“Stop,” Coop said, his quiet voice slicing between them as both looked at Coop. Our peacemaker. Frankie called him zen, and I used to tease him he was Valium. He had a way of going with the flow and sanding down the rough edges. It was a mistake to think his laid-back demeanor meant he didn’t care or didn’t lose his temper.
Cause he sure as hell did, especially where it concerned Frankie. Jake might be overly protective, and Bubba the golden child and solid backup. I had my own plays, but Coop? No one ever saw him coming.
“If you want to whip those dicks out, I’ll go get the tape measure. Otherwise, knock it off.” The mild tone didn’t match the cool look in his eyes. “But we’ve all had a shit day, some more that others.” He flicked a look at Jake before he lifted his soda. “So keep it civil and rememberwhywe’re here.”
Bubba sighed. “I told her, okay? I told her about the points.”
“She told us,” I said with a shrug I definitely didn’t feel. “What I want to know iswhyyou told her. What the hell did you think that would accomplish? It’s not like you were the innocent choirboy we dragged into the game, Bubba. You were right there with us. Every. Step. Of. The. Way.” The last five words came out with a punch of breath as I wrestled with my own temper.
Suddenly, I wanted to punch him in his perfect teeth. Bubba had the good family. The perfect school record. The jock status. And he’d asked her to Homecoming while the rest of us scrambled around with our dicks in our hands. Then he tells her something that couldn’t do anything other thanhurther.
Maybe I should have cracked open the liquor cabinet. Jeremy wasn’t a fan of when I got into it. The beer, he could overlook. The occasional bottle of wine, he didn’t mind. But the hard liquor? Not on his watch. Not usually.
“No, I brought Sharon into the game.”
“She wasn’t the only one you brought, either. If you want, I can get the playbook with the specifics.” I still had the damn thing. The little side bets we’d placed. The scores we’d kept. It started as a joke, a half-assed thing while I was in the hospital right at the top of summer. The emergency appy had fucking sucked.
The idea though? It had been funny.
Then it had been fun. A little dirty. A little challenging.
Worth the laughs to fill the hours because there was a Frankie-shaped hole in our lives.
We’d tagged different girls with different equations for scoring points. That last party…
I shook my head. Yeah, that last party had been a race to the finish line in more ways than one, and I’d half-forgotten it by the next morning and shoved it all the way out of my mind the minute Frankie had arrived in the cafeteria.
Everything clicked, back where it belonged, and I didn’t need the game. Didn’t care about it. Yesterday’s news.
Only it wasn’t…
Not anymore.
“No, Arch, I know who I brought in. I can list every BJ I got and every girl I got out of her clothes before you did, too.” Or Jake. Or Coop.
That was the point.
Last man got the fewest points.
“Why did you tell her?” Jake rasped. “You told me what your dad said, about how she seemed abused…”
Fuck her mom. That opened a whole other avenue for my temper. Fuck her. Fuck Edward.
For that matter, fuck Muriel, too.
Selfish assholes. Every. Single. One.
“…so why tell her that? She’s already getting shit from the Bitch Pack. Her mother is…a fucking piece of work, and no offense, Arch, but your dad can go suck a dick.”
“Agreed,” I said, and held the beer bottle out. He tapped his drink to mine before he took a swig. One beer, he’d said. His face hurt, and he was having one beer. But his phone was on the table in front of him. As soon as Frankie texted, he was out of here. He’d made that clear, and he wanted to be sober to drive.
Bubba sighed. “I told her because we keep lying to her. All of us. I don’t want to be that guy. I told her because you guys were going after her the same way you did Maria… Patty… Ch—“
“First,” Jake interrupted. “Fuck you. We did not treat her like a goddamn point. Ever. Second, fuck you twice for thinking we would…”
I put a hand on his shoulder because violence lashed every word, but Bubba didn’t back down from it.
“Sure, except I asked her to Homecoming first because I knew what you assholes would do, so…guess that made me an asshole, too.”