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“He, uh… Let’s just say we had different views of how the night should have gone.” I peer around Mike’s solid form to his still-running car, only to see Chelsie glaring at me from the front passenger window.
Mike sighs and wraps an arm around my shoulders to steer me toward the vehicle. “All right. I’m just glad I found you. Let’s get you warmed up. Then we can talk.”
The heat is blessedly cranked on high in the little sedan. My skin burns with the thawing process. As we travel through the labyrinth of back roads to reach civilization once again, my eyelids droop, and my body melts into the worn upholstery of the car. The unmistakable scent cocktail of latex and sex that hangs heavily in the interior isn’t enough to keep my drowsiness at bay. Only enough to make me feel even guiltier about ruining someone else’s night. Chelsie hasn’t spoken a word to me since I climbed in.
“Well?” Mike prompts from his seat. “You going to tell me what happened, or am I going to have to drag it out of you?”
“Can we talk about it later, please? I just wanna go home and forget this night ever happened.”
Chelsie shoots me a look of irritation that solidifies my game plan to maintain radio silence in the car. Her lips are kiss-swollen, her usually neat, dishwater-blond hair a mess around her heart-shaped face. If the aroma in the air wasn’t enough clue, her freshly fucked look definitely lets me know I interrupted their evening in more ways than one.
Mike is either oblivious to the tension radiating from his girlfriend, or he’s really not willing to wait to find out why I summoned his ass out here in the middle of sex. “We can do this either the easy way or the hard way. I know damn well you didn’t get out of his truck in the middle of nowhere over a simple disagreement.”
“If she doesn’t want to talk about it, then don’t force her, Mike. Jesus,” Chelsie grumbles.
For once, she’s taking my side. If only it wasn’t because she really doesn’t care to hear my pathetic little sob story. Chelsie has hated me since she and Mike got together.
At first, she used me for intel since we’re both in band, and everyone at school knows how tight Mike and I are. She acted like the ultimate ass kisser all during freshman year when I spoon fed her anything and everything she wanted to know about her crush. As soon as Mike took the bait? She grew to hate me because Mike wouldn’t let their new relationship get in the way of our bond.
Her resentment toward me escalates every year. She’s apparently of the mindset that a guy shouldn’t have any friends if he has a girlfriend. I’m pretty sure she dislikes his best friends, Rob and Alex, nearly as much as me. The only reason she gives them some small leeway is because neither of them possesses a vagina. It’s like she expects Mike to cheat on her with me or something, which is just ridiculous. Being involved in a romantic relationship with Mike is only a stone’s throw away from incest.
I gag in the back seat at the thought.
Mike’s gruff voice filters through my disgust. “Either you tell me what happened or the second I drop you girls off, I’m calling Rob and Alex, and we’re gonna go find Hinton and beat it out of him. So, what’s it gonna be?”
I roll my eyes. Mike may be a lot of things, but physically violent isn’t one of them. He’s a lover not a fighter. The man lives and breathes football because it’s the only place he feels that’s appropriate to release aggression.
“I promise it was no big deal. Eddie’s just a slimy asshole. There’s no need to call anyone and definitely no need to beat anyone’s ass.”
“You should listen to Eva. I refuse to be the girlfriend of a thug,” Chelsie pipes up. “If you so much as lay a finger on Eddie, we’re through. Besides, Eva’s a big girl. She doesn’t need you constantly defending her. Let her clean up her own messes.”
My hackles rise with each snide word that escapes her putrid, jealous mouth. It’s one thing to dislike me, but whatever happened to chicks before dicks? What if something worse had happened to me tonight? Lots of girls in my stupid, stupid position either wouldn’t be able to defend themselves or wouldn’t know how to say no to something they didn’t want. Chelsie’s behavior is beyond rude. It’s downright heartless and purposefully obtuse. How utterly fucking ridiculous is it this pretty girl who has one of the best guys I’ve ever known eating out of her hand should feel threatened by geeky, undesirable me to the point of not caring if I might have been raped tonight?
And that’s the crux of the whole matter, isn’t it? I could never hope to land a guy like Mike for myself. Up until freshman year, I never even wanted to. I was raised by a single mother to be an independent, self-sufficient young woman. Boys were only trouble, as my father had so graciously taught me. After my whole family splintered apart when my father left, my mom also learned the hard way that you can’t count on anyone but yourself—a lesson she’s hammered into my and my sister’s heads over and over again. When will I ever learn?
“Do you two even hear yourselves right now? Evie, I know there is no way you left that truck without good reason. And, Chels, put yourself in her shoes. What could I possibly do to you to make you think stranding yourself on a deserted road in the middle of winter was your only option?”
When neither of us offers any response, Mike fishes his cell from the cup holder.
“That’s it. I’m calling Rob.”
The brain is a mysterious organ. It has the uncanny ability to see things exactly as they are or to play horrible, horrible tricks on us. It can lock up and cease to function due to disease or injury, or it can spur us to respond by bypassing learned neural circuitry and tapping into the survival-based reflex system.
My brain goes offline and my self-preservation kicks in as I lunge forward to grab the phone out of Mike’s hand before he can react.
The faint sound of Rob’s voice filters into the otherwise silent cabin of the car. “Hello? Mike, you there? I’m out with Sabrina right now—”
I end the call with a jab to the screen that would shatter it if not for the protective cover.
The thought of Rob having a nice date and maybe getting some from a very willing female while I froze my ass off in the cold for twenty minutes turns my embarrassment over the night’s events to violent anger. If it wasn’t for his stupid, perfect ass, I wouldn’t ever have been in this situation. Obviously, I’ve been a fool all this time to think he could possibly reciprocate the feelings I have for him. Tonight was a mistake I allowed, even created. But I’ll be damned if I don’t learn my lessons when life hands me shit.
Never. Again.
“Mike, thank you for picking me up. And I love you—”
Chelsie scoffs aloud, but I ignore her and continue on.
“But we are never speaking of tonight. Ever. I swear to you nothing happened. Listen to your girlfriend, and let it go.”
“Evie…” Mike’s tone is soft with a hint of worry.
“No. I’m fine, thanks to you. And I’ll stay that way, thanks to me.”
