“Let’s go, Cody. He’s under the same protection order she gave you.” I hurried to add on when the cop looked like he was going to refuse. It’s a good thing he was willing to be reasonable because Cody wasn’t about to give in. Meanwhile, Susie was screaming bloody murder because she was being cuffed. Looks like everyone pointed the finger at her without being asked.
“Jess, can you stay here and make sure the party doesn’t end like this?”
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah, I’ve got Cody.” Did I mention I said that loud enough for a certain someone to hear? Now her screams had turned to wails. Oh, joy!
SUSIE
“Get your hands off of me. Do you know who I am? My father is a United States senator….”
“Ma’am, have you been drinking?”
“Of course, I’ve been drinking. I was having a party. I wasn’t driving when you found me.” I added that on quickly because that’s the last thing I need.
“Take these damn things off so I can call my mom.”
“You can call her from the station.” He slammed the door, cutting off my scream midstream. How was this happening? This isn’t supposed to happen to me. I looked out the window at the crowd looking for a friendly face, but there was none.
Then I saw Cody walking with her to an unmarked car, his hand holding her possessively around the middle, and I just lost it. I kicked the window to no avail, and the only response I got was two cops jumping in the car and driving away. One of them was saying something, but I couldn’t hear him over my own screams.
I’m not sure what I was saying, but it felt good to let it out after holding it in for so long. I knew I should calm down, especially with the cops here, but this was the last straw. This is something that I’ll never forgive, not that I had planned to anyway.
The evening had started out fine, or as fine as it could be with all that was going on. It seems like this was my week from hell where everything that could go wrong, did. It started with that stupid party and me wrecking my room and then having to explain to my dad why he was out almost ten grand, something he’s still not pleased about.
The images from that night are still burned into my retinas. Cody and Lisa in formal wear, smiling into the camera, surrounded by my friends or people I thought were my friends. Some of whom had declined my invitation. As if that wasn’t a hard enough pill to swallow, there were the comments from everyone, buttering them up, telling them how great they looked together, as if half the campus had forgotten that he’s mine.
And then came that stupid post about Cody buying condoms and everyone speculating. Don’t think I didn’t see the looks or the smirks on people’s faces because the ones who did remember that Cody was mine were only quick to gossip about my loss and that bitch’s gain.
I satisfied myself by knowing that it would all be over in a couple of weeks when mom came to visit. She’d promised to talk to dad about Cody and me, and I knew that there was no way I wouldn’t win. My mom has never denied me anything, and I knew with her in my corner, it would be easy to turn dad around.
I couldn’t very well go back to pretending that I didn’t care, not after the number I’d done on my room, so I let my dislike of her be known to everyone that would listen, but I couched it as my dislike stemmed from the very obvious way in which she was targeting me, i.e., throwing a party the week before I was scheduled to have mine.
But no one believed me and instead sided with her with some bullshit story that she didn’t even know about my party. I’ll never believe that. Things only got worse from there since everyone was on her side, singing her praises about the stupid party, which made mine look like a peasant’s.
I’d shelled out more money at the last minute to get some of my own back, and then tonight happened. An hour after the party was set to begin, there were only five of the people I invited at the bar, and those five seemed ready to leave as soon as they arrived. I pulled Mimi aside to snap at her. “Where are all the people that RSVP’d?”
“I don’t know, I spoke to some of the girls earlier, and they said they were coming.”
“Well, where are they?” Who comes to a party an hour late? Especially when there’s free beer on tap? I started to get a bad feeling in my gut when even more time went by, and still, no one else showed up.