Page 72 of No Romeo
I shoved my backpack in my locker and then glanced around the open door at Wolf’s shocked face. “Whoa. You must have been pissed if you let someone nail you like that.”
My jaw hurt like a bitch. Ethan had a harder punch than I’d given him credit for. And given the emotional shitstorm I’d been trying to sail through, I took it with a damn smile. Right before I knocked his ass out in the middle of Pizza Palace.
“Taking the first blow was worth it just to nail that smug fuckwad in the skull.”
And the beauty of it? There were plenty of witnesses who heard him call me “worthless white trash” right before he threw the first punch.
“You went and hunted Taylor down?”
I slammed my locker. “Laid his ass out on the ‘All You Can Eat Pasta Buffet’ at Pizza Palace.”
“Classic.” He patted me on the back before thumbing toward the restroom. “I’m gonna roll a victory joint for you. Want to smoke it before class?”
The mood I was in, a little weed couldn’t hurt. “Is the Chocolate River made of Oompa-Loompa shit?”
Ten minutes later, I was high as hell, shouldering my way through the packed hallways and into Smith’s class.
She glanced up from her desk and gave me a judgmental shake of her head. “Done gone and let someone mess up that pretty face.”
The class’s attention shifted to me. I fought through the weed fog, looking past every single shocked expression to Lola.
Her gaze lifted from her notebook, and I took that little stab of pussy-ass pain, forcing myself to feel it while I held her stare for a beat. Having her right in my face, in my house…it was a form of suicide.
The second I saw worry crawl over her expression, I cut my attention away.
The bell rang, and Smith huffed before shoving out of her rolling chair as I started toward my seat.
“We’re going over the female reproductive system. And I don’t wanna hear none of y’all giggling about vulvas and vaginas. Don’t be calling it va-jay-jays or a bajingo or a penis fly trap. Whatever slang words your dirty minds use these days. Keep them to yourself.”
Good for Smith. I was too high to screw with her today.
Halfway through class, she pointed her laser beam at a diagram of a vagina, circling the red dot over the clitoris. “You know what…” She moved to her desk, scribbled out a pass, then marched down the aisle and slapped it on my desk. “Mr. Hunt Number Two. Get your muscley behind on down to the nurse’s office.”
“What the hell did I do?”
“Nothing.” She dug a fist into her hip. “And that’s the problem. I’ve gone over testicles and vaginas, and you mean to tell me your dirty self hasn’t wanted to make one comment about cats or roosters? Nah-uh. Something’s wrong with you, Mr. Nasty, and I don’t want your cooties all up in my classroom.”
Swiping the pass to the nurse’s office, I pushed out of my seat and grabbed my books.
Something was wrong with me. And it came in the shape of a blonde, five-foot-two Medusa.
Chapter25
LOLA
The red neon light of the liquor store reflected off the laminate of the crappy fake ID in my hand.I didn’t really have the money to waste on cheap booze, but I couldn’t handle another sleepless nightmare fest on Kyle’s couch. I was ready to spend the weekend knee-deep in vodka.
The word “whore” had played on a loop through my head last night, opening up a can of flesh-eating worms that preyed on every horrible memory I’d tried to bury.
Johan had called me a whore. My momwasa whore. Hendrix’s mom… He could have called me anything else, but he’d said that to hurt me as much as possible. The way I’d hurt him. So, I wasn’t surprised when he’d turned up to school this morning with a huge bruise on his face.
Hendrix didn’t get hit. Unless he wanted it. Like when his mom had died and he had wanted the physical pain to override the emotional.
I just wanted to stop thinking about it all, to feel nothing.
A tap sounded on the window of the pawn shop next door, catching my attention. The worker adjusted the acoustic guitar that had half fallen forward. I shifted away from the liquor store. Haphazard carvings covered the wooden body. I couldn’t see them clearly, but I didn’t need to. I knew the album names and artists, the song lyrics scratched into it because I’d watched Hendrix carve most of them. I guessed, at some point in the last two years, he’d had to pawn one of the few things he valued.
The hurt side of me said, good, and I started to walk off, but then the memories of him playing it surfaced. The way his eyes lit up when he showed it to me after he’d gotten it. How proud he was when he realized he could actually play it.
