As Jules sweated and waited, he tried not to be obvious about it, moving through the noisy crowd to the sink and the open window above it that looked out into the backyard. His mouth had gone dry and his heart was racing as he gazed out the window and watched the bathroom door with his peripherals.
The scene out the window wasn’t helping to lower his blood pressure.
Rodney and his boys—there were around twelve of them—were encircling Hobbit, who was still sitting there, staunchly manning his post. Some of the idiots milled about, clearly bored, but most of them surrounded the younger boy, a few even sitting on the table above him, leaning in close, laughing at his discomfort.
Hobbit had his arms crossed and the look on his face was purewhatever. But he was, Jules noted, watching the back door for Belle and Jules’s return.
God, he wanted to go out there and... do what? Punch Rodney in his smirking face? Mr. Harrison would not approve—although, shit, maybe he would. Because enough was enough.
But okay. Jules would try not-punching first. He’d make sure Belle was okay, then he’d go out and hold out his hand to Hobbit. He’d pull him up and out of his seat and away from Rodney’s relentless bullshit.
Bullshit that would no doubt follow them.
At which point he’dthenpunch Rodney in the freaking face.
But then, as Jules watched—one eye on that still-closed bathroom door—three minutes and counting according to theclock on the microwave—Topher and Joey appeared. They greeted Hobbit—freaking Joey even reached out and shook his hand—before sitting down on either side of him andyes! Rodney and his boys slunk away, retreating back to the keg.
Across the kitchen, the bathroom door finally opened and Belle exploded out. “Thank yousomuch,” she effusively told the line of girls.
Mindy or Mandy or whatever her name was, was back, and she handed Belle a dark blue sweatshirt. “Oh, my God, thank you!” Belle tied it around her waist and gave the girl a big hug.
Which was when, over Mindy or Mandy’s shoulder, Belle caught sight of Jules standing there, no doubt looking rattled as hell.
“Oh, shit,” she said, and as she straightened up, she started to sing. “Kiss today goodbye and point me toward tomorrow...!”
She did a little dance toward the back door, mouthing a quicksorryto Jules before she pushed open the screen and went back out into the night.
Jules’s knees felt weak as he rejoined Hobbit, Joey, and Topher at the picnic table. His heart was still racing, and his mouth tasted like shit, so he grabbed his Dr. Pepper and took a long slug of both caffeine and sugar.
Belle was laughing with the soccer jocks, over at the keg, and Topher was watching her. “Did Tom really break up with her?” he asked. “I mean, really?”
“I honestly don’t know,” Hobbit lied artfully, shooting Jules a questioning look.
He shook his head as he met Hobbit’s eyes, shruggingslightly. He had no idea what had just happened, but he allowed himself to take advantage of Belle being the topic of conversation to look directly over at her.
She seemed okay.
She’d wrapped the sweatshirt she’d borrowed from Mindy-Mandy around her waist. But if she was cold enough to borrow it, why hadn’t she put it on? It was longer than her shorts and with her back to them, as she refilled her cup at the keg, it made her look as if she weren’t wearing any pants at all and...
Ohhhh, shit.
Jules’s friend Georgie back at his old school was always having what she’d called menstrual accidents. Her period came irregularly, and the flow was often ridiculously heavy. When it took her by surprise, she’d bleed clear through her jeans—which was as nasty as it sounded, and would prompt a panicked rush to the nearest bathroom.
Since it happened pretty constantly, Jules had learned to adapt. He’d kept an extra sweatshirt in his locker expressly to lend to her whenever she stuck her head out of the girls’ room topsstat him. She’d wear it the same way Belle was wearing Mindy-Mandy’s—tied around her waist.
Thatwould explain Belle’s mad, no-warning dash to the bathroom. As well as the invitation to cut to the front of the line. Girls were heavy into solidarity for things like that.
“Belle won’t even talk to us,” Hobbit was telling Topher and Joey with what appeared to be total sincerity. “She’s angry at us, too. Says we’re Team Tom—whatever that means.”
“Well, we kind of are.” Now that his heartrate had started to return to near-normal, Jules built on the story that Hobbit was telling. “I mean, whatever she did, she got Tom mad at her.”
Hobbit saw his contribution to the tall-tale and raised it even more. “It takes alotto get Tom mad.”
This was not entirely un-fun. Aside from the potential danger that Belle had thrown herself into, and the unspoken but always present threat from Rodney and his idiots...
Rodney was still shooting them grimly furrowed-brow looks from the keg-zone, where most of his idiots were dancing attendance upon Belle and, shit, Mindy-Mandy, who’d joined her there—potentially screwing with the whole Belle-alone-at-the-party-without-any-friends bullet-point.
Jules took his bottle of Dr. Pepper as he stood up. “I’ll be right back,” he told Hobbit, whose eyes narrowed just slightly before he smiled back at Jules.
