"Well this one seems to be an exception. Trust me."
He made a noise like he was thinking before exhaling. "Whatever you say, but if you want me to knock some sense into him—"
"Dad! You wouldn't hurt anyone if I paid you to," I laughed, remembering the times he'd gone out of his way to avoid getting into arguments with people.
"I wouldn't, but I know people!" the silly man answered.
Chapter 37
"Girls versus guys."
Nicole let out an unladylike snort. "More like girls versus bitches."
Josh cackled as he tied his bowling shoes. "In that case, I'm on the girls' team."
Tristan turned to look at Calum who sat next to him, smelling his pair of shoes with a face that was a little too curious and not enough disgusted. "You're definitely a bitch, Cal."
"Babe, do you think I'm a bitch?" Calum's deep voice asked Nikki, who was sitting in front of the keyboard typing names away for each of the lanes.
"Baby, I promised you I would never lie to you, so please don't ask me to start today," she said without blinking, her eyes locked on the screen in front of her.
Zoey, who was sitting right next to me on the lane we'd designated for the females, laughed and gave me a high-five at Nicole's response. Tristan and Calum were sitting on the opposite side of the lane and bickering over who was a bigger bitch. "This is going to be fun," she announced with a big smile on her face.
She'd been gone for a little over a week, and I'd missed her pretty face. The night before, Josh and I had gone to pick her up from the airport, before staying over at her apartment to watch the first threeHarry Pottermovies back to back. Yes, we were an overgrown bunch of geeks who banded together to read all of the books and cried when Dumbledore and Dobby died. I think Josh had a secret crush on one of the characters from the movies but he wouldn't admit which one.
"Kat and Joshua, you're up first," Nikki said.
"I'm going to kick your fanny, Booger," Josh claimed, going up to the center to retrieve his ball at the same time I did.
"You probably are considering all the experience with balls you have," I snickered with a wink.
The blonde snapped his fingers in my face as he brought his dark blue ball up to his chin, preparing to bowl. "You wish you've had as much ball experience as I do."
He bowled a strike on his turn while I only managed to knock down 8 pins total. We gave each other a high-five before returning to our respective seats on opposite ends. About an hour later, we'd moved around the seats a bit. Zoey, Tristan, and I sat on our original lane, while Nikki sat on Calum's lap between turns, and Josh settled for glaring at the happy couple when he could. We, the females, had won the first game.
As fate would have it, Calum was just as terrible at bowling as Tristan. He kept saying, "I was on a league!" but obviously, he’d been on the same one as Tristan— an imaginary league. Or possibly one with bumpers, was another of my best guesses.
Zoey rested her feet on my lap as Nikki and Calum went up to bowl against each other. "I talked to Ryan this morning," she said with a naughty look in her eye.
"That's cool," I said slowly, raising an eyebrow in her direction. Tristan was sitting right next to me with his forearm brushing mine, but his attention was focused on the lane. I mouthed out a "What?" to her, because even though Zoey was pretty random, this was unexpected. She talked to Ryan at least three times a week and had never made an effort to let me know that she had spoken to him unless there was gossip. Or, the time she had asked him to prescribe her cream for her hemorrhoids and he flipped out.
She winked at me so dramatically I had to turn my head slightly to make sure Tristan wasn't looking at her. "I didn't know you were going to a wedding with him," she drawled out.
That bitch.
I loved her.
His arm stiffened, it was the smallest fraction of a movement and barely noticeable. "Yeah, he asked me last weekend when Josh decided to ruin my face." The bruise on my face was more yellow and brown by then, rather than purple, blue, and red.
"It was an accident!" he bellowed from the other side.
"Mind your own business!" Zoey waved the nosey turd off. "I'm glad you're going with him instead of that skank he was going to take before. She's such a slut, and you know for me to call someone a slut, she really is one," she sighed dramatically.
It was Tristan and Zoey's turn to bowl, so she held up her index finger asking me to give her a second while she went up and bowled nine before picking up her spare. Tristan, on the other hand, knocked down a total of six. That was the equivalent of a strike by his standards. I couldn't hear what they were saying to one another because their voices were surprisingly low and the music was too loud, but Zoey punched him in the arm on their walk back to their seats.
"Good try," I laughed when I passed by my auburn-haired friend on the way up to the lane as he tugged at my ponytail in response.
"You're going down, bitch," Josh hissed from my right, already prepped and ready with his ball.
