Rich boy? That's the best insult he has? I really wish there were no guns around.
"Chill out, Bud," Jared, the only sane one of the four says. "Shoot at his feet again and I'm telling Raya."
Bud scowls at the guy, and then he cuts his eyes at me, silently threatening me.
"You can't tell Raya you guys were here," Josh says as he shoots and shatters a skeet, making orange clay rain from the sky. I really wish he didn’t have such a good aim. "She'll have my balls in a jar," he adds, his attention on the new clay flying in the air.
He shoots it down as well, making it look easy.
Jared chuckles while making his way over to me. He's not the same ghastly size as the others. I suppose he doesn't eat nails with his cereal in the mornings.
"Don't mind them. Josh isn't used to Raya dating. And Bud's had a thing for her for years. He's just jealous."
The other one, Mark, seems to be content just shooting, even though he makes sure to mention something about my attire every chance he gets. I didn't realize you needed camouflage for skeet shooting. I wonder if anyone has ever told them the skeets can't tell if they're camouflaged or not.
"Raya and I aren't dating," I murmur, taking a slow sip of beer and wishing it was whiskey.
He smiles to himself, not really saying anything, but I can tell I must be pretty transparent.
"No one would come to shoot with Josh unless they've got it bad for Raya," he finally says.
I suppose that's why he can see through me. Had I known my day would go this way, I might have kidnapped Raya and taken her home before her psychotic brother accidentally killed me.
I checked for shovels earlier. Found none. That gives me little reprieve, though.
I decide not to say anything more on the matter. I'm not talking about how I feel about Raya with anyone but Raya.
"I think this is a bit overkill, wouldn't you say?" I ask, motioning to the dramatic setup Josh went through to scare me shitless. "He loads his gun with the barrel pointed at me every time."
Jared snickers, and I notice Josh smirk as he shoots down another skeet, proving he's listening in.
"Josh is into theatrics, and he's crazy protective over Raya. She's the type to take whatever you say and swallow it, no matter how bad it hurts. She won't stick around for you to run over her, but she doesn't fight for herself, either. Josh takes it upon himself to weed out the ones who don't really care about her before they can hurt her."
I now understand why Raya has had only one boyfriend.
"How'd he miss Jeremy?" I drawl, sipping on the beer again.
Probably the wrong thing to say. Everyone gets quiet, and Josh's jaw tenses as he slowly lowers the gun from the air. Jared stays beside me, his eyes trained on Josh like he might do something stupid.
"Jeremy is the reason I started checking them out," Josh says, working hard to hold back his rage.
Subject change is necessary. I turn back to the only one who doesn't look ready to rip me apart and pretend as though no one else is around.
"If Raya doesn't fight back, then why is Josh so scared of her?"
Just like that, the tension breaks, and everyone starts laughing.
"It's not so much Raya, as it is her fa—"
"Don't," Josh warns, interrupting him and silencing him with a glare that seems to speak to Jared.
Jared clears his throat and loses his smile for a minute. What was he going to say?
"Her what?" I prompt, too intrigued to let it go.
"Just don't piss her off," Mark, the Camouflage Nazi, interjects through laughter. "The last time Josh did, pictures of him passed out drunk and sucking his thumb made it around base. Found them as a screensaver for every computer there."
Josh glares at him, but the three men cackle like he doesn't matter. How would she get pictures of him on every computer at their base?