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“Why wouldn’t he?”
I shrugged my shoulders. “Sometimes, he finds someone else to go home with. It’s no big deal.” Tripp stopped in his tracks and stared at me like I’d lost my mind. “What’s wrong?”
“Mack would really leave you here by yourself?”
“I’m a big girl, Tripp. Same age as you and everything,” I reminded him.
“Yeah, but…”
“If you say it’s different because I’m a girl, I might just leave you to find your own ride home.”
“Okay, okay!” He playfully threw his hands into the air in the universal sign for ‘surrender’. “You have a really good head on your shoulders. I’m sure you’ll be fine, but if it’s all the same to you, I still plan to keep my eye on you tonight. Even big, bad men can get jumped when they’re caught unaware.”
I returned that sentiment with a genuine smile. “In that case, I’ll have to keep my eye on you too. For safety.”
We both chuckled as he moved closer to my side until we ended up standing near the bonfire with our fingers nearly touching while my shoulder brushed up against his arm.
“Can’t remember the last time I came to a civilian party,” Tripp said as we both stared into the flames.
“Civilian party?” I questioned in good humor. “Listen to you, biker snob.” He laughed with me, and it felt good to have him there.
Normally, I’d be mostly on my own, avoiding grabby hands, unless Carrie was able to get away from her mom and stepfather. She was an eighteen-year-old, high school graduate, but because she still lived in their house, she was bound by their rules. Half the time, I thought Hank and Isabel grounded her for no reason at all to piss her off and make her move out. Carrie was stubborn though. She was busy saving as much money as she could so that when she did move out, it would be for good.
“Do you usually come here with friends?” Tripp asked. I was about to tell him about my best friend and how she was grounded again and couldn’t come tonight, when a long-legged cheerleader type ran up and practically tackled Tripp.
“Oh my God! Tripppp-” She shrieked annoyingly while pawing all over him as if she was unable to stand up on her own and needed to cop a full-body feel to keep from falling. To my amusement, he refused to touch her and took a healthy step back away from her pretend, drunken attack. We both watched as she stumbled forward, having not expected him to move, and nearly faceplanted on the ground before she managed to catch herself.
“Too much Boone’s Farm,” she giggled.
I rolled my eyes at anyone drinking “too much” Boone’s Farm. You’d be more apt to puke from all the sugar before you got wasted drunk on it.
“Where’s your cunty girlfriend? Please, tell me you’ve finally seen the light and ditched the bitch!” While I agreed with her, she had a lot of nerve to phrase it that way.
“Who the fuck are you?” Tripp asked with obvious frustration building as his fists clenched and nostrils flared. The girl, whoever she was, didn’t even realize he was about to lose it on her.
“Um…” The girl hummed, less sure of herself as she clued into the fact that she made a spectacle out of herself, and he didn’t even know who the hell she was. “I’m Joelee. Greg Smithers and I dated all last year.”
I had no clue who Greg Smithers was because I didn’t go to their high school. I got my adult high school diploma from the local community college two years before, so that I could get a job and work to pay the bills.
“Really?” Tripp asked as he cocked his head to the side as if trying to recall something. “Could have sworn Greg was hooking up with a bunch of different girls last year,” he finally said in a way that sounded like he might have been mistaken, but I didn’t miss the calculating gleam in his eyes.
The girl nodded and looked like she was about to cry. “He was cheating on me,” she admitted, “that’s why we broke up.”
“Well, guess you better go find your revenge fuck somewhere else because it’s not going to happen here with me.”
Joelee gasped and stood there absolutely flabbergasted for a full minute before she managed to make her feet work, so she could walk away. Walk was probably a generous term for her. She could have gone out for the Olympics in their race-walking event. How in the hell did the Olympics have an event for who could walk the fastest, anyway? Wasn’t that supposed to be what running was all about?
Tripp groaned in frustration and my attention flew back to him, forcing me to leave my Olympic sports ponderings for another day. The least I could do was help a friend out when he was feeling down about himself or his girlfriend problems.
“Even people I barely know seem to have an opinion on me and June.”
“Everyone has opinions, that doesn’t mean you have to listen.” I inwardly cringed. My heart wanted to lock my brain and stupid mouth in a cage and take over. Why-oh-why did I continue to play devil’s advocate for his girlfriend? I should be one of those awful women who becomes a homewrecker, but with a purpose!
“They’re all the same though. Everyone’s opinions about June are exactly the same, and that’s the hard part to swallow. No one understands why we’re still together.”
I stayed silent that time, not wanting to get on his bad side by agreeing with everyone else. Inwardly, I hoped he didn’t ask me outright for my opinion. I’d kind of given it to him earlier, but that had just been generic stuff that was hovering at the surface, things I related to from my past. My mom was never happy with my father, so he ended up staying gone a lot to be out of her way. They made one another miserable. I didn’t want that fate for Tripp, or anyone I liked, really.
“You said the same shit earlier,” he mentioned after kicking at some loose rocks on the ground. He glanced up at me while his head was still tipped down. It made his dirty blond hair hang over one eye, so it was partially hidden from view. I studied his hair for a minute while I let that simmer. It was darker near the roots, and part of me wondered what he would look like if he shaved it all down to stubble. For some reason, I thought it would give him an edgier look. The longer bangs made him look like a kid trying to play badass biker, in a way.
