“You should feel honored to be with Tessa,” he tells me.
“Stop being a dick and we might actually enjoy the game,” I tell him forcefully, but can’t help the smile that appears on my face at his annoyance. “Sorry, Landon. I’m honored to be with her. Now, would you chill out?” I laugh.
“Sure, sure. Let’s just get our seats,” he says quietly, leading the way.
“WHAT THE HECK! Did you see that? How the heck did that count!?” Landon screams next to me. He’s more energized than I’ve ever seen him. Still, even angry, he sounds like a pussy.
“C’mon!” he yells once more, and I bite my tongue in laughter.
I suppose Tessa was right: he isn’t too terrible of company. Not my first choice, obviously, but not so bad.
“I hear that the more you yell and scream, the more likely they are to win,” I tell him.
He ignores me and continues to yell and boo with the ebb and flow of the game. I alternate between paying attention and texting Tessa dirty things, and before I realize it, Landon’s yelling “Yes!” when his team wins the game at the last second.
The crowd piles out of the arena, and I push my way through them. “Watch it,” a voice behind me says.
“Sorry,” Landon apologizes.
“That’s what I thought,” the voice says, and I turn around to find a nervous Landon and an asshole wearing the opposing team’s jersey. Landon swallows but doesn’t say anything else as the man and his crew continue to taunt him.
“Look how scared he is,” another voice says, one of the asshole’s friends, I presume.
“I . . . I . . .” Landon stammers.
Are you kidding me? “Fuck off, both of you,” I snarl, and they both turn to look at me.
“Or what?” I can smell the beer on the tall one’s breath.
“Or I will shut you up in front of everyone, and you’ll be so humiliated it’ll be on the game’s highlight reel. That’s what,” I warn him, meaning every single word.
“C’mon, Dennis, let’s go,” the short one, the only one with some sense, says and tugs on his friend’s jersey, and they disappear into the crowd. I grab Landon by the arm and pull him the rest of the way. Tessa will have my balls if I let him get beat up tonight.
“Thanks for that, you didn’t have to do it,” Landon says when we reach his car.
“Don’t make it awkward, okay?” I grin, and he shakes his head, but I hear him laugh quietly to himself.
“Should I take you back to your apartment now?” he asks after several minutes of awkward silence while we wait to leave the crowded parking lot.
“Yeah, sure.” I check my phone again to see if Tessa has responded; she hasn’t. “Are you moving?” I ask Landon.
“I don’t know yet, I really want to be closer to Dakota,” he explains.
“So why doesn’t she move here?”
“Because her career in ballet wouldn’t work here; she has to be in New York City.” Landon lets another car pass in front of his, despite the fact that we’ve barely moved in the line of traffic since we left our parking spot.
“And you are just going to give up your life and move for her?” I scoff.
“Yeah, I would rather do that than continue to be away from her. I don’t mind moving, anyway. New York City would be an awesome place to live. It’s not always about one person in the relationship, you know?” he says, looking sideways at me. Fucker.
“Was that supposed to be directed at me?”
“Not exactly, but if you think it was, maybe it is.” A group of drunken idiots stumbles in front of the car, but Landon doesn’t seem to mind that they’re blocking us.
“Shut the hell up, would you?” I say. He’s just being a dick now.
“Are you telling me you wouldn’t move to New York to be with Tessa?”
“Yes, that is exactly what I’m telling you. I don’t want to live in New York, so I won’t be living in New York.”
“You know I don’t mean New York, I mean Seattle. She wants to live in Seattle.”
“She’ll be moving to England with me,” I tell him. I turn the volume dial on his radio up in hopes of ending this conversation.
“What if she doesn’t? You know she doesn’t want to, so why would you force her to?”
“I’m not forcing her to do anything, Landon. She will move because we’re supposed to be together and she won’t want to be away from me, simple as that.” I check my phone once more to try to distract myself from the irritation my lovely stepbrother is causing me.
“You’re an asshole.”
I shrug. “Never claimed that I wasn’t.”
I dial Tessa’s number and wait for her to answer. She doesn’t. Great, fucking great. I hope she’s still at home when I get there. If Landon didn’t drive so goddamn slow, we would be there by now. I stay silent, picking at the torn skin surrounding my fingernails. After what seems like three fucking hours Landon pulls up in front of my apartment.
“Tonight wasn’t so bad, right?” he asks me as I get out of the car, and I chuckle.
“No, I guess it wasn’t,” I admit. Then I tease, “If you tell anyone I just said that, I will kill you.”
Landon chuckles as he drives off. I let out a deep breath, very pleased that he didn’t get his ass beat by those guys tonight.
When I walk into the apartment, Tessa is sound asleep on the couch, so I just sit and watch her for a bit.