Missing Pieces - Chapter 21
Hailey
Monday
I wasn't intentionally eavesdropping. Well, not at first. But when I had opened up the door to my bedroom, their conversation spilled into my ears.
Normally I would have chimed in to let them know I could hear them, but something had caught my attention. It wasn't just the words that bothered me. It was the way that Josh had said them. "So you only have a few days of freedom left?"
What the hell did that mean? Tyler had joked around with me about being on the run. But maybe he was the one that was in actual trouble. I would have been hung up on the issue if their conversation hadn't taken a turn toward me.
"So what does that mean for you and Hailey? Does she know?" Josh asked.
"No, she doesn't know." He paused. "She just needed a ride to Pasadena and I was heading out to California anyway. We're just...friends."
I swallowed hard. Just friends? Maybe before this afternoon. But it didn't feel like just a friendship anymore to me. I really liked him.
"Oh. Sharing a bed type of friends?" Josh said.
Tyler laughed. "Can you blame me?"
That asshole!
"No, she's fucking hot," Josh said.
"Yeah. She is."
"So how is she in the sack? Better than that torch you're holding?"
Tyler laughed. "Hails is definitely a ten in bed."
My whole body felt cold. So that's all this was.
A conquest? Why had I let myself think for a second it could be more?
In just a few days he'd be dropping me off in Pasadena and heading back to New York.
I shouldn't have been shocked by his words.
But why had he let me fall asleep in his arms then?
Why had he held my hand? Why did he tell me I was gorgeous?
The answer was clear, but I didn't want to accept it.
He did all that just to get in my pants.
Like every other guy I had ever met, he was only after one thing.
..sex. I wanted to punch his stupid beautiful face.
I stood there for a second, trying to calm down.
I closed the door hard to alert them that I was coming down.
Tyler may have thought we were friends, but I certainly wasn't his friend now.
As far as I was concerned, we were acquaintances that hated each other.
Because I really, really loathed him right now.
I made my way down the stairs. I didn't want to be compared to the girl he was in love with. I didn't want to be second. There were enough times in my life where I was second best. I wasn't doing that again.
"Hey, guys," I said as cheerily as I could muster. "Ready for dinner?"
Tyler stood up and smiled his perfect smile. It was annoying how handsome he was.
"Yup." said Josh. "You guys are going to love this place."
***
The restaurant was covered in Texas longhorns skulls, whiskey bottles, and barrels of who knew what.
We had passed a bunch of chain restaurants on the way out of the city, but I was happy to be in a place that screamed Texas.
The odds of me ever coming back to this state were slim to none.
And I wasn't going to let some lying ass-wipe ruin this adventure.
"I don't know many girls that drink whiskey," Josh said.
"I'm not most girls." I took a sip from my glass. It wasn't my drink of choice, but I was pretty used to drinking anything. We had gotten a crescent shaped booth and I was sitting between Josh and Tyler.
"I can tell." Josh smiled at me. "So what do you know about the stranger that you've been driving around with for the past few days?"
"Enough."
Tyler laughed. "What's that supposed to mean?"
I shrugged my shoulders and turned back to Josh. "Why? Do you have some incriminating stories you could tell me?"
Josh smiled. "Absolutely." He rubbed his hands together. "Where to begin? Well, there was that time that he got in a fist fight with a professor."
I glanced at Tyler. Who the hell gets into a fist fight with their professor? Lots of my lectures were so big that I never even spoke to the teacher, let alone got close enough to him to put my fist in his face. "Well that's dumb."
Josh laughed. "Yeah, it was a pretty stupid move."
Tyler clearly had anger problems or something. Plus he was a womanizer. And he just loved what he couldn't have. That's the only reason he had wanted to sleep with me. To prove that he could have me like he couldn't prove with Penny. Well, fuck him.
"It was warranted," Tyler said.
I completely ignored him. "Did you guys hang out a lot in college?"
"All the time. We were in the same frat."
In my mind, that literally explained everything.
Of course Tyler had been in a fraternity.
Most assholes were in fraternities. "I bet you guys threw amazing parties.
" I decided that I needed to completely shove it in Tyler's face.
Not only was I going to completely ignore him, I was also going to flirt with his friend.
Because Josh seemed a hell of a lot nicer than Tyler.
"Yeah, we did. Theme nights really were the best," Josh said with a laugh. "You should have seen some of the awesome themes we had."
"Like what?" I said. "I've been to a few frat parties and everyone always looked ridiculous."
Tyler laughed. "That about sums it up."
I ignored him and kept my eyes glued on Josh. He seemed to like the attention. He took another swig of his whiskey and leaned in a little closer to me.
"Well, the best one had to be our annual ABC party."
"Did you all wear a different letter or something?"
Josh laughed. "No. You've seriously never been to an ABC party?"
I shook my head.
"It's an Anything But Clothes party."
"So...it's just a bunch of naked dudes chillin' in the frat house? Sounds fun."
"What? No," Josh said. "First of all, there were always tons of girls at our parties. And second of all, we weren't naked. You just have to dress in anything but clothes. So like, aluminum foil, body paint, newspaper...that kind of thing."
"What did you guys wear?"
"Just plastic wrap," Tyler said. "We really wanted to show off our junk."
I laughed. Damn it, don't laugh with him! "Wait, seriously? That's disgusting."
Tyler shook his head. "Of course not. If we had done that, we probably wouldn't have had any girls show up."
"But one year Tyler did wear bubble wrap," Josh said. "And a few bubbles got popped...so..." he let his voice trail off.
I laughed. "Sounds wild."
"It was seriously the best. I'm sure you would have loved our parties." He smiled at me.
It finally seemed like Josh was fully flirting back. No more restraint whatsoever. I leaned forward and put my elbow on the table, effectively blocking Tyler out of our conversation. "I'm sure I would have. Did you have a girlfriend the whole time you were in school?"
He laughed. "No. I did date one girl pretty much my whole senior year. The one that Tyler was just sleeping with."
"Doesn't that break all sorts of bro-code? It definitely breaks girl-code."
"Nah, Tyler and I are cool."
"You don't want to get back at him? Even just a little?"
Tyler cleared his throat from behind me. "Hails, can I talk to you for a second?"