School Girls' Stories: New Generation - Finale

Chapter 13 – 10 Hours Remaining (4:00 AM)



“Shu...” Mercedes was surprised to find him in his room when she knocked on the door. She had been hoping to find him still with some of his friends, or perhaps asleep. Instead he was fully dressed and standing at the door and looking grateful to see her. He reached out and snagged her into his arms, crushing her body against his. He kissed her lips full and hard and she fought hard not to let go to temptation. Temptation had brought her down Shu’s path too many times, and though she was his girlfriend she seemed to have sex with him less now that they were together.



“I am so glad you are here,” Shu whispered into her hair.



“You won’t once you know why I’ve come,” Mercedes mumbled.



Shu shut the door behind her and turned to watch her. “Don’t tell me you aren’t here for a great night of sex.” At the look she gave him he felt himself shriveling. “I take it that is a ‘no’.”



“Shu, are you with me because I’m like Bliss?” Mercedes asked. At the surprise on his face instead of hesitating she trudged forward. “Tonight I realized how much she and I have in common. We dress the same, our attitude is the same, and we are both slightly reckless. Are you with me because I remind you of Bliss?”



“Can we sit?” Shu finally asked.



“No.”



“Please.” Shu said it like it was the last thing he would ever be able to say to her. “This is not something I want to say while standing in the foyer of a cramped hotel room.”



“If this is cramped I would like to see what ‘luxurious’ is,” Mercedes bit.



Shu offered her no quips about being raised as a rich child who was spoiled rotten until he had been thrown out on his ass by his step-dad. He knew he had been given one of the less nice rooms in the hotel, because there were few vacancies, he was told. He should have been staying in the penthouse like everyone else; he knew it was there, unsaid. Of course tonight no one seemed to be staying in the penthouse.



“Please sit,” Shu offered again when Mercedes refused to move.



Mercedes let out a sigh and moved into the room itself. Mercedes never stopped being amazed at what Rhapsody’s family was truly capable of. The hotel would have broken the piggy bank of any normal person. Instead they threw their money around frantically, trying to live life to the fullest of the monetary value. It was no wonder Rhapsody had turned out the way she did.



Mercedes struggled for patience for all of a minute before she snapped. “Shu, answer my question.”



“Yes.” The word came out so flat, so unemotionally charged that Mercedes nearly stood up and left right then. It was only Shu’s hand on her shoulder that kept her seated on the edge of the bed, and even then she was debating breaking every one of his fingers. “Are you going to listen to my explanation before you pass judgment?”



“I don’t know if I can,” Mercedes said honestly.



“Will you try?”



“Yes.”



Shu stepped away from her and turned towards the balcony. She did not know what he saw as he looked out into the pool below or the images that were rushing through his mind. It was a night he wanted to never repeat, yet one that would replay in his mind for the rest of his life. It was so close… It was ironic that it was Darrke who had saved Waza’s life on that balcony. He shuddered. Tonight was not the night for all of these revelations, but perhaps there was no time better than the night, a night like this, so beautiful, the clouds sneaking in to ruin a wedding that took place in ten hours.



Shu crossed his arms against his chest, his own sort of lame protection against Mercedes’s quiet judgment of him. “When I first started fooling around with you it was without a doubt because you reminded me of Bliss.” He saw the instant irritation on her face and her slight movement on the bed that said she really was not ready to hear this. He plunged forward. “You dress like her, you are harsh like her, you are smart in a way that most people never acknowledge, and the best thing that you did that Bliss would never do is show interest in me, so I started fooling around with you, imagining that you were Bliss. Stop.” He turned to her as she stood up. He gave her a harsh shake of his head. “You asked me, and I know that for the first few times that you and I fucked around you did not even know who I was. You were so high from whatever Waza was giving us you barely knew your own name. Very unlike the Mercedes who sits before me right now.”



“How much respect can I have for myself if that is how you and I ended up dating?” Mercedes asked.



“Were you sleeping with only me?”



“Definitely not.”



“Then forgive me for not being apologetic for imagining you were someone else,” Shu said coldly. “Mercedes, for the longest time you were someone who was there. You were Miss Right Now and that was what I needed. I got a kick out of you and Portia because you didn’t care I was fucking other women, you just wanted to get high and roll around, and then suddenly I grew up. I saw you, the real you, and I saw Portia, the real Portia, and I came to the conclusion that you were better. That night after you rescued Rhapsody from my devious plan I knew one thing; I loved only you now.”



“’Now’,” Mercedes mimicked.



“Yes, ‘now’, because before that I wanted Rhapsody,” Shu admitted. “Not Bliss. I no longer needed Bliss, and that was because you were there, a bigger better version of something I had foolishly fooled around with and coveted after I had spurned her.”



Mercedes shrugged her shoulders and Shu wanted to rip her shirt away from those shoulders and let his lips trail over that tanned skin, another huge difference between the girl he had fallen in love with and Bliss. Bliss was a pale Japanese version of Mercedes, and to Shu she paled in comparison. All of the horrible things that had happened to him before, even that very night, it had all been to put him here, with Mercedes. She was the one he wanted to spend the rest of his life with.



“So now what?” she asked carefully, cautiously, quietly. She was staring around him and at the wall beyond.



“Mercedes, I love you.” Shu took a deep breath. Could he do this now? Did he have any choice? She needed to know. She needed to know he was serious and perhaps falling to one knee and declaring his ever lasting devotion was the only way.



Mercedes never saw it coming. Shu kneeled before her, reaching back into his pocket. Mercedes could not believe what she did next. “Harmony and Yuna are in the hospital.” Shu looked at her, his hand frozen in his pocket, his eyes completely clouded over and unclear. “Rhapsody found out they were carrying Ashe’s babies and so… it turned ugly. I’m partially to blame for it. I…”



Shu sighed and pulled his hand out of his pocket and sat beside Mercedes on the bed. He reached around her, wrapping his arm around her waist and pulling her close. “Sometimes two people belong together, but can never admit it,” he said, and never realized he could be so philosophical. “Rhapsody and Ashe belong together. Bliss and Link belong together. You and I belong together. Do I care that you hurt Harmony? Not really. Harmony is awful and sometimes I wonder what happened to her. We were all brats, but we all grew out of it, but Yuna and Harmony…”



Shu turned to Mercedes and took her hand in his and looked her in the eye. “Our worst enemy, all of us, all these years, has been Waza.” He hesitated, quieting. Mercedes was lost and he did not know how to say the words. “Waza’s dead.” Well, that was not as hard as he thought.



Mercedes’ smile was an even larger surprise.