Page 15 of No Romeo
That was it. I kicked the footstool of the recliner, nearly catapulting him into the floor. “That girl’s coming to look at the room in half an hour. Girls like houses to smell clean.”
Bellamy coughed from the sofa, waving a hand in front of his face. “So, you’re making the place smell like pine treesandweed?”
I took the ashtray filled with half-smoked roaches and dumped it in the now empty bag of Doritos.
“Dude…” Wolf tossed his phone to me, and I caught it against my chest. “She’s totally choking on his light saber.”
StarWarsKyleOB1’s InstaPic account was pulled up on the screen. Just about every post over the past few weeks were pictures of him and Lola. The most recent was a selfie of Kyle with his arm around her, his sweaty hand a half-grab away from her tit. And that infuriated me.
Bellamy leaned over, snorted, then clapped a hand on my shoulder. “She’s banging him, man.”
I’d screwed my way through more nameless girls than I wanted to admit, which meant the fact that I cared what she did made me a hypocrite. But the sick part of it was that every girl I brought home made me hate myself a little more when all it was supposed to do was make me forget.
“I bet he purrs like Chewbacca when he comes.” Wolf cackled, spitting out clouds of smoke.
I stared at the screen, my brain trying to melt at the idea of his scrawny ass thrusting on top of her, erasing every bit of me. “That motherfucker better get on there and start asking for thoughts and prayers…”
I opened messenger, stamping my fingers over the keyboard on my screen:
If you put your Skeletor hands on her again, I’m going to take your inhaler and shove it up your ass until your lungs don’t need help breathing.
I waited two seconds before tacking on:
I swear, Kyle. You so much as think of sticking your pink, unused dick in her, and I’ll come over to your house, shit on your front step, then smear your face in it before I spoon-feed you the rest.
Wolf’s laughter cut off. “What the hell are you doing?”
“Stay out of this, Wolf.”
He pushed out of the recliner. “Don’t be commenting from my account.” Then he moved to snatch the phone, but I leaped up from the sofa like a spider monkey and dodged him.
“Fuck off.”
This was what that girl had reduced me to—an InstaPic warrior, threatening to shove anaphylactic up aStar Wars fanatic’s ass. His phone dinged.
When I glanced down at the message, it felt like my head might explode.
I know that’s you, Hendrix. Leave Kyle alone.
Attached to that message was a selfie of Lola—on Kyle’s motherfucking couch, in her short blue jean shorts, flipping me off. Holy shit. My ex-girlfriend was into the guy who cried anytime the teacher turned the light off for quiet time in third grade. The guy who had a panic attack and threw up when we went on a field trip to the crappy Dayton Zoo, and one of the employees passed around a green garden snake.
Me: Give the phone back to dicksneeze, Lola. Let the nerd fight his own battles.
Just as I went to type out another message, a pop-up appeared on the screen.
StarWarsKyle0b1 has blocked you.
Oh, hell no. I chucked Wolf’s phone down, grabbed my own phone, and pulled up Kyle’s account to find I was blocked there, too.
Blocked?Sheblocked Wolf and me. On Kyle’s account. Like she was his protector. His Obi-wan. His Mandalorian. His what-the-fuck-everStar Warsbullshit would equate to Kyle being a sack of shit I now wanted to choke.
I pocketed my phone, then went to the kitchen for a bag of chips. Maybe if I choked, it would stop the dumb, pussy-ass heartache tightening my chest.
I carried the snack back into the living room, swiping a greasy hand over my shirt before grabbing the controller.
Just as we started the game, the TV cut off and the motor to the box fan silenced, the blades slowing to a stop.
“Dude,” Wolf said. “Your power is out.”
