Perfect Regret (Bad Rep #2)(8)
Author: A. Meredith Walters

“Hell to the yeah!” I hollered. Jordan didn’t miss the heavily laced sarcasm, thus warranting an affectionate smack on the back of the head for yours truly.

“Do you need me to kick his ass, Ri? I will you know. Just say the word and Damien’s face will get up close and personal with Mr. I-Will-Break-Your-Nose.” Jordan held up his fist and smacked it into his palm in a feigned threatening gesture.

Maysie and I laughed. Jordan was a good guy. And I was lucky to have such great friends willing to commit assault and battery on my behalf. It really did give a girl the case of the tingles.

I held up my own fist and shook it. “I think Miss I-Will-Mess-You-Up has first dibs.” Jordan grinned and bumped my knuckles with his.

“Well if she needs backup, let this guy know,” he told me as he pulled Maysie towards his monstrosity of a truck. Getting into my car and turning on my music, I felt just a tiny bit better.

4

Dear god on everything that is holy, please don’t let me strangle this guy! I gnashed my teeth together, feeling the overwhelming urge to smack the crap out of Maysie for dragging me to the seventh level of hell with her.

Sure, this may be her thing. She played the part of rock star girlfriend really well. And more power to her. But she had gotten a wild hair up her ass thinking I needed to party, enjoy my youth, blah blah blah. And I had, in a moment of institutional crazies, agreed.

So here I was, surrounding myself with drunken jackasses as they tried to rub against each other (or me if I wasn’t paying attention) in some sort of scary mating ritual. Sorry, I missed that episode of Wild Planet. I know I had intended to let my dormant bad girl out to play but instead this whole scene had her in permanent hiding.

“Don’t you think?”

Huh?

I blinked in exaggerated slowness, making it clear that I hadn’t heard a damn thing he had said. He being none other than Garrett Bellows.

Garrett wasn’t put off by my blatant disinterest. I think the dude could talk to a brick wall. I was just surprised he had chosen to share his sparkling wit with me. Though it could be the fact that I was the one person in the room who couldn’t give a shit about anything he had to say. It was sort of like how cats always gravitated toward the one person who hated them the most. It was some sort of passive aggressive mind f**k. Oh you don’t like me? Well now I’m going to be all up in your face.

And like flies to garbage, Garrett had circled around me all evening until he had finally cornered me. It was as though he had been lying in wait for his chance to bore me to death. We had been engaged in a one-sided conversation for the past fifteen minutes. One-sided meaning that he was talking and I couldn’t care less. I had tuned out around the time he started waxing poetic about surfing at night during some trip to Hawaii last year.

I really hated these pseudo-philosophical types. You know the ones that smoked a bowl or two and suddenly they were Plato reincarnate, talking about the meaning of life and how it had to be a government conspiracy that McDonald’s only rolled out the McRib a few times a year.

“I’m sorry. You’ll have to run that by me again. I was too busy trying to remember why the hell I let Maysie talk me into coming here in the first place,” I said, infusing more than a little bit of jerk into my tone. Okay, so maybe the guy didn’t deserve to have a firsthand encounter with Riley Walker, mega witch, but I was in a bad mood and feeling a little heartbroken; which made me rude and more than a little punchy. Plus, Mr. Lead Guitar Player was the last person I wanted to be sharing air space with.

I fully expected Garrett to call me a bitch and leave me alone to stew in my bitter juices. I was really hoping he would anyway. It would give me an excuse to be justified in my feelings of annoyance and outrage where he was concerned. But the idiot did no such thing.

Instead he laughed. He freaking laughed! Was he missing a few of those brain cells that were required to recognize when someone was being a complete and total f**k face to you? Oh god, maybe he thought my attitude was endearing! Great, I hadn’t thought that maybe he was one of those crazies who got off on bitchy girls.

Retreat Riley! Retreat!

“You have one huge ass chip on your shoulder. Does it work for you?” Garrett asked lazily and my eyes snapped up to his. He spoke in that slow drawl of his that was either meant to be dead sexy or a perfect cure for insomnia.

“Does what work for me?” I asked him warily, not sure where he was going with this. He pushed a hand through his hair and narrowed a pair of thoughtful blue eyes in my direction. I couldn’t really make up my mind if I thought Garrett was good looking or not. His dirty blond hair was on the longish side, hanging down to his shoulders. I wasn’t typically into guys with long hair, but for this dude, it sort of worked it. He wasn’t overly tall, probably coming in around five foot eleven with a wiry frame that he seemed to like to show off by the amount of time he spent without a shirt on. Though if I had abs that defined, I’d probably be topless all the time, tits and all.

His cornflower blue eyes could have been appealing if they weren’t blood shot and glazed over. He exuded that laid back couldn’t give a toss demeanor that only came after inhaling a copious amount of THC into your system. And given the number of chicks who had attempted to get his attention since he had plopped down beside me to begin the most asinine conversation in history; he must have some sort of magnetism. Too bad I was wearing my armor of snark and not remotely susceptible to any of his possible charms.

I could admit that I had already dismissed him as a small-brained stoner who was smoking away the last of his brain cells. We had never carried on a meaningful conversation and I had never expected him to bother having one with me. But then his question and following statement caught me off guard.

Garrett leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees. He waved a hand in my direction. “This. The whole ‘I’m a bitch so stay away’ act. I get that this probably isn’t your scene. I bet you’d rather be at some eco-warrior recycling meeting or something. You seem like the idealistic save the world type.” I bristled at his annoyingly astute observation.

“Wow, so you picked that all up from the complete lack of conversation we were having? Can I add deluded quasi-psychic to your resume. Right under wannabe rock star?” I said rather nastily, not wanting to give anybody the upper hand. Particularly this grunged out dope head whose eyes seemed to have cleared a bit. And I couldn’t help but notice that yeah, they were pretty appealing.