She rolled her eyes. “For Christ’s sake, it was years ago. Who cares? Let’s bowl and forget the little maggot is even here.”
Gunner looked around. “Is Ellie here?”
The hopefulness in his voice didn’t go unnoticed, but I had to shelve that conversation for later.
“No, Ari is,” I stated and stood. “And you can find your own damn ride home, bitch.”
Casey’s mouth dropped open. “Gunner! Are you going to let him talk to me that way?”
Ignoring her, Gunner looked at Nettie. “Do you need a ride back?”
She shook her head. “We’ll get a ride; don’t worry.”
Glancing back down to Casey, Gunner shot her a fake smile. “Lose my number, Casey.”
“Gunner! Wait! Are you seriously kidding me right now? You’re leaving because of something that happened in high school?”
“No, I’m leaving because I’ve had all I can take of you, and you only just proved to me what I’ve been thinking all night: I really don’t like you.”
I smiled and hit him on the back as he slipped off his bowling shoes and replaced
them with his boots.
When we started for the door, I couldn’t help but look Ari’s way. She was sitting down watching us leave, a questioning look on her face. I wanted to smile, to wave, to do something, but I looked away from her and focused on the exit.
When we got into Gunner’s truck, we both sighed.
“Why didn’t you tell me about Casey?”
“I don’t know,” I said with a shrug. “It was high school, and you’re a big boy who can take care of himself. Plus, I honestly wanted to see how long you were going to be able to stand that laugh of hers.”
Tossing his head back and laughing, Gunner dropped his head on the headrest and cursed.
“Shit. She is annoying as hell. Why didn’t I see that before?”
“’Cause you probably wanted into her pants.”
He shook his head. “Yeah, well, that was the last thing on my mind tonight. I just wanted to get the whole night over with.”
“Let’s call Josh and Brad, see if they want to join us for a beer.”
Gunner nodded and started up his truck. “Sounds good to me. I’ll be glad for spring break; I’m ready to get the hell away from Austin.”
Ari’s face popped into my head when I pulled up my phone and saw her text still on the screen.
Hitting reply, I typed out my response.
Me: Looks like you handled yourself perfectly fine, Squirt.
It was less than twenty seconds later, and I was smiling at her response.
Ari: Stop calling me that, you fucking dickhead, son of a bitch, asshole jerkface!
I knew if I could see her right now as she typed that out, she’d have a huge smile on her face. Ari loved yanking my chain as much I loved doing it to her.
Backing out of the texts, I pulled up Josh’s number, and we planned on meeting back at our place. None of us felt like hitting up a bar, so Josh offered to stop and pick up a few pizzas and some beer.
It would have been the perfect ending to this shit day except for the fact that I laid in bed that night haunted by Ari’s green eyes. My dick was so fucking hard that I ended up having to jerk off to the image of Arianna Peterson’s beautiful face.