Tough Guy: PROVIDENCE PREP HIGH SCHOOL BOOK 2

by Allen, Jacob

  “And right now, you are showing that you want to be an asshole to her.”

  I really didn’t think I’d done it that much. I definitely wasn’t subtle in pushing her away, and I definitely relished the fact that I could largely get her to do whatever I wanted. But for it to be obvious enough to Adam? Adam fucking Collins?

  “I just thought I was being sarcastic, but whatever,” I said. “What about Emily? Has she talked to Jackie about it?”

  “Duh, they’re friends,” Adam said with a snort. “Anyways, Emily just says we all know Jackie likes you, but we all tell her you’re not interested. Seems pretty obvious.”

  That’s what’s obvious?

  Adam, having already gotten down to his boxers, hurried to the shower and quickly changed, leaving me to sit by the lockers and try and figure out what sort of message I wanted to send to Jackie. I didn’t mind being the ass when she was being push.

  But for me to do it so much that it seemed like the default? Was my sarcasm really that grating on her? It wasn’t my fucking fault that she couldn’t handle it… right?

  It was all kind of funny. I didn’t know if “interested” was the right word to describe how I felt about Jackie. Curious, definitely. Curious enough to try anything? Curious enough to, say, convince her to ask me to Sadie Hawkins?

  I saw two ways that could go. The first was for her to ask me out, for her to become better about not being so damn naggy, and for us to actually work out. That was the ideal. It was most certainly not the probable.

  The second was for her to become even pushier, having gotten what she wanted—the classic “given an inch, take a mile.” That was a good way for me to wish that internal combustion was real so that I could explode and not have to listen to her non-stop questions. I might be dead, but that would be better than having Jackie smile at me and wish me a good morning when I’d made it abundantly clear I just wanted to listen to Styx and Metallica and not have to deal with the outside world. This was not the ideal, but it was most definitely the probable.

  With all of that said, though, it didn’t really matter, because even if Jackie managed to strike the perfect balance and we wound up trying to make it work—whatever the fuck “it” was—she wouldn’t like me in the slightest when she knew the full truth about me. When she discovered my home life and how much of a fraud I was to be called a Broad Street Boy, she would run like a deer from a lion.

  Except in this case, the deer would run because the lion was a bitch, not because the lion was a mean, tough motherfucker.

  * * *

  Lunch rolled around, and for the most part, I forgot about what Adam had said in the locker room. The only part I didn’t forget was Adam’s half-compliment about how I was athletic for a big guy, because when compliments came from Adam, it was akin to getting rainfall in Las Vegas.

  It helped that I didn’t share any classes with Jackie. I also managed to avoid passing her in the halls, avoiding her smiling at me as I scowled at her. Which might be part of why people think you’re just an ass to her. You can’t smile?

  Fuck no. That’s a good way to make her think you’re interested. Most you can give her is just bored neutral, but I sure as shit wouldn’t give her more.

  I headed to the cafeteria, passing the library on my left, when I saw a sight I had not expected.

  Jackie was eating by herself.

  God, I knew that feeling too well. I knew that feeling from skipping around multiple schools in my childhood. I knew that feeling from my father leaving me at the table to eat by myself. That feeling fucking sucked.

  I wanted nothing to do with it.

  I went to the cafeteria, trying to shake the memories that seeing Jackie by herself gave me. It was miserable thinking about it, honestly. Where were Emily and Samantha? Sure, maybe Emily was eating with Adam, but what about Samantha? What kind of fucking friends did she have if they led her by themselves?

  When I got to the cafeteria, I was kind of relieved to see Adam and Nick accompanied not by Emily, but by Ryan. Ryan was an annoying little shit that I couldn’t stand—and yet, somehow, Adam was the only one in the group allowed to talk shit about him—but he was better than Jackie, if only because I didn’t feel like I had to fake my emotions around him.

  I sat down, nodded to Nick and Adam, and took a bite of my bagged lunch—an apple and a ham and cheese sandwich—as the two of them resumed conversation.

  “I can’t believe the Grizzlies lost that game last night,” Adam said.

  Oh, fucking great. Basketball. Another reason I’m a fake in comparison to the rest of the guys. I don’t really care that much about sports.

  “I know, right?” Nick said. “Maybe if Coach Jenkins hadn’t traded away all our best players, we’d actually be in a position to win.”

  “We’ve got youth, though.”

  None of these words mean anything to me. I know what the team’s jersey colors are only because I’ve watched games with them. But if I had my way, I wouldn’t ever watch a game of basketball other than whatever school I go to college at.

  “Yeah, but youth doesn’t mean shit if it’s not winning games,” Nick shot back.

  “And I suppose you’d be the savior?” Ryan said.

  “Fuck you, sophomore,” Nick said. “I never claimed to be some stud. I only claimed that I’m good enough to play at the D-1 level.”

  Oh, boy, here we go again.

  I let the argument go on about sports and college athletics for a little longer before I realized a really obvious truth.

  I would rather spend my lunch with…

  Well, not her.

  But she sure seemed like the only fucking option at this point. Everyone else had their friend circle, and at this point, if I tried to fit into any other circle, I’d be the laughing stock of our class. As it was, the only reason people respected me, I felt, was because I was an honorary Broad Street Boy. If they knew how poor I was, if they knew how much I didn’t belong, if they knew how little respect I commanded…

  Fuck.

  I had to go somewhere where I had a little bit of control.

  “Shit, you know what, I’ve gotta catch up on school,” I said to no one in particular as I stood up.

  Ryan and Nick didn’t even turn their heads. The two of them were caught up in some argument about how good Ryan would be at basketball and football if he’d actually bothered to train. Adam noticed me and cocked an eyebrow, to which I just nodded to the library. He didn’t seem to get it, but he’d surely hear later. When he and Emily crossed paths, she would already know the news. I knew how girls gossiped.

  I escaped the brouhaha of the cafeteria, emerged into the gentle stirring of the hallway, and found the quiet refuge of the library. Naturally, my eyes found Jackie immediately, and she was still there, reading a book. From this far, obviously, I couldn’t see what the book was, but I could see she was having some sort of vegan lunch with rice, stir fry vegetables, and black beans.

  No wonder the girl was so healthy. She was probably just as poor as me, and the only thing she could afford was a diet full of greens. If her family had any money, they would’ve bought her something much nicer than some fucking vegan Chinese food.

  I took a deep breath. I vowed not to be a jackass.

  If, that was, Jackie didn’t turn into a nagging bitch.

  7

  Jackie

  Admittedly, when I first walked into the cafeteria and realized that Emily and Samantha would have different lunch periods than me, I felt disappointed.

  This period had a mix of students, so I recognized some of the underclassmen, but it wasn’t like I was friends with them. It was more like I nodded to them, smiled at them, and said hi, but generally left it at that.

  When I thought about it, though, I realized it could actually have enormous benefits. It was an additional fifty minutes of time that I had to focus on schoolwork or my own passions. It was fifty minutes I could get to feed my introverted side. It was fifty minutes I could get in w
hich I could get over any of the petty drama from the day.

  And so, what had started as a sinking feeling that I’d be eating alone instead became a grateful, pleasant feeling that I could enjoy this quiet time alone. Today, pulling out my stir-fry lunch, I started to poke at the rice and veggies with a fork as I read a book about dolphins in the Gulf of Mexico and the effects of pollution on them. It was a nerdy topic, I knew, but it was a nerdy topic that I was happy to embrace. If this was my career—

  “Sitting by yourself at lunch, huh?”

  I looked up to see Kevin leaning forward at my table, both of his hands spread out, as if leaning forward on a conference table like a powerful executive. With the glare in both of his eyes and his intimidating size, it wasn’t hard to imagine that this would be his future in twenty, thirty years. I bit my lip and tried to smile, but the memory of trying to start this last semester off on a positive note lingered in my mind.

  “I’m enjoying my quiet time, that’s all,” I said. “What’s up?”

  Kevin nodded, bowed his head for a second, and took a breath. It was difficult to read him, but at least he hadn’t come running out of the gate with insults and smart remarks on me.

  “You asked Adam about me?”

  Shit!

  I didn’t even swear much in my mind, but this was the only response I could muster. I should have known that just because Adam was a changed man with Emily didn’t mean he’d be a changed man with all of us. That was a stupid move on my part. He and Kevin were very close friends; why wouldn’t something like this have happened?

  At this point, the only way forward seemed to be to tell the truth. Guys like Kevin and Adam thrived on sensing when someone was trying to hide behind some sort of lie. And that aside, I just didn’t like lying. At the risk of sounding too much like my mother, it brought bad energy.

  “Yeah,” I said. “I was wondering why you are so mean to me.”

  I’d meant to keep my response curt, but once it came out, it was like a single hole that soon caused the entire flimsy mental dam to burst.

  “I try to be nice to you and smile at you, but you always mock me and push me away. It hurts to see you treat me this way, especially because all I’m trying to do is make you happy and give you some good vibes during your day.”

  Kevin sighed. At least he was taking the time to make sure he worded his responses much more carefully than before. He wasn’t so prone to being a rapid-response jackass as he was before.

  Though that didn’t mean the words didn’t cross his mind, that much was obvious.

  “You know that maybe it’s because when I try to get it into your head that I don’t want your attention, you ignore it and keep coming at me.”

  There was a sort of understated vitriol to his words, like he knew they had some poison to them, but he wasn’t willing to go so far as to unleash it in full. I was trying to decide if it was a good thing that Kevin was holding it back, or if he shouldn’t deserve credit for being nice about something that any normal human being would have been nice about anyways. I didn’t think he should get a curve just because his default behavior was condescending and rude.

  “It’s like you don’t listen to me. Sometimes, I just want to be alone.”

  “I get that, but don’t you want to be happy?” I said. “I like making people happy. What’s so wrong with that?”

  “Well, maybe when someone doesn’t want to be happy, you shouldn’t help them.”

  What… who would want that?

  I understood that not everyone found the exuberant, exaggerated happiness honest. In fact, I found it a little fake myself as well.

  But to not be happy at all?

  That was only the case if someone had a miserable life around it and hated the feelings of seeing other people happy. Or—rather, and on top of that—if someone had very little self-esteem and self-worth, maybe they felt they didn’t deserve happiness.

  Either way, I was beginning to realize I knew very little about Kevin Torres. Despite my constant interaction with him, he had so many layers of protective guarding against him that I had only just begun to scratch the surface.

  And then I said the words that left Kevin speechless.

  “Well, I think everyone wants to be happy. Some people just don’t know how to ask for it or don’t think they deserve it.”

  Not only did Kevin go silent, he couldn’t even look me in the eyes when I said that. I gave him a few moments of silence, opening my mouth to follow up a couple of times before I thought better of it. But when it got to an awkwardly long period of time, I couldn’t help myself any longer.

  “Do you want happiness, Kevin?”

  Another long pause came. The only thing I heard was the ticking of the clock on the wall, and that it was so isolated made every tick feel like some sort of ominous warning that something drastic was going to come.

  But instead of that, Kevin only uttered four sad, upsetting words.

  “I only want silence.”

  Before I could say a word, he headed out of the library, leaving me to dwell in the very silence that he so desperately craved and, somehow, wasn’t getting in his life.

  8

  Kevin

  Well, that ended up sucking much more than I would have thought.

  I slumped against the outside of the library, caught between two worlds—one in which I felt exposed as someone who wasn’t as puffed up as I thought I was, the other in which I appeared to be that guy who was the shit and was an awesome guy but who had his own internal struggles. It was like I had to pick which I preferred, feeling bad or feeling exposed.

  Neither really worked for me. I supposed that starting tomorrow, I would just stick to feeling bad on the inside. At least staying with the Broad Street Boys would get me laid, get me status, and keep me in the circle of the rich kids. It wasn’t something that I necessarily enjoyed, but when the alternative was to be alone and be shown to everyone around me for whom I was…

  I’d made it this far being a Broad Street Boy. I could keep doing so for another few months.

  That was the hope, at least.

  * * *

  I saw Jackie and Emily chatting between the penultimate and final period of the day, but their smiles and giggles made me feel like they weren’t discussing me. There wasn’t anything funny or nice about our discussion, and Jackie was too nice to gossip anyways.

  I should’ve known better, though.

  When the final bell rang, I immediately made a beeline for my car in the school parking lot. Just as I liked to get to school early, I also liked to leave as soon as I could. Unlike someone like Emily, who had soccer practice, or Nick, who played a bunch of sports year-round, I didn’t have any school activities. My father didn’t want me to do anything but get good grades, and so that meant no football, no clubs, nothing.

  Was it any wonder that I was always an asshole to everyone?

  I got to the front door when I heard a voice I really didn’t care to hear at that moment.

  “Hey, puppy!”

  Goddamnit, Adam, I’m going to fucking kill you before the end of the school year.

  I paused, turned, and raised my chin, as if to say “you can call me puppy, but I’m not afraid to stand up to you.”

  “How’s your new girlfriend?”

  I arched an eyebrow at him as I folded my arms. Other students brushed by me; I looked a security guard overlooking the field, making sure no one was doing anything meriting detention. Depending on what direction Adam took this conversation, there was a pretty decent chance that the one winding up in detention would be me.

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “Oh, wait, that’s right. You don’t know how to ask for her or don’t think you deserve her! I remember now.”

  My face went red with anger as I felt my fingers curl in and tighten, forming two fists that might as well have been weapons used with the intent to murder. How fucking dare Jackie tell Emily. How fucking dare Emily tell Adam. And
how most fucking dare of all Adam decide to taunt me with a private conversation like that.

  Did this motherfucker have no boundaries?!? Did this asshole not realize anything about what was private and what was public?

  Being with the Broad Street Boys had been great for the last four and a half years because of the perks that came and because Adam usually wasn’t an ass. Yet, ever since he’d started dating Emily, it’s like he needed to find a new outlet for his bullying, bullshit ways. He needed a target, and he’d decided that I was the target. I was always the target to some extent, but this was a new degree of it.

  “I mean, you might as well go to Sadie Hawkins with her,” Adam continued. “Who else is going to ask a poor kid out? The homeless kid at the Panera across the street?”

  If Adam had any idea how much this was wearing on me, if he had any idea how close I was to knocking the fuck out of him right then and there, I think he would have backed off. I wasn’t a trained martial arts fighter nor an athlete, but I was the biggest Broad Street Boy, and basic figures of mass times acceleration equaling force suggested that anyone who sought to fight me would probably not come out alive on the other side.

  “She has to ask me out first.”

  “Maybe you should make yourself available,” Adam said, something meant to be continually sarcastic and rude but something that somehow wound up actually being more truthful and on the nose than I cared to admit. “Good news for you is that now I’m not single. So maybe you can keep them.”

  Oh, right. That was another fucking reminder of how much this guy could be a pain in the ass.

  As the de facto bouncer of the Broad Street Boys, I was the first person many girls went through to meet the rest of our group. Adam might have been the founder, but I was the front line, that first defense, if you will. In theory, this got me laid a lot, and I guess in practice, it did.