Better With You (Better Love 2)

“Shut the fuck up, Dylan,” Riggs growls again, louder this time.

“Dude, you’re wasted. Just stop talking,” the guy sitting beside Dylan says with a roll of his eyes. He looks bored as he picks up his pint glass and takes a drink.

“What!” Dylan shouts. “You were there, Zay. Riggs said boned. Past tense. Said the fairy girl is old news.” Dylan actually looks affronted, as if he can’t understand why he’s being chastised for telling the truth. “Shit, sorry, Tal,” he adds as an afterthought, flashing her one of those whoops, my bad grimaces.

I survey Riggs. His big body is vibrating with anger, and Talia’s hands are still clutched onto him, squeezing tightly enough that I can see white imprints where her fingers are digging into his arm. I’m barely hanging on to my composure, but when he has the balls to look at me with a bullshit apology on his face, I lose it.

“Move over,” I growl at Talia. She stiffens and furrows her brow while the other girl at the table gasps.

“Excuse me?” Talia spits out.

“I said move. Get off him.”

Rigg’s eyes are comically wide, the rest of the table is silent, and Talia is sputtering.

“What? No. Just who do you think you are?”

“I warned you,” I say, and then dump the pint glass and the rest of the pitcher I’m holding over their heads. Dylan howls with laughter as I soak Riggs with Miller Lite, and Talia squeals and launches herself backward, trying to escape the stream.

I didn’t want to get her wet, but when you lie down with dogs...

I slam down the pint glass and the pitcher, splashing myself a little with the small lake of beer now standing on the tabletop. “Might want to go home and change, asshole. Looks like that shirt is old news.”

“Bitch!” the random girl screeches, but I ignore her and make eye contact with Talia.

“I really am sorry,” I say genuinely. For everything, I don’t add. She just blinks at me and jerks her head in a confused nod.

I hustle back into the kitchen and promise another server that I’ll do all her closing work if she agrees to take table 32 off my hands. I don’t care how much silverware I have to roll, I cannot face that fucking table again tonight. She agrees, but when she goes back to table 32, it’s empty, completely cleaned off except for a ten-dollar bill and two singles, which is just enough to cover the cost of the two pitchers of Miller Lite.

I’m uneasy for the rest of my shift. I’m just waiting for the scolding from the manager for assaulting paying customers, but it never happens. Apparently, no one at the table complained. At the end of the night, I pocket my tips and agree to serve again next Wednesday.

I hate serving, but I made good money tonight, so I’m actually looking forward to coming back.

* * *

“How was Wing Wednesday?”Ivy asks the next morning.

I groan in response.

“Ooof, that bad, huh?”

“I dunno, depends on your idea of bad,” I concede. “I walked away with decent tips, but I also had a run-in with a table of dickbags, and I might have accidentally-on-purpose dumped Miller Lite on the heads of one of those dickbags and his girlfriend.”

“What?” Ivy looks at me with wide eyes, mouth turned up into a surprised smile. She sets her coffee cup down on the table and scans her eyes over my face before letting out a little puff of breath. “Would one of those jerks happen to be a Butler University star pitcher named Riggs Stanton?”

I roll my eyes. “That would be the one.”

“Dang, B. Did you get in trouble?”

“Surprisingly no.”

“Oh. Well, that’s awesome, then. I hope you soaked him.”

I look to see her mouth set in a firm line, her face serious.

“Yeah? You’re not going to tell me that acting on my anger isn’t healthy, or that lashing out is toxic for my soul, or whatever?”

She snorts. “Heck no. That guy is a jerk, and he deserved it. You got to exact a bit of retribution with impunity, so big thanks to the Goddess of Revenge for that gift.” She gets quiet for a minute. “I do feel bad for his girlfriend, though.”

I sigh. “Me too.”

I ended up spilling my guts to Ivy after the cookie contest. I told her everything. How Baking Aisle Alex is actually Riggs Stanton, star of the BU baseball team and Grade A fuckboy. I told her how we were seeing each other regularly and talking daily. How much we had in common. How easy he was to be around. I even told her how I officially entered him into my phone contacts the night before the contest, only for it to all come crashing down around me the next morning.

Ivy was livid. She might come off as sweet and timid, but she’s the exact opposite when provoked. She can be downright scary when she goes into protective mode. She was ready to call the university athletic director regarding their star pitcher’s gross misconduct before I talked her down. Then I ended up letting the story slip to Jesse and Kelley, so now BU’s god with the golden arm is persona non grata amongst my found fam.

“You know what pissed me off the most?” I confess through a mouthful of cherry pop-tart.

“Hmm?”

“I still wanted him, even if it was just a little. I was jealous to see Talia’s hands on him and before I could stop it, I wanted him. It’s fucking dumb.”

“I mean, it does make sense, though.”

“What does?”

“That you’d have these conflicting feelings for him. You were starting to really like the guy he was pretending to be, and then you were given no warning before finding out that that guy didn’t actually exist.” She shrugs, pensively staring into her coffee mug. “You can’t just turn feelings like those off. There’s no light switch for our emotions, no matter how much we wish there was.”