The Bad Boy's Choice

Chapter 4

“It wouldn’t be of any use not when he’s completely in love with someone else.”

My heart stops, it literally does. I play it cool even though I want to shake Nicole by the shoulders and find out who it is.

“Did he say that to you?”

“Not directly but sometimes you can just tell. He’s in love and maybe that crazy bitch doesn’t want him and that’s why he breaks hearts wherever he goes. It’s like a twisted form of revenge.”

Is that why he’d been with me that night? Was it only to hurt Nicole, some kind of twisted revenge? 

My heart refuses to believe that because for me, despite the fact that Cole’s been nothing but horribly mean to me for the past few years he’s also the person who’s been more refreshingly honest to me than anyone else.

I’m the mayor’s daughter, I used to date the most popular guy in town, my family’s rich. All this means that people will say or do things to please me all the while completely capable of stabbing me in the back. I haven’t been able to trust a lot of people, especially not after they tore down my brother Travis once he got expelled from college. When things get ugly it becomes obvious where the interests of others lie and when I’m with Cole I don’t have that weight of expectations over me.

But he’s also just broken my best friend’s heart so it’s highly inappropriate for me to have these thoughts.

“You know what? We don’t need either of those brothers, let’s take a break and be strong independent single women. I’ll even schedule a Beyonce dance party and throw in some pizza, you in?”

She takes one last look in Cole’s direction and gives me a strained smile. “Definitely.”

Though I should be worried about the nature of our friendship after she promptly gets up after our conversation to go back and sit with Jay and his friends.

***

My mom isn’t talking to me and it’s not the worst thing that could’ve ever happened to me. In fact not having her lecture me on the do’s and don’t of being the debutante princess I never signed up to be is oddly refreshing. She turns her face away from me as I enter the kitchen and grab a can of Diet soda from the fridge. She clicks her tongue which I know is a silent warning against consuming empty calories and a ton of sugar but I’m thirsty and not in the mood for drowning myself in the three litres of water she always wants me to.

If I start bursting out of my jeans then so be it!

I complete my homework early in the evening, give it’s a weekday there aren’t a lot of options for someone bored out of their minds. The thing about being in long term relationships is that you get so used to being the other half of a pair that when you’re on your own you tend to get bored of your own company. Maybe Jay had stopped making me happy ages ago but his constant presence was something that kept me from being sucked inside my own head for too long and I miss that. My head tends to get depressing, there are so many things that I think about, wonder if I could’ve changed.

I’ve given four years of my life to someone and when the time came to end it, I walked away without even shedding a tear over him? Do I regret all the time wasted? What would my life have been like had I been braver, more willing to risk everything and what changed recently that’s made me look at things differently?

“Tessa, you have company!”

I hear my dad’s voice call out from downstairs. Confused, I check my phone and see no texts from Nicole. Our Beyonce dance party isn’t until the weekend and usually she hangs out with some of her other friends during the week, ones that I’m not exactly comfortable being around.