Deja Vu Blog Hop

There's another awesome blog hop going on (and though I cannot get the widget to work, I can still link to it).  Take some time to cruise the other blogs over at: DL Hammon's Blog.  There are some really good entries out there that went overlooked the first time around.

The deal is you re-post one of your previous blog entries.  This is mine from when I first started blogging, and didn't have many followers.  It is from Derrick's perspective (one of the really good friends of my MC in Good Criminal Heart - work in progress) and I think it captures him almost perfectly.  I love Derrick as a character, more than my MC, to be honest, and that's why I loved this post.  This is not supposed to be a finished piece, this will never be published (except on here).  This is Anthony's story, not Derrick's - but Derrick plays a huge role.  It was a fun exercise, and I still invite feedback if you care to give any.

Here's the original (with some editing to spiff it up a bit!):

Kelli slid towards us after the show was over.  I tried to turn my back on her, but something about her made it impossible.  It might be the fact that she follows your eyes wherever you turn.  She wouldn’t let me forget about her.  So eventually I gave in.  There was nothing about her I particularly liked – but it wasn’t like I hated her either.  The ratty nest of bleached blonde hair with black underneath, the dark make up coating her eyes, the pink lip gloss that she used, the over-sized t-shirt that she wore dangling off of one shoulder, it all made her a complete scene girl, and for whatever reason, she had decided to fall for me.  I never could tell her that I wasn’t that into it, into her, but I figured, what else did I really have going for me at the time?  She wasn’t a bad girl, she just wasn’t particularly nice either.

“So where are we going?”  She smacked her gum chewing lips together and tossed her hair behind her shoulder, it fell in a clump.  I looked to the guys – they were already doing their thing.  Anthony was talking with Tyler and Jess about god knows what, and Eric was already off with his girl, what the hell was her name again?  It was one of Kelli’s friends – I didn’t know.  I always thought it was weird that someone would be into him.  Eric was scruffy, he had long hair, was kind of dirty, and was really lazy.  Sure, he came up with great lyrics for our band and was somewhat of a musical genius, but if we weren’t going to become famous, he really had no future to speak of.  Kelli’s friend was what you would call gorgeous, short, petite, a pixie brown haircut and eyes to make you melt.  I never understood it.

“No idea,” I shrugged the band’s gear onto my shoulders.  “Tyler, is your car open?”  He was still talking to Anthony – who looked bored, but he always looked bored.  The crossed arms, jaded look in his eyes, shuffling his feet every minute or so, yup, bored.  Maybe Anthony was always bored.

"Tyler, your car man?”  He tossed me the keys without even looking.  Kelli swooped down and plucked them off the floor.

“Perfect,” she got a smirk on her face.  I almost sighed, but followed her swaying body out back towards the car.  I put in two of the cases, shut the trunk, and turned around before Kelli crashed into me.  Her lips collided with mine.  I wondered if other guys ever felt this way – completely and utterly molested when a girl kissed them.  Did they just “go with it to” or were they actually into it?  And it wasn’t that I wasn’t into Kelli – okay, it really was that I wasn’t into her, but what was I supposed to do?  So I kissed her back and felt miserable about it.  I continued to keep up a charade with her, and for what?  She was just using me, probably not the same way that I was her, but it was still similar.  She had no interest in the type of person I was, she probably couldn’t even tell what color my eyes were if I shut them.  She was just, dare I say it?  A groupie.

That’s when we heard the screaming and saw Anthony and Tyler run into the alleyway.  “Should we go help them?”

“Naw, let them take care of it – Tyler’s strong, I mean, you’ve seen the guy right?”  Kelli rested her head on my chest.  On instinct, I put my arm around the small of her back.  “He’s so handsome, I mean have you ever seen his muscles? Ugh.”  I made a face as Jess came up from behind Kelli.

“Excuse me, bitch?”  Jess's lips pursed, her hands on her hips.  Jess was overprotective of Tyler, for good reason.  Tyler never realized how many girls threw themselves at him on a daily basis, but Jess did.

I inched myself away from them as their voices raised, cussing and screaming at each other.  I stared up at the sky, I could just barely see the outlines of the clouds in the dark, midnight blue.