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“Uh,” she choked out, shocked. “Are you kidding me? You don’t even know what she said to me last night.”
“What’d she say?”
“Well, she called me a bitch when she realized I had been the one on Cord’s phone. Then I called her a backstabbing bitch, both to her boyfriends and to her friends. I called her a bunch of other names too, not appropriate for here.”
When the waitress approached, we both ordered coffee. As she left, I glowered over my menu. They all looked the same: skinny, gorgeous, blonde hair, with very full lips. I growled as I remembered Sabrina from the night before, and the club’s hostess as well. Both could trip on a box of doughnuts and get fat, for all I cared.
“Okay.” Angie snapped my menu out of my hands and snapped her fingers in front of me. “Where’d you go? I was here ranting about our lost friend, but you went somewhere else. I know you, Alex, and I know you don’t have it in you to be that angry at Marissa.”
Oh, right. Marissa.
I shrugged. I was beyond caring now. “I don’t know. I was pretty upset with her last night too. She doesn’t treat Eric right at all.”
“Hmmm mmm.”
“What?”
She gave me a knowing grin. “And that has nothing to do with you and Jesse, right? You’re not equating him and Marissa together? She cheats on Eric. He’ll cheat on you. You see where I’m going?”
“No.” We weren’t in an exclusive relationship. He could do whatever he wanted. So could I.
“Oh. Okay, well, you’re mad that she’ll cheat on Eric?”
“If she hasn’t already.” I leaned forward. “Her and Cord were giving each other the bedroom look last night.”
“Really?”
“You didn’t catch it?”
“No.” She was surprised, but the waitress returned with our drinks. After the coffee was set down, we both ordered toast and fruit. The waitress seemed disappointed when she left. “I’m surprised that I didn’t catch that.”
“You were distracted by wanting to scratch her eyeballs out.”
“Yeah, there’s that.” Angie grinned as she took her coffee black. I poured a creamer in mine as she asked, “So the game is tonight, at six. You’re still going with us?”
I shook my head.
“What? Why?”
I shrugged. I didn’t want to open a conversation about how my parents would be there and there’d be a memorial dedicated to Ethan. I couldn’t handle that conversation right then and there. “You think Marissa is still going?”
She rolled her eyes. “I suppose. She’s the one with the tickets. Crap. I didn’t think about that until now.”
I laughed. “Wouldn’t that suck? You confront her about ditching us and she gets you back by giving your tickets away to someone else?”
She slumped back in her chair. “Man, that sucks, but I’d respect her a bit more if she did that. It’s something I would do.”
I laughed harder.
Angie grinned at me. “What the hell am I going to do? You can’t ask Jesse for tickets?”
I shook my head. No way was I going to risk that the seats he’d give us would be next to my parents. He’d do that without thinking, although his comment last night had surprised me. It’d been the first real one he had made that told me he was aware of what my parents were doing, or that I might be hurting because of them.
I swallowed that painful thought away.
She’d been watching me as I pondered all of that. Her eyes were too knowing as she sat back. “Oookay. We’re not going down that road, apparently.” Then she smirked. “Maybe we could call that captain on their team? He seemed like a nice guy, what’s his name, Ryan or—”
“Reed,” I supplied. “And that’d be worse. It wouldn’t be right if we asked him for tickets; besides, I think it might be too late.”
“Yeah, you’re right.”
Disappointment filled both of us when our bill came and we paid at the table. As we walked out, I asked, “So what’s on the agenda for you and Justin today?”
Her eyes sparkled in humor. “Can I make a comment like you did? Instead of Jesse, can I say Justin? Would you be okay if I disappeared for the day with my man? We had a crazy dirty night last night. I was worked up. I got him worked up.” She pretended to shiver from excitement. “He scratched me right and I scratched him back.”
“Okay,” I laughed and hit her arm. “Shut up. I got it. I won’t bring up Jesse in that way anymore.”
She tipped her head back as a carefree laugh came out of her, but it ended on a sour note. We stopped in our tracks when we saw Eric in the lobby. He was on a couch in a far corner with two of his bags packed at his feet. His head hung low as he was hunched over his knees.
She sighed, “That doesn’t look good.”
I touched her arm. “Let me, okay?”
“Have at it. Hopefully she didn’t railroad him like she does all her guys.”
“What?” I mocked her. “What about the ones who leave her in the dust?”
Angie grinned and waved at the same time. “Listen to us; we’ve turned into the mean girls. Good luck over there.”
As she went back to her room and I headed to Eric, regret filling me for a moment. I was being mean to Marissa. I had flinched as I heard the bitterness in my tone as well, but I also knew that everything would work out with her. It always did, even though it might take awhile this time. For some reason, I couldn’t turn my back as easily as I did before. For some reason, her betrayals hurt more than they normally did.
“Hey.” I sank onto the couch beside him and tapped the bags beside him. “What’s up with those?”
Eric’s head snapped up. His eyes widened, but then a depleted look filled them. His shoulders sagged forward. “I had a great lie to tell you, in case I saw any of you guys, but screw it. She’s not worth it.”
A foreboding sense filled me. I asked quietly, “What’d she do?”
“Besides spending the night in Cord Tatum’s room last night?” He shook his head. His mouth was strained at the corners. “She screwed him all night long, and they were loud enough that his roommate had to bunk somewhere else. She loved telling me that this morning.”
“I’m sorry, Eric.” I reached up to pat his arm.
A harsh laugh ripped from him. “There’s more.”
“Oh.” My hand fell back to my lap.
“Yeah, and I guess this morning he told her to take a hike.”
“What?”
“Yep. He told her that she should go back to her boyfriend because he’d be out with the guys tonight. I guess they party hard after their games, and he said he’d be getting other ass tonight. He told her not to wait for him and that she should patch things up with her boyfriend. I guess he thinks I’m a nice guy.”
The anger rolled off of him in waves, but he was tired too. I saw the exhaustion in his depths. Then he continued, “None of that went over with her. She came back to the room, screamed at me for an hour that I was a horrible boyf
riend because I still had feelings for you and she knew it.”
He closed his eyes and shook his head. His hands formed into fists. Then he bit out, “She blamed me for everything. She said I wasn’t good enough for her in bed, that I was too nice to her. She liked having guys treat her like shit. She said Cord had been liberating in bed, that’d she do him anytime he called her.” He
