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But one impulse was overriding it all. I pushed her aside, and got in my car. As I pulled out of the parking spot, Tamara was still standing there, her mouth moving. I thought she was probably shouting something at me, but I couldn’t hear anything over the blood in my ears. It was like when I was really engrossed in the mark I was going to take next, to the point where no sight or sound existed except that which brought me closer to that goal. The ultimate goal.
I didn’t start thinking anything that wasn’t animal again until I was pulling into our driveway at home. That was when it hit me that I’d probably just made everything much more difficult for myself.
Well what was I going to do about it? Go for a run first, a really long fucking run, and then when I got back to the house it would still be way too fucking early for me to be home from school, but Mum could go fuck herself if she cared.
Then, I was going to join Para in the only damn way either of us seemed to be able to strike back against this fucking world that just wanted to ruin us.
“Calm the fuck down,” Para ordered, about two hours later. “You’re going to ruin our whole setup.”
The four of us had been laying a trap for our favourite rival group for the past thirty minutes, so I understood her strain. I was so wired it was hard to take it in the right spirit, though.
“Could you give me a fucking break, Para? I’ve had a day.”
“Hey,” Danger spoke up, “we don’t harass the woman in our team, do we?”
“Para,” said Potatoes, “look, he doesn’t deserve it, but could you please go one-on-one with him and talk him down from whatever teenage drama has ruined today for him? You always seem to have the magic touch.”
“We’ll keep doing all the boring work here and let you know when to come back,” Danger added.
“I just want to have one thing work out well today,” said Para. “Come on, Baddy.”
“Come on,” I whined, embarrassed that I was whining but unable to stop. “I don’t need a fucking intervention, I—”
“Yes, you do,” said Danger and Potatoes.
So thirty seconds later, it was just me and Para in one another’s ears.
“Okay, so dude, what happened? You’re usually the one getting me not to totally melt after a… a school day.”
I was so low I ended up being a little more honest with Para than usual. “I guess I told you at some point I have really, really bad taste when it comes to women… well, today I really fucked up. I thought this girl was really sweet, but she turned out to be a menace.”
“I’m surprised you’re willing to let a girl get you like this,” Para admit
ted. “Like… don’t take this the wrong way, but you never hold back with me, and I wouldn’t expect you to hold back with anyone else either.”
It wasn’t at all true that I didn’t hold back with her, and maybe she knew that too, but I liked that tough image of myself right now. “Are you saying I need to go back in there and stop being a whining pussy?”
“I’m just saying you would never let me get away with getting to you.” I didn’t know what Para looked like really, she’d never shared pictures and her avatar was just some fanart she’d found somewhere and liked, but I could almost see her smirk now. Para was full of sass when she was in a good mood, which was usually whenever she could get her dad to give her a break.
I swear we were soulmates. Not in a sex way, I didn’t know how to think like that about a girl I’d never met, but it always seemed like one of us was there to pick the other up. We made a good team even outside of the game. Maybe a necessary team.
I knew better than to completely discount anything she said.
“I think you’re fucking right. I’m not going to let anyone just walk over me.” Not any more.
I would be ready for Tamara the next day. No matter what she thought she was going to pull over me. If she wanted to be crafty and to use things she couldn’t have learned fairly against me, I was going to use every bitch trick in the book to keep myself safe.
And I’d learned from a master bitch.
Chapter Fourteen: Tamara
I didn’t really remember the rest of my day at school. The highlights of that fight with Steven kept going around and around in my head.
He’d just assumed I’d done something like that before? Why? I was pretty sure he knew about as much about Callie’s prior sexual history as I did now; it wasn’t like it was hard to draw a line between those dots.
Was it something about me then? Did I just give off an impression of being really—
I tried not to let myself go down the road of questioning implications that might not even be there. That was probably exactly what he wanted me to do, exactly what would keep me so messed-up I would be at his mercy.
