Chapter 6 #2
If it were possible for steam to come out of someone’s ears, a massive plume would have been blowing out of Cassie’s right about then.
I’d once seen her take a pitcher of iced tea and dump it over his head because he hadn’t told her thank you for heating up his Hot Pocket.
Honestly, I found their toxic merry-go-round of a relationship fully entertaining.
I pulled the joint from behind my ear and held it up. “Wanna smoke?”
He didn’t answer, just took the weed from me and went to the back door. I followed. The second the door slammed shut behind us, something—most likely a plate—shattered against it.
“Seriously, dude,” I said, descending the rickety steps. “You’re the one who needs to worry about being murdered.” Grass crunched under my feet. “Not me.”
“ Megan’s crazy. Cassie just has a temper.”
And tempers were what got people killed…
I sank into one of the lawn chairs I had taken from Dad’s trailer just as I heard the front door slam. “You really think keeping them here for a month is a good idea?”
“It’s not a good idea. It’s a great idea.
” The lighter flicked, and the pungent scent of weed drifted in front of my face.
“Look, I know it’s petty. Slightly misogynistic…
” An engine revved on the street—probably Cassie—and Rogue looked as happy as a pig in shit.
“But is it worth it?” His grin widened when the squeal of tires sounded. “Yes.”
Of course it was worth it to him. He lived to get Cassie all riled up.
“And we have free labor,” he said, the nylon of the other chair creaking when he took a seat beside me. “I mean, come on. Do you have any idea how much a maid costs?”
“Do I look like the kind of guy who would?”
“They’re like forty bucks an hour. Which, at say, four hours a day, seven days a week over the course of a month, adds up to about four thousand eight hundred bucks. Per girl.” He lifted the joint to his lips.
Who the fuck had that kind of money? I took in Rogue’s Prada shirt and Balenciaga shoes. Assholes like him.
“We’re making out like bandits.”
Regardless of how much a housekeeper would cost or how much he enjoyed this shitshow, I still had a problem. “Look,” I wiped a smudge of ash from the plastic arm of the chair. God, I hated that I was about to admit this. “I have a bit of a situation…”
Lifting a brow, he passed over the joint. “Nothing a dose of antibiotics can’t fix.”
“I don’t have an STD, you idiot.”
“And you call yourself a football player…”
I stared at the smoldering tip of the joint. I didn’t want to admit to him that Jade being here was throwing me for a loop. I should have been able to ignore her the same way she’d ignored me for almost two years, but a few hours into her sentence, I couldn’t even focus on a damn video game.
“Oh, shit, bro. Noo …” I could feel him staring at me. “You still have a thing for Stabby McStabberson?”
“It’s not that.” Then what was it? “Her being here is—it’s fucking with my head.” A stream of smoke drifted into the daylight.
“It’s been three hours.”
“Exactly.”
“Well, it’s just a month. Don’t get all bent out of shape over some girl you haven’t dated for years.”
I wasn’t bent out of shape. I just didn’t want her there. At least that was what I’d convinced myself. And like he had any room to talk. “You have a mental breakdown every time you and Cassie break up.”
“I do not.”
I deadpanned him.
“Whatever, man. That girl could make a celibate monk crazy.” He stood up. “Just calm your dick. Four weeks will fly by.”
“Where are you going?”
“To take a shit.”
The back door banged shut, and Dog scampered across the yard.
I took another drag from the joint, then snuffed it out on the electrical tape wound around the arm of the lawn chair, right above my dad’s faded initials written in semi-permanent marker.
He and my mom used to take those same chairs to the recreation field.
They’d set them up by the edge of the turf, drinking beers while they watched me play Pee Wee football.
After mom died, he’d moved to sitting on the bleachers.
Dad would never have admitted it, but I’m pretty sure the thought of having only one of those chairs on the field killed him as much as it did me.
Eventually, he bungee-corded them to the roof of our trailer.
I’d sometimes hear him up there, talking to that empty chair like she could hear him.
It took me a good two years before I started going up there, too. I both loved and hated it.
I stayed outside for a good twenty minutes, trying to push the thoughts of Dad and Jade out of my head. Just when I was about to go back inside, someone pulled up to the back gate. Dog got up from where he’d been sunbathing, belly up, and let out a low grumble.
Cassie came through the gate and cut across the yard, Wal-E-Mart bags in hand. The only acknowledgement she gave me was a middle finger on her way up the steps.
“And that’s what we call insufferable,” I mumbled to Dog.
As soon as the back door slammed shut, unintelligible shouting started. This was day one. Surely to God, Rogue would get fed up before they had served their time.
I settled back in the chair, staying right the hell there. Then, blissful silence.
Dog hopped onto the chair beside me, looking back at the house when the door opened again. What now? With any luck, that would be Cassie, bags packed and Jade in tow.
Dog’s curled tail slowly wagged before my algebra notebook dropped to my lap. Then the stupid bickering inside started again.
“I don’t know what’s more unbelievable,” Jade said, staring back at the house. “The fact that he thinks he’ll last a month or the fact that she thought taking those pills would be the pièce de résistance to her so-called relationship with that dickhead.”
I could believe Cassie had taken those pills to piss off Rogue, but Jade…
She was the same girl who, three years ago, nearly had a breakdown in the middle of Wal-E-Mart because Hendrix had stolen a ten-dollar yard flamingo.
The only “criminal” thing she’d done in her life was set fire to the prick-ass rich kid’s high school football field.
Which they’d deserved every bit of, considering one of them had drugged her.
Was she that mad over shit-for-brain’s car that she’d taken the drugs to get me back?
The thought pissed me off, but I had to know…
“Cassie did it to annoy Rogue.” I took a puff. “Why’d you do it?”
She glared at me. “Certainly not to piss you off, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
Well, she sure as hell seemed defensive about it. I felt my gaze narrow through the wisps of smoke. Hers narrowed right back.
“Okay, so, again. Why did you do it, Jade?”
“Why do people like us ever steal anything, Wolf? Or maybe you’ve forgotten…” She waved a hand toward the house. “Living in your nice house, with your rich friend. A scholarship… Your drug business.”
Nice house? Sure, the place was better than any place I’d lived in, but it was still a shithole. Peeling wallpaper, leaning floors. She just assumed I no longer had financial problems because of what? Rogue? He didn’t pay my way. I earned it.
“Give me a fucking break.”
“Well, I could do with a break, but here I am playing maid to a bunch of slobs.” She threw her hands out to the sides, studying me. “Why did you even agree to this, Wolf? I know damn well that you don’t want me in your life any more than I want to be here.”
I hated how those words stung.
“You could have just let us pay you back.”
What did she think we were? The Bank of Hard Knocks? “That’s not how this crap works, Jade.” I dropped the notebook to the ground. “You steal from most drug dealers and they’ll put a bullet in your head. Woman or not.”
“Rogue isn’t Al Capone. That—” she pointed toward the house—“is Rogue’s petty way to get one up on Cassie.”
“If you didn’t want to deal with the petty bullshit, you should have been smarter and either not gotten involved or not gotten caught.”
Jade evidently didn’t appreciate that comment because her brow furrowed, and a heavy hand full of attitude landed on her hip.
“Don’t patronize me! It’s pure luck that you aren’t in jail right now .
Or maybe you never got caught because no one was willing to rat you out.
” Now both hands were on her fuckable hips.
“And here, you always preached about honor among thieves. The hypocrisy.”
That word got under my skin like a damned splinter, working its way deeper. That woman had no right to call me a hypocrite.
“Like you’re not the definition of a hypocrite.” Me threatening to rat her out was simple business. The way she’d dropped me? Oh, that was personal, and it had fucking broken me. All her having to be a “live-in servant” for a few weeks would hurt was her ego.
Her nostrils flared. “Says the guy who hated silver-spooned assholes but now sells out the friends he grew up with for one.”
“Friends?” I laughed.
She’d avoided me, point-blank just admitted she didn’t want to be in my life, abandoned me when I’d needed her the most, and she thought we were friends? “A friend would definitely think it’s okay to skip out on their friend’s dad’s funeral. Some fucking friend you are.”
Her expression blanked before she redirected her attention to Dog.
Her not showing up for Dad’s funeral had been a hollow-point bullet straight to my heart.
Sure, she’d cut me out by the time Dad passed, but I had loved that girl more than anything else in the world.
She’d been my best friend, my rock. The only damn person I’d needed then.
I was so sure she’d show up that I’d looked for her.
But she didn’t even have the decency to send me a message.
I’d never felt so disposable in my life.
“You’re right. We aren’t friends.” She tore at her thumb, refusing to look at me. “And it wasn’t my place to go to the funeral.”
I felt betrayed all over again. “What the fuck does that mean?”
Her jaw tensed. When she looked at me, there was a trace of hurt in her eyes. “It means, you didn’t need me, Wolf. You had Nora.”
Before I could offer a rebuttal, she turned and walked back to the house.
“What the fuck?” I mumbled.
Jade had dropped me months before I’d started dating Nora—to get over her. To convince myself that I wasn’t as worthless as Jade had made me feel. I never would have thought that Jade gave a shit about who I dated after her, but that comment…
I glanced at Dog, belly up on the lawn chair, then looked at the back door. “Seriously, what the fuck?”
Shaking my head, I brought the joint to my lips and took a hefty puff.
“I don’t need this shit,” I said before dropping my head back against the nylon. I really didn’t.