Best Friend's Brother #2 (Best Friend's Brother Romance Series - Book #2) (7 page)

She laughed, but I already wanted to kick his ass.
“Alexa, this is Brock, Russ, Danielle, Mike and the creepy pervert here is
Jeff.”

“Hi,” she said, as we slid into the booth. I put her
on the side furthest away from the asshole.

Alexa and I ordered a drink and then Brock said,
“When’s the next fight?”

“In a few days,” I told him. “I’ll leave you guys
some tickets again up front if you text me and let me know how many.”

Danielle, Mike’s girlfriend and also someone I’d
known most of my life said, “Ian, how are you’re your parents doing?” She’s a
sweet girl, and it was a nice thing for her to ask, but I didn’t really want to
talk about that right now.

“They’re doing alright,” I told her. It was mostly
true, they were getting better. I had my doubts that they’d ever really be
“okay” again. “Thanks for asking,” I said. She smiled and then looked at Alexa
and said, “Where are you from?”

“I’m from here,” Alexa said. “I’ve lived here my
whole life. I’ve been away at college for about a year.”

“Oh, I’m sorry. I just thought since I’d not seen
you around before…”

“It’s okay,” Alexa told her. “Emma was my best
friend, so I’ve known her family a long time.” I could tell by Alexa’s face
that she was like me; she didn’t want to talk about any more of that tonight. I
looked at Mike and said, “How’s the job coming?” Mike had just gotten hired on
as a security officer at the mall. It was funny, if you knew Mike and his
history. I wasn’t going to bring that up, being reluctant to share my own.

“It’s good,” he said. “I deal with a lot of little
shit heads, but it’s inside where it’s nice and cool and the pay is good. I
can’t complain. Well, I can I guess, but no one listens. I chased some punk all
the way from one end of the mall to the other because I saw him palm a
bracelet. He ditched it somewhere before I caught him and his parents are
saying now that I was “harassing” their baby.
Sickening.”

“At least you didn’t have to work the mall back when
we were in high school,” Brock said with a laugh.

“Hell, I’d have quit on my first day. They didn’t
have mall security then, did
they
? If they did, I
don’t remember seeing them.”

“Why don’t you ask Ian,” Jeff said. Damn him. This
was exactly the sort of thing I didn’t want them bringing up.

Alexa looked at me. I could see her looking at me in
my peripheral vision but I was staring at Jeff. I was trying to convey to him
with my eyes that I really didn’t want him to go there.

“Yeah Ian…that’s right man,” Russ said, getting in
on the conversation. “You would know.” Russ and Jeff are best friends and have
been since kindergarten. I would say their like one mind, but together, I think
they’d only be able to come up with one. I could still see Alexa out of the
corner of my eye. She looked curious now, but she wasn’t saying anything.

“Ancient history,” I said. “Who cares about any of
that anymore? So Brock, did you sign up for that amateur tournament I told you
about
? Wasn’t the orientation last week?”

“It was and I did. I have to say that when I went in
for the orientation, there were some big assed sons of bitches there. I hope
they don’t all look like that, they’ll kill me.”

“Ah, it’s not always about who has the bigger
muscles,” I said. “But…if you want to purse this you’ll need to get really serious
about bulking up.”

“Well, that’s something Ian knows about too,” Jeff
said. “I’ll bet he could hook you up with something that will bulk you up right
quick.”

I was staring him down now and I could tell that
Brock had picked up on my angst. He tried to steer him clear of it too. “I’ll
do alright I think. I don’t need bulk, I got skills.”

I laughed at that and tried to keep my focus on
Brock and keep Alexa’s off of Jeff. I had my hand on her leg and I was tapping
my fingers in time to the music. If Jeff opened his mouth again, I was going to
ask her to dance.

“So what do you do, Alexa?” Jeff asked her. That was
good, steer the conversation her way. She could hold her own and I seriously
doubted that she had any skeletons in the closet.

“I’m still in school,” she said.

“Oh, a smart girl,” he said. “Good for you. I should
a went
to school…or I should a become a fighter like
Ian. Then I could say screw my scholarship and make a ton of money anyways.” I
wanted to punch him in the face. Alexa looked at me and still smiling she said,
“What is he talking about?”

I tried to smile too but I was pissed, “They’re all
under the impression that I’m a UFC fighter and I’m making bank,” I told her.
She had her brow furrowed and I knew that wasn’t what she was asking. Jeff knew
it too and for whatever reason, he was all over me tonight.

“Ian gave his scholarship up. Did he tell you that?
He was a smart little nerd until what was it, sophomore year?”

“Alexa doesn’t want to hear all this old stuff,
Jeff. Let’s just drop it, okay?”

“It’s okay,” she said, “I’d like to hear more about
you when you were young.” She was being genuine and I felt like an even bigger
ass hole for wanting her not to know.

“I thought you two knew each other for years,”
Danielle said, confused about why Alexa didn’t know more about me. This shit
was getting out of hand fast and Alexa was going to have more questions than I
was prepared to answer.

“You want to dance?” I asked her. There was a
Tu
Pac song playing overhead. She looked at me
like
I was crazy and said, “No thanks.” She turned back to
Danielle and said, “I knew his family well. Ian wasn’t around much when I was
there.”

“You must not have gone over much on Sundays,” Jeff
said.

“Drop it Jeff, now!” I snapped too quickly and too
loudly. That just made Alexa more curious.

“Why? What happened on Sundays?” she asked.

“Visiting day,” Jeff said. I was picturing him with
no front teeth after I knocked them both out. He was already ugly; it might
actually help his look. Alexa turned to me and said, “What’s he talking about?”

“It doesn’t matter,” I said. “We can talk about it
later. Besides, Jeff never knows what the hell he’s talking about.”

“Aw, come on Ian. It’s fun stuff. She has a sense of
humor, right? Why are you so uptight all of a sudden?”

“I’m not uptight and none of that was fun.”

“None of what, Ian?”
Alexa asked again. Her voice was low and her questions were meant only for me,
but Jeff kept answering them. “Visiting day, where?” she asked.

“County lock-up for disorderly juveniles,” Jeff said.
“Ian was a guest there.”

“You were in jail?” she whispered that.

“It wasn’t really jail,” I said.

Jeff laughed and looked at Russ. “You remember that
nice buzz cut he was sporting when he got out, that was priceless.”

Alexa was still looking at me. I finally said, “I
spent a couple of weeks in juvenile hall. I got caught shoplifting because
these shit heads all took off and left me holding the bag.”

“Hey, we came and visited you,” Mike said, laughing.
“And don’t act all innocent, it was your idea.”

“Yeah, you wanted to see who could take the most
stuff in the shortest amount of time, remember?” Jeff said. “All I had on me
was a Mars bar, man. I wasn’t going’ down for a Mars bar. What was it you had
on you…like over five hundred dollars in merchandise?”

I felt sick to my stomach. I couldn’t even look at
Alexa’s face. The worst was yet to come though when Russ said, “Leave him
alone, man. He had to pay for his
Roids
somehow.”
Mother fucker!

Brock, thinking he was helping said, “Come on guys,
leave him alone. Seriously, out of all of us, who turned out to be the most
successful so far?”

“True that,” Jeff said. “Like I
said,
proof that you don’t need no
stinkin
’ school and no
stinkin
’ scholarship to make the bank. Maybe if someone
would have expelled me…”

“Shut up Jeff! Just shut the fuck up!” I looked at
Alexa and said, “Let’s dance.”

She didn’t look like she wanted to, but she got up
and went with me to the dance floor. The song was slow and she slipped her arms
around my neck and I put mine around her waist and pulled her into me. Her
posture was stiff and I could tell she was bothered by what had been said at
the table. Hoping to make it better I said, “I really wasn’t a delinquent. I
just made some bad choices…all of which I paid for.” She just nodded and we
finished the rest of our dance in silence. When the song was over I said, “Do
you want to go home?” she looked upset.

“No,” she said. “It’s early yet.” That wasn’t the
reply I was hoping
for
. It was early. Early enough for
Jeff to have enough time to ruin all of my chances with this girl that I was
becoming very attached
to
. We went back over to the
table and there was a fresh drink in each of our spots. Jeff said, “I felt bad
for giving you a hard time, drink up.” We thanked him, but he couldn’t leave it
at that, as usual. “The truth is, Ian is my hero,” he said, looking at Alexa.
“When we were freshmen, he wanted to wrestle. We’d all wrestled in middle
school, but high school was a different story. These guys were serious and they
were huge and we were just puny little runts.”

Alexa looked at me and smiled, “I can’t picture you
puny,” she said. I knew what was coming when Russ opened his mouth, “He wasn’t
that way for long. All he needed was a little bit of chemical persuasion.”

She didn’t bother looking at me that time. She had
put together his earlier comment about the
Roids
with
the chemical persuasion…I could see it in her eyes. She was one of the smartest
people I’ve ever met. It was stupid of me not to just tell her all of this
before she met these guys. It probably would have been less shocking that way.

“What did you gain that first year, Ian? Wasn’t it
something like fifty pounds?”

“I don’t want to talk about this shit,” I told him
again. My tone was more firm and they still didn’t get it.

“Remember when coach asked him how he was bulking up
so fast and he said that he just ate a lot while he was studying?” Mike asked.
He and Jeff laughed and then Jeff said, “Yeah, but he was winning matches so
coach didn’t really care what the answer was. Hell, he probably would have even
supplied them if Ian ran out.”

Alexa was quietly sipping her drink. These idiots
went on about my shady past for another half hour before they got tired of it
and started razzing someone else. The damage was done though; I could see it in
Alexa’s pretty green eyes. Later on in the evening Russ got on a tangent again
and went on about how I didn’t give a shit that they expelled me and how
jealous he was because he had to go to school and I got to work out every day.
It just got worse and worse.

CHAPTER
EIGHT

IAN

After a few more drinks, they all decided they
wanted to go get something to eat. I tried to beg off, but I got the feeling
Alexa was suddenly avoiding being alone with me. She wasn’t really saying
anything, to anyone, but when I said I thought we’d pass she said, “Do I get a
vote?”

“Of course,” I told her. “I’m sorry, you didn’t say
anything so I thought you didn’t want to go.”

“I’m kind of hungry,” she said.

“Okay, we’ll go.”

Danielle was their designated driver so she drove
all of those shitheads and Alexa hadn’t drank anything stronger than Pepsi, so
she drove us. We met up at a little café outside of town that we used to go to
a lot when we were teenagers and hanging out way too late on the streets. It was
a place that stirred up a lot of memories for me because there was a while
there that I didn’t really have a permanent place to live. During that time,
the owner here would let me come in at night and sweep floors and clean
windows, stuff like that in exchange for food. Brock knew a lot of that and
Jeff knew some. I was afraid that being there would just give them more fodder
to make Alexa think the worst of me. I can already tell that the respect she
held for me was waning. She had driven all the way out here without saying a
single word to me unless I asked her a question and then all I got was a one
word answer.

When we drove up in front of the café and she
started to jump out of the car I said, “Hey wait a sec, please. What’s going on
with you?”

“Nothing,” she said. It was reminiscent of the night
Kristie text me.

“Alexa, I can tell that something’s wrong. Tell me
what it is, please. Stop saying “nothing” when it is very obviously,
“something.”

“It’s nothing. I’m just hungry.” Her voice was terse
and impatient with me.

“My friends can be assholes sometimes…” I started. I
know that was a good example of me trying to put the responsibility I should be
taking off on someone else…but I was desperate.

“They’ve been nice to me. I’m just hungry, Ian,
really.”