BROKEN & SCREWED (BS #1)

Chapter 17

17

Jesse was gone when I woke to the hotel phone ringing the next morning. Angie sounded bright and perky on the other end. Apparently my cell phone wasn’t doing the job, so she had asked around and found where the Golden Boy’s room was. I was supposed to be thankful she hadn’t come in person. I almost hung up on her. I wasn’t ready for her that morning. I wanted to curl back up in bed and never move. It smelled like Jesse. Everything did—the pillows, the bed sheets, even the towel he had left on the other bed.

But Angie was insistent, so an hour later, I met her in the lobby for breakfast. She looked refreshed in a blue dress with her hair in braids on top of her head. Ugh. She looked gorgeous. I touched the ends of my hair and knew my messy ponytail would never look sexy on me, not when I stood next to her.

“Hey, my only best friend now. What are you hankering for?”

“Jesse,” I grunted.

She froze for a second. The bright smile slipped a bit, but she rolled her eyes. “Okay. I got that, you stupid girl-who’s-going-to-be-destroyed-later-by-him, but I was talking about food.”

I opened my mouth.

“And not in the way of what you want to taste right now, but actual food that we can sit, order, digest, and take home in a doggy bag. That kind, you wanton woman, not anything that has to do with sex.”

I closed my mouth. I had another smartass comment on the tip of my tongue, but I sighed. “I’m sorry. I’m still pissed from last night, I think.”

“You think?” She arched an eyebrow high as the hostess led us to a table in the hotel’s restaurant. As we slid into our seats with the pool as our backdrop, Angie frowned when she opened her menu. “I’ve moved on to being angry.”

I opened mine as well. “But why are we so angry? She didn’t do anything to us last night.”

“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 b***h when she realized I had been the one on Cord’s phone. Then I called her a backstabbing b***h, 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 with wanting to scratch her eyeballs out.”

“Yeah, there’s that.” Angie grinned as she took a sip of her black coffee. I poured a creamer in mine as she asked, “So the game is tonight, at six. You’re still going with us?”

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 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. “Okay. 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.”

Our breakfast arrived and we both ate quickly and then 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, and 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 filled 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 a while this time. For some reason, I couldn’t turn my back as easily as I did before. Her recent betrayals hurt more than they normally did.

“Hey.” I sank onto the couch beside him and tapped his bags. “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?” 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 all about it this morning.”

“I’m sorry, Eric.” I reached up to pat his arm.

“There’s more,” he said on a bitter laugh.

“Oh.” My hand fell back to my lap.

“Yeah, and I guess this morning he told her to take a hike.”

“What?”

“Yep. 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 him in waves, but he was tired too. I saw the exhaustion in his depths. Then he continued, “None of that went over well with her. She came back to the room, screamed at me for an hour that I was a horrible boyfriend 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 s**t. She said Cord had been liberating in bed, that she do him anytime he called her.” He cursed under his breath and swung his head toward me. I jumped back at the bleak look in his eyes. “Is that what it’s like for you and Hunt? Are you with him because he treats you like crap? Do all girls go for that?”

I sucked in my breath and told myself that this wasn’t really about me and Jesse. I started to reach for his arm again, but he hissed as he yanked it away. “Don’t touch me, Alex. Don’t ever touch me again unless you’re going to follow through with it.”

“What?” My mouth fell open.

He jerked to his feet. “I mean it. Don’t hug me. Don’t pat me on the shoulder. Not unless you’re ready to follow through and screw me. Isn’t that what you do with Hunt? He touches you and you melt for him. It disgusts me. You disgust me.”

“Eric.”

“I mean it. I’m tired of it. I’m always the good guy. I always get crapped on. I’m done with it.” He started to turn away but then pulled something out of his pocket. He threw it at me.

As four pieces of paper fluttered in the air, I couldn’t move. This wasn’t an Eric that I had ever seen before.

He grabbed his bags and glared at me. “I’m going back home. Marissa took off this morning. She said she couldn’t stand being around me. I took the tickets out of her purse when she was in the bathroom so there you go, you can still watch your boy’s game. Shit.” He shook his head again. “I’m still being the nice guy. I wanted to be with you, but you never gave me the signs. And then Marissa was all over me and I thought, ‘why not? She wouldn’t hurt me,’ but the sad thing is that she did. I cared about her. I actually did. And then this trip happened. This was the trip from hell. I got to watch both girls that I cared about fall all over the assholes. That’s what he is, Alex. You know that, too. I know you know that. He’s going to break your heart. Why won’t you stop it? I don’t get that. Why do girls like you always go for guys like that? I bet he hasn’t even lied to you about it, either, like Cord did with Marissa. He told her upfront that he was going to screw other girls tonight, and I know she’ll still go for him if he ever calls her. You do that. You’re both so weak. You’re spineless.” He held a hand to his stomach. “You make me sick. I can’t even look at you.”

The tickets were lying on the ground at my feet, but I couldn’t bend to pick them up. I couldn’t even pick up my own mouth as it fell beside them. My feet were cemented in place as I watched him leave. This was Eric Nathan, the good guy who was never going to hurt me. It was then, as I heard everything he flung at me, that I realized I could’ve been happy with him. He wouldn’t have hurt me as I knew Jesse would. He would’ve been good to me, treated me right. And maybe, even maybe, he might’ve helped me heal from the pain that I had left at home.

Shit.

He walked away from me, but he was right. Everything he said was right. And even as he left through the doors, I knew I’d still go to Jesse that night. But this time was different. This was the last time. I would end it after tonight. I had to, otherwise everyone would be right. I drew in a shuddering breath. I should’ve been crippled by what Eric had said to me, but I wasn’t. Strength started to fill me. I couldn’t explain it. I had no idea why I wasn’t crying or why I wasn’t filled with shame because he’d been right about me. Maybe it was because I knew I had one more night, or maybe I was lying to myself. Either way, as I finally bent and picked up the tickets, I knew what I had to do.