“Sure thing.” The woman nodded once, grabbed the spilled beer, and hurried away. I watch her approach the three men as she leans in to speak to them, shrugging her shoulders a bit. The guy in the middle jabbed one of his friends with his elbow, laughing, then peered around the bartender and back at me. The smirk hadn’t faded from his face, which pissed me off more than anything else.
“Do you know those guys?” Carly asked. I took my gaze away from the middleman’s smirk and looked at her.
“Yeah, I know them.”
“They’re cute,” Jami said carefully, figuring things out because the look on my face hadn’t wavered. “How do you know them?”
I looked back at the guys. The three of them have turned around, their backs to us. I felt a slither of gratification down my spine. I’d throw something across the room at them if I were petty.
One hundred points each for three headshots.
“I know them from high school,” I said.
“Were you friends?” Carly was slurring a bit, getting drunker by the second. Usually, I wouldn’t care. Carly had been a lush since I met her. But tonight, I found it annoying, an irritating click in the back of my mind that wouldn’t waver.
“I wouldn’t say friends.”
“Whatwouldyou say?” Jami’s cheeks were reddening now on account of the booze, and the rigid posture she usually maintained was slowly turning to jelly. I swallowed a tight lump in my throat and reached for the ice water the bartender had dropped off with the beer, taking a sip to soothe my frayed nerves.
“Their names are Matt, Aaron, and Jake,” I said, unable to tear my eyes from burning holes in the back of their heads. “They were my high school bullies.”
Carly bursts into giggles, spewing beer all over the tabletop. “Come on, Susie Q,” she said with a laugh. “We all had high school bullies. Who the fuck cares?”
“Carly, knock it off,” scolded Jami, turning to me. She rested her hand on top of mine and squeezed, shooting me a sympathetic look. I smiled back, but it was forced. All I wanted to do was lean over and throw up over the floor.
“Matthew Nelson and his two goons made my life a living hell,” I breathed. “They’re why I had to transfer schools in the middle of my sophomore year.”
“It couldn’t have been that bad.” Carly pushed aside her empty beer mug and turned away to scope the place for fair game. “You’re still here, aren’t you?”
“Yeah,” I agreed, and tears pushed against the back of my eyeballs, threatening to spill over. “But I almost wasn’t.”
Chapter 6
Aaron
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