Part One may be found on Deanna/Cestmoi’s site, Funny Figure Four.
“There you are! I thought I’d never find you,” a male voice declared from behind Joeanne. “Look, I really need to talk to you.”
Joeanne darted an outraged glance over her shoulder, then snapped back to stare, horrified, at Di.
“Oh, hi Tyler,” Di greeted weakly. “This isn’t a great time right now. Can I maybe meet you somewhere later or something?”
“No, I really need to talk to you right away,” he answered, oblivious to the rising tensions. “It’s important.”
Di shook her head. “I’m kind of in the middle of something.”
“It’s important,” he repeated.
Hallie stepped forward and introduced herself, adding, “Diana, you’ve already met. And this is Jo.”
Tyler glanced at Joeanne, did a double take and began swearing.
“You’re in my Chem lecture, aren’t you?” he asked, some time later.
Joeanne only nodded, not meeting his eyes. Tyler swore some more.
“This wasn’t how I wanted to do this, but I guess there’s no stopping now,” he eventually continued. “Last night in the club, someone told me something which I misunderstood. And I want to make sure that it doesn’t get back to him, so I’m asking you – no, begging you – not to tell him what happened.”
Diana only barely restrained herself from shaking her still-aching head. “I’m sorry? Not tell who, what?”
Tyler let out a frustrated breath. “Max Newman. Don’t tell him that I met you last night.”
“Max Newman?” Joeanne asked. “Who the hell is Max Newman? And why would he care?”
Diana waved her into silence. “I’ll explain in a minute. What did Max Newman tell you? And what did you think he meant?”
He looked away. “He just said, ‘There she is, in the red skirt.’ I thought he meant the girl he’d told me about, who apparently liked me. Actually, he meant the girl he…”
“Liked?” Di supplied. “No. No way.”
Tyler nodded once. Di squeezed her eyes shut for a moment and shuddered in distaste.
“Who is this Max guy?” Hallie wondered, turning from Di to Tyler and back again. “And how do you know he isn’t going to come and join the party?”
“It’s daytime on a weekend. He never goes outside if he can help it.” Tyler dismissed that concern.
“Why not? Is he a vampire?” Hallie quipped.
Di stared at her, open-mouthed, for a long moment, then let forth a burst of laughter.
“Thanks, Hallie. I needed that, even if it does make my head ache even more,” she told her. Taking out her phone, she scrolled through her photos. “Here. This is Max. I don’t have a better shot of him.”
She pointed to the misfit in a group selfie. While everyone else looked relaxed and happy, he stood stiffly at the very edge of the screen with a disapproving expression on his pale face.
“Mmm, definite vampire vibes,” Hallie commented. “He looks about fifteen. How did he even get in to the club?”
“Fake ID, probably,” Di muttered, then turned to Tyler. “So, what does he hold over you?”
“Wait. What?” Joeanne interrupted. “Explain what’s going on. This isn’t making sense.”
Di expanded the photo so that Max’s face took up most of the screen, then she pulled a face at him. “I first met Max when we were forced to do a group project together – this was the group; everyone else was okay, but you know how those things go, that’s there’s always that one person? Well, that time, it was Max. And he may not be a literal vampire, but it’s a pretty good description of him. He’s always taking something from someone by force.”
“He says he can get my father fired,” Tyler admitted, all of a sudden. “He says his father’s good friends with the CEO of Wheeler & Hart, where my Dad works, and all he has to do is put a word in the right place.”
“And you believed him?” Di demanded. “Mr. Wheeler wouldn’t do that!”
He shook his head. “You can’t know that.”
“She does know that,” Hallie contradicted. She turned to Di. “Call Honey and find out. I bet this guy’s father has never even met her Dad.”
“How would Honey even know, especially if we don’t know Max’s father’s name?” She opened her contacts. “I’ll call Miss Trask. If he’s ever been to the house, or their city apartment in the last eight years, she’ll know.”
Tyler held a hand out. “Wait. You’re friends with his daughter?”
Di nodded.
“Don’t bother calling anyone,” he told her. “This is all starting to make more sense.”
She cast him a quizzical look.
“He must have found that out, somehow. And he must have known that he could only keep me doing things for him for so long before I found out that it’s all a lie.”
“You’re suggesting that he was only interested in Di because he thought she could get him an introduction to the Wheelers?” Joeanne asked. She turned to Di, “If I were you, I think I’d be offended.”
Di grimaced. “Max is a slimy toad. I don’t care what he thinks.”
“And now that we’ve had this conversation, I don’t care either,” Tyler added. “Screw Max. I don’t care if he finds out. And I’m sorry I interrupted your conversation.” He turned to Di. “Can I give you my number, Diana? I’d like to see you again sometime – maybe for coffee?”
She accepted it with a small smile.
With a wave of his hand, he left them.
“I’m still hungry,” Di admitted, moments later. “How about if we go and get something to eat?”
Joeanne nodded. As they walked, she said, “I’m sorry I slapped you, Di. And if you want to, you can call him. I won’t mind.”
“You don’t–” Di stopped, unsure of how to finish the thought.
Jo shrugged. “Somewhere during that conversation, the infatuation just evaporated. I think it was somewhere around the time he said he was begging you not to tell.”
“There’s one thing I still don’t understand.” Hallie turned to Joeanne. “How did you know about Di and Tyler? Because Di only told me and I didn’t tell anyone. And Tyler just told us he didn’t want anyone to know, so I guess he wouldn’t have, either.”
“That was the thing that didn’t make sense,” she answered. “The guy in the photo came up and told me.”
“This is all my fault,” Di told them.
“How do you figure that?” Hallie wondered. “Because I’m thinking that vampire-dude has a lot to answer for.”
Di took a breath. “Because, yesterday afternoon I told Max not to speak to me ever again – which would ruin any scheme he had for using me for his own gain. He’s done all of this as revenge. I can just tell.”
They walked on for a few minutes in silence.
“What are you going to do about it?” Hallie asked.
Di shook her head. “Nothing. What would I even do?”
“You could use your connections to get Max’s father fired from his job,” Joeanne suggested, with a rather nasty smile.
“That assumes that Max actually knows who his father is, and that he cares,” Di pointed out. “And that I have that kind of connections, which I don’t.”
They walked a little further.
“Are you going to call him?” Joeanne wondered, a wary look on her face. “Tyler, I mean.”
Di shrugged. “Probably not.” She glanced across at Hallie, then at Joeanne. “I think my best revenge will be to stay friends with you, Joeanne, and for me to be okay, with or without any men whatsoever. Do you think we can do that?”
Joeanne hesitated a moment, then nodded. “Still friends.” She suddenly grinned. “But if vampire-boy tries anything else, he’s going down.”
Diana laughed. “It’s a deal.”
“So, are you actually okay?” Hallie asked later, when their dorm room door had closed behind them. “I didn’t want to ask in front of Joeanne.”
Diana’s eyes squeezed shut for a moment. “Not really. But I think I’m going to be. Eventually.” She let out a sigh. “I know, in my head, that you were right when you said that the world isn’t ending, but it still kind of feels like it has.”
She sat down on her bed, with her back against the wall, and hugged her knees to her chest.
“I didn’t know whether the explanation of how it happened made things better or worse,” Hallie admitted, as she sat down at her desk, swivelling the chair to face her friend. “And there’s some things I’m still wondering about. Like why you even went to the other club in the first place.”
“Oh. That.” For a long moment, it seemed that Diana would not elaborate. “I guess you could say that I’d had enough of being forgotten about, the instant I’m out of people’s sight. I felt… superfluous, to use one of Mart’s words.”
Hallie’s gaze snapped to Di’s face. “What about Mart?”
“What about him?”
Hallie rolled her eyes. “I know you were in the off-again stage of your incredibly complicated thing you’ve got going – at least, I think you were. But what are you going to do about him?”
Diana shrugged. “He’s forgotten all about me, too. I know he says that he admires me, and he says that I’m important to him, but the instant someone more interesting comes along, I get put back on my pedestal, ready and waiting for him to need me again. I’m tired of being a convenient date, when he can’t get anyone else. And I’m tired of the weight of other people’s expectations.”
“The expectation that you’d be with Mart?” Hallie frowned. “Or that you’d just keep on waiting for Mart?”
“Either. Both.” She dropped her chin onto her still-raised knees. “I think I was the only one expecting that second one. And I don’t even know why, any more.”
“Ouch.” Hallie’s eyes squeezed shut, then sprung back open. “Wait. Before, when you said about people forgetting about you… you meant Dan and me, didn’t you?”
A tinge of pink stained Di’s cheeks. “Only a little. I don’t grudge you your happiness, or your time alone. Promise. I just…” She shook her head. “I don’t know. I was reminded that I’m always the least interesting person in any social circle.”
“You are not!”
Di tipped her head back against the wall. “It feels like it, sometimes. I’m always the one left out, or left behind. It’s like when I was back in high school and Trixie and Honey would go and do things together and forget that I even existed.”
“That’s just Trixie’s hyper-focus issue,” her cousin argued. “She does that to everyone.”
Di nodded. “I know. But pretty much everyone does that to me, sooner or later.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make you feel this way.”
“It’s not your fault!” Di groaned as she climbed off the bed and turned to her own desk. “Now, I suppose I’d better try to salvage something from this horrible day. Because the last thing I need right now is to fail something and have to come back.”
“I’m really going to miss you when you graduate,” Hallie told her.
“You have Dan.” Di picked up some papers and put them down again. “Your senior year will fly past.”
“Probably. But I’ll still miss you.” Hallie began to arrange her own study materials. “You’re not really going to call Tyler, are you?”
Di shook her head. “I’ll keep his number, in case I ever want to contact him, but no. I don’t think I want to ever see him again. And I know that I’m not ready to start something new.”
Hallie breathed a near-silent sigh of relief.
“And I think I’m going to have to set things straight with Mart,” Di continued. “Because this on-again, off-again thing has to stop. It isn’t good for either of us.”
“I’m glad you can see that, now,” Hallie answered. “Because I’d been thinking for a while…”
“That if we were right for each other, we wouldn’t have dated off and on for nearly six years – and unofficially for another two before that – without ever sleeping together?” Di finished for her.
Hallie nodded. “Yeah. Something like that.”
“Maybe the fact that I didn’t sleep with him is for the best. It’ll be easier for us to go back to being just friends.”
“That’s a good thought to hold onto,” Hallie commented, as she opened one of her books. “As bad an experience as this has been, it hasn’t been all bad.”
Diana thought about that for a few moments. “No. Not all bad. And I believe I’m going to be okay.”
Hallie smiled. “I believe it, too.”
The End
Author’s notes: This is a two-year-late addition to the second part of CWE#20: Finishing Unfinished Trixie Business. The idea of the challenge was for people to post unfinished stories and then for different people to finish them off. I did a couple during the time of the challenge, but I also started another and collected some ideas. I have been focussing on finishing things during 2021, and this fitted the bill really well. This is the second of two late entries.
Thank you to the CWE team for the inspiration and especially to Deanna/Cestmoi for writing the beginning of this story. Thank you, also, to Mary N./Dianafan, who very kindly edited it for me and pushed me to try harder when the first version I sent her failed to answer all the questions. This particular story falls a little outside of my comfort zone. I hope that doesn’t show too much.
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