“I think, Mr. Vinson, that another order of the night is to get you laid,” he announced. “Seriously, bro, it's your first weekend back. You need to sample some of the local talent.”
“Whoa, now, let's not get ahead of ourselves,” I said. “I just want a few drinks and a nice, quiet night. No craziness.”
“Come on, man, look at you! You could pick up any girl in this bar if you wanted to. Women have always fallen at your feet, Wade – and you might as well take advantage of that while you're still young. Sheesh, man, don't throw a gift like that away! A guy who looks like me would kill to look like you, just for one night!”
I shook my head and smiled. “It's not all it's cracked up to be, pal. And I appreciate you, uh, looking out for my needs, but it's just not what I'm after at the moment. I'm keeping my life as simple and complication-free as possible.”
“And, what's simpler than picking up a chick from the bar here? Wham, bam, thank you, ma'am. You have some fun tonight, she's gone in the morning, and that's that!”
“Ah, man, it's never as simple as that.”
The truth was, I couldn't get thoughts of Eryn out of my head. It felt so wrong…like I was crossing a boundary just by being attracted to her. But I couldn't help it – I just couldn’t get her out of my mind.
“Well, we'll see what happens, old buddy,” I said with a smile, fully knowing that nothing at all would happen. “We'll see what happens. Come on now, drink up!”
Chapter Five
Eryn
A little bead of sweat trickled down the back of my neck. I wanted to wipe it away. It itched, but I was not going to let myself get distracted, not by anything.
I was positioned opposite Tammy on the court, and man, she had it out for me. I mean, she’d always disliked me, and I never knew why. Leena had said she thought it was because she was jealous, which I’d thought was ridiculous. Tammy looked like some sort of, I didn’t know, model or actress or something – the type of girl that every college guy fantasizes about. Me? People always said I was pretty but I thought they were just being nice.
No, I thought it had more to do with the fact that I was simply better than her at volleyball, despite her making the starting lineup every season and me…well, not.
Today, she was really going out of her way to get me, though. She had actually thrown the ball at me, hitting me in the back of the head when I was turned around and talking to Leena after we'd just won a point. Then she'd smiled her super bitchy smile and told me that it was an “accident” and she was “just trying to pass the ball nicely to me.”
Yeah, whatever. The back of my head was still stinging from how hard that moron had hit me with it.
She had also spiked the ball directly at me not once, not twice, but three times this game – going right for my face. Thanks to my quick reflexes, I'd been able to block it all three times, but only just barely.
I wasn't going to let her push my buttons or get away with it. I'd had enough because it wasn't like this was the first time. There were always the bitchy comments, the jokes in which I was the object of her so-called humor, and that time someone replaced the towel in my locker with one that had been soaked in witch hazel because I was allergic to it. It took my skin a week to recover.
I'd never been able to prove that Tammy was behind it, but I was absolutely certain that she had done it. After all, who else would have had any reason to? I got along great with everyone else on the team. Everyone except for Tammy and her equally bitchy friend, Kelly.
And now? Now I was at the point where I'd simply had enough, and I was just waiting for the perfect moment to strike. It soon presented itself.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Tammy moving closer to the net, preparing for a counterattack setup as their team sent the ball over the net. Leena popped the ball up to me, expecting me to spike it into the open spot at the back of the court, which would have been an easy point.
Except, I wasn't after an easy point.
I was after something else. I was after a little payback.
I spiked the ball with as much force as I could muster – right into Tammy's face. She was just across the net from me. She had no time to react.
The ball popped her right in the nose, and she fell down with a shriek of pain.
“Oh my God, I'm so sorry, Tammy,” I said.
She glared up at me with absolute wrath burning in her eyes, and I couldn't help but feel a little shiver of satisfaction rush through me as I saw a little trickle of blood running out of her left nostril. The other players on her side of the net gathered around her, offering words of sympathy, but the girls on my team remained tight-lipped. I even saw a few smiles of satisfaction cracking on their faces; they knew she deserved it.
Still, despite the sudden rush of satisfaction I'd experienced, I felt a twinge of regret starting to seep in. As bitchy as she was, and as many times as she'd tried to hurt me, I felt pretty bad for having done that to her. For one, I felt as if I'd degraded myself by stooping to her level, and for another, it just felt bad to hurt another person, even if she was horrible.
Just then, however, Coach Vinson stormed onto the court, and everyone could see that he was pissed.
“Tammy, Eryn, off the court. You two are out for the rest of the game, and we'll be having a word about this after practice.”
“But, Wade,” whined Tammy.