“And you don’t like that?” I was genuinely asking because I had no fucking idea what girls liked, but I knew that my mom seemed to enjoy it whenever my dad got a little crazy over her.
“I do not like that,” she said slowly, drawing out each word. “No one likes that.”
I cocked my head in disagreement. “Hmm … I think some women like it.”
She contemplated my statement, and I knew she was deciding between asking some smart-ass question or not. “Okay, sometimes, we like it. But not like this. Not all passive-aggressive.” She waved a hand in Jared’s direction without looking at him.
Nodding my head, as if that had made all the sense in the world and totally cleared things up, I asked, “So, you like it when it’s aggressive-aggressive?”
Danika laughed, her lips toying with the tiny red straw. “I guess. No. I don’t know.” She put her drink on the table and rubbed her temples. “Sometimes, it’s a turn-on. Other times, it’s the opposite. I don’t know how to explain it without sounding crazy.”
“Too late.” I took a long drink of my beer. “Incoming,” I said because Jared was heading straight toward our table, flanked by two guys on each side.
“In what?” She shook her head, confused, before she looked behind her and saw exactly what I’d meant.
“My girlfriend and Baseball Boy, together again,” Jared sneered.
I wondered why he was so riled up. The last time I’d seen him, he had faked being completely cordial, pretending like there were no issues between us. Maybe because he was in front of his boys, he felt like he had something to prove.
“I sent you a text.”
“Why do you think I’m here?”
“That’s why you’re here? Because I told you I would be?”
“You’re my girlfriend,” he scoffed, emphasizing the word my. “Thought you might have forgotten that fact.”
“Looks like she already has,” one of his boys piped in.
I shot him a look that told him to shut the hell up. He pumped up his chest for only a second before taking a step back and snapping his jaw shut like a good little boy.
“You’re making a fool out of me,” Jared said, waving his hand in my direction. “Being seen in public with him when everyone knows we’re together.”
I pushed back from the stool and stood to my full height, muscles flexing. “What the hell is your problem, man?”
Danika stood up then and put her hand on my chest in an effort to keep me back. “I got this,” she told me, but I refused to back down or leave her to deal with this asshole on her own.
“Mind your own business, Baseball Boy,” he said before reaching for my beer and throwing it at me.
Motherfucker threw my own damn beer on me.
Looking down at my soaked-through shirt, I said with a laugh, “Feel better now?” I acted perfectly calm, knowing that it would only piss Jared off more when, in reality, I wanted to rip his fucking head off and send his frat bros home with it.
“Are you kidding me? What the hell, Jared?” Danika yelled, and if everyone inside the bar hadn’t been paying attention to us before, they were now.
“Maybe you’ll stop embarrassing me,” he growled toward her, referring to the fact that she was out in public with me, wet shirt and all.
“Yeah, maybe you’ll stop embarrassing him,” another frat bro shouted in response.
“What are you, a parrot?” Danika asked the frat dude, her voice laced with venom, and I couldn’t stop the laugh that bubbled up and out of my mouth.
“Do you know how it feels to get DMs and texts of pictures of the two of you together? Everyone was asking me why my girlfriend was on a date with the hot baseball player.” Jared’s face turned red, and it looked like he was about to pop.
“But you knew it wasn’t a date.” Danika’s response was so reasonable, and Jared was anything but.
“No one else did,” he argued back.
“But you knew the truth, so who cares what other people think?”
He shifted. “I do. I fucking do. If we were back home, you’d never even think about pulling this sort of disrespect. It’s like you’ve forgotten who you are. Who we are and where we come from.”
This guy always brought up the fact that they were from New York like it came with a completely different set of rules for dating.
“Stop acting like we’re from some sort of mob family.”
“Stop acting like you’re single!” he screamed before directing his anger at me and pointing. “And you, stay away from my girlfriend. How many times do I have to tell you?”
I shrugged, my T-shirt currently plastered to my chest with wet beer. I continued to play it off like it wasn’t driving me absolutely insane, but it was. I wanted it off my body, and I wanted to strangle this fucker with it. “At least a hundred more since, apparently, I’m not a very good listener.”
“Let’s go, Danika. We’re leaving,” he insisted, and I wondered what she’d do.
“I’m not going anywhere with you.”
That was the girl I adored—all feisty, headstrong, mouthy, and independent.
She looked around the bar at all the faces watching us like it was the first time she’d noticed the scene we’d created, and I could tell how uncomfortable it made her. Her entire demeanor shifted in that moment.
I watched as she swallowed hard, her eyes meeting Jared’s before agreeing to leave.
“I’ll leave. But not with you.” And before I could offer her a ride home or say anything, she turned to me and added, “And not with you either.”
Why the hell was I in trouble too?
Pre-Winter Break Party
Chance
The rest of the semester flew by, and I was honestly grateful for it. That night at The Bar was the last time I’d seen Danika in person—naturally, online stalking didn’t count. And aside from the single text she’d sent me, replying to my fifty asking if she was all right, I hadn’t heard from her since. She’d responded that she wasn’t okay, but that she would be, and then she asked me to give her space.
So, I did.
And it fucking killed me.
I felt like it took every ounce of willpower for me not to text her or call her or show up at her door like that jackass stalker from last year. I didn’t even let her know I’d passed my math final with flying colors. When I’d grabbed my phone to tell her because she was the first person I wanted to call, I’d remembered that she had asked me for space, and I forced myself to continue respecting her request.
I had no idea if her and Jared had broken up or not, but I figured that if they had, she would have at least told me that much.
Or shown up at my door.
Naked.
In a bow.
But since that never happened, I assumed that they were still fucking together and most likely always would be. I really needed to stop pining over someone who was choosing to stay in a crappy relationship with an even crappier guy, no matter their history or how disappointing it was. I was done chasing the girl who obviously wanted nothing to do with me.
“Still sulking?” Mac’s voice shot through the ones in my head, and I looked up from my bed to see him walking in my room with a glint in his eyes.