he looked over at me and said, "I mean guys who don't have to go through your father first, princess." If he really believed me, it didn't seem to matter. In his mind, I was still a raw beginner.

And that really infuriated me.

"I know." I declared hotly. I had been lying a lot during the past few days so one more wouldn't kill me. I ignored the rational part of me that didn't want my life to get even more complicated than it already was and instead focused my attention on proving Jiyong wrong. "I've had relationships with boys-boys that in fact were not approved of by my father." 

"Oh really?" He raised his eyebrows, letting his voice show his skepticism. he was looking over at me again instead of the road but this time I was too caught up to worry about my own life.

"Yes, really." I insisted stubbornly, meeting his gaze with defiance.

"Like who?" He challenged and I didn't plan on backing down so before I knew it, I blurted out the first name in my old life that I could think of.

"Siwon!" My eyes widened with shock as soon as my mind registered not only what my voice had just done but whose name I had just called. Lying was bad. 

Why haven't I learned my lesson yet?

"Who's he?" Jiyong snorted. "The pool boy?"

"No." I corrected him miserably as I slumped down in my seat. "He's my tutor." The same tutor who has been crushing on me for at least a year. It didn't take a rocket scientist for me to see that he liked me as more than a mere pupil but there was no way that I could ever return his feelings, even if he was good looking. He lectured me on history for goodness sakes! And my dad really wouldn't approve so that part of my story wasn't a lie. "His only source of income is teaching, and to my father, that in itself is a failure. Nothing in that line of work is really guaranteed."

Jiyong looked at me in amusement. "So the affair was an act of rebellion on your part?"

I winced at the word 'affair.' "Something like that." I muttered. "In any case," I hastened to continue, trying not to dwell on my make believe love life. "I have plenty of experience so getting Taeyang to fall for me won't be a problem." 

Not that I want him in the first place...

"Good." Jiyong smirked as they pulled into the school parking lot. "Because there he is. Go work your magic." Not for the first time since I'd met him, I wished that looks could kill. After resigning myself to the fact that my glare had little to no effect on him, I got out of the car and surveyed the parking lot for Taeyang.

He was standing next to his bike, a Yamaha of some kind, and was surrounded by a group of tough looking guys. I immediately whirled back to face Jiyong. "I can't go up to him now." I hissed, pointing at the boys dramatically. "Not with all of them around."

"What's the matter?" He mocked, grinning up at her. "Scared?"

I stared at him for a second before finally saying, "Screw you," not waiting to see if he'd reply. Turning sharply, I resolutely walked towards my target. He looked up as I approached and returned my smile with one of his own. 

Okay, what was the plan again?

Oh. Right. There was no plan.

"Hey Taeyang!" I greeted him in what I hoped was a friendly and unassuming way. Of course, maybe I was supposed to try and sound assuming, but I'm really wasn't sure if I could pull off any seductress techniques.

"Hey." He nodded in my direction. "Jenny, right?" He asked even though I never told him my name. One of the students must have told him after I left the day before.

"Yeah," I smiled up at him, making it as genuine as possible. "You remembered me this time!"

Taeyang chuckled. "Yeah, well you talked back this time." I wanted to laugh at the way he referred to their non-existent meeting. "What's up?"

"Nothing..." I trailed off, racking my brain for a reason, any reason, for me to have approached him. To my amazement, my mind supplied me with a plausible excuse. "I wanted to piss my brother off." 

They hated each other, right? 

I had yet to figure out why...

Taeyang looked amused. "Why would talking to me piss him off?"

I stared at him for minute before coming to the conclusion that he hadn't figured out who my brother was yet. Well, he probably didn't even know my last name so it's not that surprising. Still, everyone else in the school seemed to know. Maybe no one wanted to be one to mention it to him.

I lowered my eyes in an effort to look embarrassed which, to be honest, wasn't very hard giving my current situation. "My brother is Jiyong," I told him, wondering if he'd blow me off right then and there, ruining Jiyong's plan.

Now it was his turn to stare. "That pathetic loser is your brother?" He demanded. From the corner of my eye I saw his friends, the ones that I had conveniently ignored, exchange looks. He looked angry for a minute and then his face cleared. "No wonder you needed someone to tell you to stand up for yourself. A loser like him probably bullied you every chance he got."

The irony of the statement wasn't lost on me. In reality, Jiyong did do everything in his power to push me around, a great example being that I was here, attempting to seduce Taeyang. Something in my face must have signified agreement because he put his arm around my shoulder, scanning the front of the school until he spotted Jiyong starring in their direction.

"Don't worry." He told me, keeping eye contact with my 'brother'. "I'll protect you from that reject."

Instead of comforting me, as the words were probably intended to do, I felt a growing sense of dread. The statement rang to close to a promise, one that I felt guilty about extracting from him. But I had seen Jiyong watching us too and I couldn't afford to make him mad. "Thank you," I said absently, more focused on leaning into his embrace than anything else.

He walked me to my first block class with gang trailing not too far behind us. I couldn't pay attention to the lecture because my mind was a mixture of swirling emotions and complicated lies and I honestly didn't know how I was going to keep up. All I knew was that I had to. I would have given anything to live a normal life a few weeks ago and I wasn't going to allow a few setbacks to ruin it for me now.

Thought part of me couldn't help but wonder just how 'normal' this life was turning out to be.