Bad Guy: Providence Prep High School Book 1

by Allen, Jacob

  “What are you doing?” I asked.

  “I’m being a nice guy,” he said. “I will never be a pussy like Nick. But I guess I can try and be nice once in a while.”

  Huh. Interesting. Let’s see where this goes.

  “Don’t push your luck with it, though,” Adam said. “I said I’ll be nice, not taken advantage of.”

  “Because of all the people in this world, I want to take advantage of you,” I said with a casual laugh.

  Adam ignored it. The two of us walked up to the shop, which currently had no line. Adam tried to put his hand on the small of my back, but I brushed him off. I wasn’t interested in moving that fast—or even moving in any direction, period. I didn’t even know how I’d wound up here, to be honest.

  The only thing I could say was that there was a part of me that was relishing this opportunity more than I cared to admit.

  “Hi, what can I get ya?” the cashier said.

  “I’ll—”

  “She’ll have mixed strawberry and pecan ice cream, and I’ll have—”

  A cone of chocolate and peanut butter ice cream.

  “A double cone of chocolate and peanut butter ice cream.”

  He remembers what I like.

  And I remember what he likes. He just wants more of it.

  Uh oh…

  Before I had a chance to reach for my wallet, Adam pulled out a twenty dollar bill and held it out for the cashier, even as she was still ringing up our order. I tried to get Adam to pull back the bill, but he was too strong for me to do much of anything.

  “That’s cute, you remember what I liked,” I said sarcastically.

  “I’ll bet you knew I was going to order that.”

  Don’t give anything away. Don’t give anything away. Don’t give anything away.

  “You act like I’m still obsessed with you, Adam. Don’t get your hopes up.”

  “You didn’t say no.”

  I ignored him, knowing full well that that was going to just give away the truth. I went and grabbed one of the outdoor tables, sitting on the far side in the hopes that Adam would sit away from me.

  I should have known better.

  As soon as our ice cream came out, he handed me mine—noticeably with his hand fully wrapped around it, so that I had to touch him and his hairy fingers to get to it—and then sat next to me. At least he wasn’t touching me.

  “So,” he said. “Tell me how your day has gone.”

  “The fuck?” I said, laughing.

  “I’m trying to be nice here,” Adam said. “Not sure if you notice, but I’m not very good at it.”

  “Seems to me you were perfect at it three years ago.”

  Adam ignored that, choosing to turn his attention to the ice cream before him. I sighed, took a bite of mine, and kept my eyes on the ice cream.

  “Are you going to answer my question or just use me for free ice cream?” Adam said.

  “Funny man,” I said, deciding not to call him out for him being the whole reason I was here. “It’s going good. We had a good soccer practice.”

  “I see,” he said. “And if you win on Wednesday, you take the conference, right?”

  You know that too? How much are you paying attention to me, Adam?

  “That’s right,” I said, trying not to show my surprise at what he knew about me. “It’s a tough game. Nashville Academy is a beast of a school—they recruit a lot of their players, but we’ve won every year that I’ve been on the team.”

  “So it’s time to turn the domination into a slaughter and slit their throats in conquest?”

  “Umm… yeah?” I said, laughing at the extraordinary excess of his words. “I just want to win. I’m not interested in taking over the globe.”

  “Speak for yourself,” Adam said, smirking. “Just call me Mr. Worldwide, because—”

  “Did you really just invoke Pitbull?” I said, unable to hide my laughter.

  Adam put a hand on my thigh when I laughed, and while I did pull it away, it wasn’t immediate. It was something that I had to think about.

  And, well, honestly, it was something that felt kind of good.

  This little dance between us went on as we finished our ice cream and even a little past that. I kept wondering what would happen if someone from Providence Prep saw us here, but who was? Most of the students were probably sleeping in or playing games on their phones. Whoever had dates planned were probably spending them at the house of whoever had their parents out of town.

  And even if someone saw us, I knew Adam would say something snarky that would dispel any rumors. And if he didn’t, well… that was going to open a whole different can of worms that I wasn’t sure how I would handle.

  A full hour—a full hour!—passed of us trading jokes. We even played a little bit of cornhole behind the ice cream parlor, and Adam kept talking trash. Unlike before, when I would have seen it as him bullying me, I just saw it as him being playful, and I gave it right back. That didn’t mean that I saw everything the last three years as playful, God no, but at least it was nice to see he still had the good side to him.

  At the conclusion of our last game, our ice cream long finished, Adam put his arm around my shoulders and pulled me in. I didn’t lean in to him, but I didn’t really resist, either. The still-unexpected butterflies rushing around in my belly made it all but impossible for me to do so.

  “So,” Adam said, taking me to the car and encouraging me to sit on the hood. I did so with some hesitation—I had a feeling he’d positioned me there to try and do something, to try and kiss me perhaps. “We’ve had a great day. Just like old times, right?”

  “A little,” I admitted.

  “Exactly. And so now it’s time to be more like old times. So, now that you know I am a gentleman and a scholar—”

  I rolled my eyes, but I had a smile on as I did so.

  “Dump Nick. Come with me to homecoming.”

  I sighed. He wasn’t going to give this up, was he? And even if I did go to homecoming with him… he still hadn’t apologized for anything over the previous three years. All he’d done was try and woo me for the past hour. As fun and nostalgic as that hour was, there was no way it erased what had been three years of agony, frustration, and disappointment.

  “I can’t do that, Adam,” I said.

  Immediately, Adam’s cocky smile faded, and his furious, bullying, hard-lined expression returned.

  “Maybe in the future, if you continue to demonstrate that you’re a good guy, then we can go to a future dance together. Maybe. But right now? Regardless of what’s between us, I’m not going back on my word. I said yes to Nick, and unless Nick dumps me, then I’m not—”

  “Get off my car.”

  “Adam, I’m—”

  “I said get the fuck off my car!’

  So there it was. He hadn’t asked me out because he liked me. He’d asked me out because it was a game to him, a challenge to see if he could outshine Nick. And when he had failed, he acted as he always did—like a petulant child.

  I climbed and Adam stormed by me.

  “You had your chance in eighth grade!” I shouted. “And now it’s Nick’s chance! And he’s not going to be an asshole about it!”

  Even if he has no chance. Even if Nick is not the person who makes sparks shoot off and my heart rate elevate.

  Even if that person is you when you act as you did, Adam.

  “You haven’t even apologized for anything!”

  But by this point, Adam had already gotten in the car. I moved to the side, fearful that he would back out and run me over without any hesitation. The speed at which he peeled out of his parking spot suggested as much. I took one step forward when he put his car in drive, but he gave me a middle finger and sped out at an even faster rate.

  Great.

  Just fucking great.

  I’d been brought out for ice cream not because Adam liked me, but because he wanted to troll Nick. At best, he wanted Nick to not have me. Maybe there was some s
weetness and some misguided sense of protection in that, but for the most part, I just was fucking frustrated with Adam.

  And on top of that, now I had to find my own way back to my car in the high school lot, because Adam had abandoned me.

  I reached into my pocket, grabbed my phone, and groaned. Two percent battery. I had to spend it on the only person whom I knew I could rely on immediately.

  “Hi Jackie,” I said when she answered. “Can you come get me at Mama’s Ice Cream? It’s a long story. I was a fool.”

  14

  Adam

  Three Years Ago

  I just couldn’t make sense of it.

  My stepfather… he just used my mom for sex? He didn’t love her?

  Why? Why would he have done that? Why would he have married my mom and brought her in if he didn’t love her?

  It felt like everything that I knew about the world was getting thrown upside down. People married for reasons more than love. Maybe I was naive—I liked to think not, given my father’s death and how my mother had ignored me then—but I liked to think that love was the primary motive for people getting married.

  But now, sitting at our kitchen table, waiting for Mom to come home, I knew that my stepfather hadn’t been bullshitting when he said what he did.

  I knew so because, when me and my two best friends, Nick and Kevin, were walking around downtown after a movie, we saw my stepfather kissing and touching a woman that was not my mother. He was cheating on her.

  I was beginning to think that love was nothing more than an illusion, a rush that people got that lasted for a few months before it all dissolved. What did that mean for Emily and me?

  So far, it meant that I was scared for how we would turn out. And that fear had caused me to push her away. I didn’t know how to handle it, and when Emily kept asking me more and more questions, I got more and more annoyed. Couldn’t she see I just wanted space to understand things? Couldn’t she see I didn’t know the answers to her questions?

  I wasn’t happy that I’d exploded at her. I wasn’t happy that I’d pushed her away. But I wasn’t happy, either, that she seemed unsympathetic to what I was dealing with.

  The front door opened. I heard my mother muttering something from the front door, and the door closed seconds later. She came in with four bags of groceries.

  “Adam, will you be a dear and help me?”

  “Yeah,” I grumbled.

  I needed to confront Mom about my stepfather’s cheating. I needed to say something. But what? I was scared and nervous to. If Mom rejected it and ignored what I had said, then I’d be even worse. And what if she did?

  “How was your day, sweetie?”

  “Fine,” I said, my voice barely rising loud enough for her to hear it.

  “Adam?”

  “I saw Sam cheating on you, Mom!”

  I never used my stepfather’s real name. And now that I’d seen him act like an evil person to my mother, I wasn’t about to either. But I blurted out the name, and probably for the best. If I’d called him “Asshole” as I liked to, my mom would have been appalled at the language.

  “Adam, what are you talking about?” my mother said with a nervous laughter.

  “The boys and I, we were coming out of the Deadpool movie—”

  “You saw an R-rated movie?”

  “Mom!”

  That got her attention back. I already felt like this was going badly if Mom was more focused on me seeing an R-rated movie than anything that her husband did.

  “He was kissing another woman!” I said. “We saw him clearly!”

  “I… that’s not like Samuel, Adam,” Mom said, but her eyes were downcast. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. He…”

  “He did, Mom, I swear to God, I swear on my life!” I said. “He’s cheating on you!”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “God!”

  Were all women this stupid? Were all relationships this destined to be fall of unfaithfulness?

  “I wish Dad were still here!” I said. “At least he wouldn’t cheat on you. At least he—”

  “Adam,” Mom said. “Your father cheated on me too.”

  I stood, stunned. No… not Dad. Dad was a superhero who had died young. Dad was the guy who played basketball with me. Dad was the guy who made me laugh more than anyone. Dad…

  Dad was perfect.

  “Mom?”

  “Your father,” my mother said, sobbing. “He didn’t think I was beautiful after Ryan was born. So he came home later and later each night. I didn’t want to do anything about it, because I wanted to keep the family happy. I wanted us to look like a happy family to the world. A father, a mother, and two handsome sons. And everyone thought we were perfect. And instead…”

  By now, Mom’s tears were coming out full force. She was seated at the kitchen island, on a stool, her body hunched over.

  “He died because he contracted a disease from another woman,” Mom said. “Adam, your father is gone… because of what he did. I’m sorry. I don’t even know why I’m telling you this, but…”

  Her sobbing took over her words, and she could say nothing else.

  But she didn’t need to say anything else. My world was shattered. The one person I had believed in most, the one person whom I thought was perfect… not only was he not perfect, he was just like my stepfather. A cheating scoundrel.

  I didn’t know what disease he’d contracted, but I knew well enough that he deserved it.

  But I also knew if he had done it, if my stepfather had done it, there was no way any relationship, any marriage could last without betrayal. My father was still perfect in every other way, but if even perfection could not prevent chasing other girls…

  Emily and I could not last.

  I knew that then. Either she could cheat, or I would grow bored and hurt her by cheating. Either way, such a thing couldn’t last. It wouldn’t last.

  I had never cheated on her. Hell, I felt guilty looking at other women. I had barely even had any serious arguments with her. Maybe twice in the time that I’d known her, we’d had a fight that resulted in one of us storming out on the other.

  But now…

  Fuck.

  How could it last?

  I left my mother, numb, walking to my room. Ryan saw me and called to me, but I walked past him like a zombie, hearing but not listening to his calls for me. When I got to my room, I saw that Emily had texted me. I’d barely spoken to her since our blowup at the mall last week, and she seemed intent on fixing it.

  “Can u plz let me kno what’s goin on?” she had written. “I want to help u feel better.”

  There was no making me feel better. There was no making this work. Not when I knew all relationships were destined to end. Better to cut it off now, let her find someone else she could pretend to make it work with, and let me casually date. At least I would be honest about it. At least I wouldn’t pretend that love was real.

  “No,” I wrote back. I thought of adding more, but I decided not to say anything else. The more curt I got, the more I hoped Emily would get the picture.

  But instead, it only prompted Emily to send emojis my way—emojis of people crying and feeling sad.

  “I just want u happy, and I miss that.”

  She wasn’t getting the picture. I just needed to tell her the truth. I just needed to tell her we weren’t going to work out, that no relationship was going to work out. I needed to tell her how much I now hated my father and my stepfather alike.

  But I couldn’t muster the courage. Every time I wrote that we were breaking up and it was over, I deleted the words. I couldn’t bring myself to send such a message. It felt…

  Emily was too nice to receive a message that brutal.

  So I decided to take the coward’s way out.

  I’d act in such a way that she would eventually feel she had no choice but to walk away.

  “I’ll be happy when you leave me alone,” I wrote back.

>   Emily sent another teary-eyed emoji, but I ignored it, tossing my phone on the ground and screaming in frustration.

  She was hurt.

  I was hurt.

  But at least I would get an out from something much more painful in the years ahead.

  I wish I could fool myself like other people do. Maybe then I could believe in love.

  Might have been easier if not for my dad and stepdad.

  * * *

  Present Day

  We had a sweet-ass limo, booked on my parents’ credit card, pick up the Broad Street Boys en route to homecoming.

  Well, three quarters of the Broad Street Boys.

  I had one of the hottest cheerleaders and one of the girls in my class that I had not slept with, Janelle or Janice—what the fuck did it matter—by my side. She was a tanned brunette who took very little care to hide the cleavage bursting from her dress.

  Kevin had some girl from his Spanish class named Christine who, apparently, was even poorer than he was. I had relentlessly mocked him on what it felt like to finally be a higher class than those around him, and naturally, Kevin had played along. For someone who was so dominating and controlling to other people, he sure was awfully submissive to me.

  Ryan had some girl named Cassandra who was all up on his crotch, but he spent the night saying he was going to dump her for some other chick named Anna. I had no idea who either of his girls were, and I really didn’t give two shits. So long as they stayed far away from me, Emily, and Nick, we were good.

  “Feels incomplete without—”

  “Swear to God, Ryan,” I snapped.

  So much for that.

  “Enough of that bullshit,” I said as I reached into my pocket. “Let’s instead celebrate in a little bit better fashion, shall we?”

  I pulled out a small bottle of Fireball Whiskey, not quite a full fifth, but enough that it would get all of us buzzed. The girls, including Jane—that’s what I decided to call her—cheered loudly, while Kevin and Ryan just casually smirked. We’d all had drinks before, we knew how to handle our liquor. Apparently, the gals did not.