Four Letter Word
Page 29

I squinted away and watched Tori slip out her phone and study it for a minute before dialing.
“Yeah, it’s me again. Where are you?” she clipped into the device, looking down the street and across it while she spoke.
“Are you kidding me? When? We stood out there for ten minutes waiting for you!”
I dropped my head back with a sigh.
“I’m drunk. I can’t track your location on a map! And you were supposed to text me when you arrived!”
“I really hate to pump and dump,” Kali admitted quietly, grabbing my attention and pulling my ears off Tori’s conversation. She bit her lip. “Do you think I’m a horrible mom for going out tonight?”
I shook my head. “No way. You’re so pretty.”
She smiled.
Shay giggled either because of us or something else. The girl was laughing at everything.
“Just head north on York Street and we’ll walk back. You can’t miss us.” Tori ended the call looking irritated as all get-out, then motioned for us to spin around and instructed, “Go back. He’s been waiting for us.”
“Ugh! What a jerk. He was supposed to text!” Shay hissed.
“Men are such idiots with technology,” Kali commented.
I pinched my lips together so I wouldn’t scream at the top of my lungs about Brian being awesome with technology.
It was torture keeping his awesomeness a secret.
We were walking back in the direction of the bar with Tori leading the way when she stopped dead without warning.
Shay and I stumbled a little, bumping into each other since we were the two walking mostly behind her. Kali was off to the side.
“What?” I asked, then moved in front of Tori when she didn’t react to my question, not with a response or even a jerk of her head. “What’s going on?” I pressed further.
I followed her gaze to the parking lot we were standing in front of, and I couldn’t be sure because I was drunk and also because there were a lot of vehicles filling that lot, but it looked like Tori was shooting daggers specifically at a sleek red sports car that was taking up two spaces.
Rude. I couldn’t stand it when people did that.
“Tori!”
My assumption was validated when I watched my best friend bolt down the sidewalk a few feet and follow the bend that swept into the parking lot, take to the asphalt and sprint in her four-inch heels to where the sleek red sports car was parked. She stood beside it and looked it over for a whole two seconds before attacking the passenger side window with fists flying.
She must’ve thought it was really rude.
“Oh, my God!” Kali screamed.
“T! What are you doing?” Shay called out.
I took off running after her and heard the girls on my tail. Shay’s heels mainly, but I knew Kali was with her. We got inside the parking lot and over to the car, and I wasted no time in grabbing on to Tori’s shoulders and yanking her away from the window.
“Sweetie! What are you doing? Stop!” I yelled.
Tori fought me, twisting in my arms and then leaping for the window again.
“Tori!”
“Let me go, Syd!”
I yanked her back again and maneuvered around her, putting myself between her and the window and holding my hands up to keep her back.
Tori rubbed the edge of her right hand like it was stinging. “Move, hon.”
“No way.”
“Sydney.” Tori stepped closer. It was then I saw the tears in her eyes. “Move out of the way.”
I kept my hands up and I didn’t move.
“Not until you tell me what the hell you’re doing and why you’re doing it.”
“It’s Wes.”
“What?” I asked, then it hit me.
“Oh, God,” Kali whispered.
“Shit,” Shay muttered.
I lowered my hands and looked over my shoulder at the car.
It was sleek. It was expensive. And it belonged to the man who broke my best friend’s heart.
“First, I’m busting out his windows. All of them,” Tori started, bringing my head around. “Then, I’m going to drag my heel across his door and carve Douche Bag into the paint.” She moved closer. Her hands were balled into fists. “Then, depending on my mood, I may set fire to it.”
“Hell yeah!” Shay cried. “Let’s do it!”
Kali stayed silent, but she was nodding her head approvingly. She knew Tori’s motives behind this and she felt they were justified.
Tori looked from Kali to me, tilting her head. “What do you say, Syd?”
I watched a tear drop onto my best friend’s cheek. I didn’t need to think about my decision regarding giving Wes some hurt.
I’d made it three weeks ago.
I spun around and started pounding my fists on the window and doing it with all my strength, screaming and hollering because this was crazy, and not to mention illegal, but fuck it, Wes deserved to walk out and find his car demolished so I was giving it my all.
Tori joined me a half a second later, then it was Shay’s turn.
I beat that window with everything I had. I was determined to break it, bullheaded determined, so the longer it stayed intact, the madder I became and the harder I beat on it.
“I hate you! I hate you! I hate you!”
Tori was yelling at the top of her lungs, her arms flying with the punches she wasn’t landing either, but still flying all the same.
Shay was getting creative and ramming her shoulder into her window.
“Hey!”
I heard a man’s voice but I kept punching, smacking, and clawing at the glass.
“Hey, what the hell are you doing?”
Someone tugged on my shoulder and pulled me away from the car. I looked back and saw it was Exhibit A from the restaurant a couple of weeks ago.
“You want to go to jail?” he asked me, dropping his hand.
I shook my head with wide eyes, then watched him stalk around the car and grab Shay. She giggled, not giving him much of a fight.
He deposited her next to me and moved behind us, falling in beside Kali.
He looked at her. She looked at him, smiled hesitantly, then shared, “I have a son.”
He stuck his hands in his pockets, then muttered an indifferent, “Cool.”
“Legs! What the hell, babe!”
Jamie had his arms wrapped around Tori and was dragging her away from the window, her legs flailing about and her body thrashing against his.
“Calm down!”
“Get off of me! Let me go!”
Tori’s feet were kicking in the air and she was twisting her head frantically.
“Quit trying to bite me and I will! Shit!”
He put her down and stepped back, getting between us and the vehicle to block us, a hand pushing through his hair, and his chest pulling in deep breaths.
“Now, what the fuck?” He stared at Tori. “What are you doin’? Are you tryin’ to get the cops called on you?”
“What I’m doing is none of your business,” she hissed. “So move out of my way.”
“Not a chance.”
Tori stuck her hands on her hips.
Jamie took this moment to really look at her, letting his eyes wander the length of her body and then doing it again, finally pulling back to her face to ask, “What the fuck are you wearing?”