I Stand Before You (Judge Me Not #2)(8)

“Yeah, but I don’t plan on taking one, my friend. And, I hide it better than you.” He shrugs. “Trust me, I got it covered. Just wait in the car. It’ll only take a sec.”

Tate’s always confident like this. He can talk anyone into just about anything. I always tell him he’s a natural-born salesman. Maybe if we ever get our shit together he can do something legit using his smooth ways. It’s cool, it’s Tate’s thing, and it helps make him popular. He’s an okay-looking guy—brown hair, brown eyes, kind of skinny—but it’s his smooth talk that gets him in with the girls. They eat that shit up.

We cross the state line, turn into the convenience store. No cop cars. “See, we’re good,” Tate says, still as confident as ever.

I flip up my black hoodie hood and slouch down in my seat. “Just be quick,” I mumble.

Tate hesitates, and I know something is up. “What the f*ck are you waiting for?” I ask.

He begins his sentence with “Don’t be pissed—” and I cut him off right away, hoping I won’t have to kick my good friend’s skinny ass. It would be a damn shame really, since Tate wouldn’t stand a chance against the likes of me. I am way bigger and far stronger, and the rage within me has no match.

“What?” I spit out, clenching my jaw.

Tate ignores my attitude; he’s used to it. “I kind of need you to hold on to something while I go in there. Just in case.”

“Just in case of what?”

I am running out of patience. I scrub my hand down my face, wary to hear what Tate the salesman is up to now.

He smirks, and I tell him to knock that shit off, save it for the “ladies.”

“Okay, okay.” He raises his hands in mock surrender. “I may have kind of asked Kyle to give us a little something to get our entrepreneurial gig started.”

“Us?” I say, feeling the anger rise up. “You didn’t even know I was going to sell with you until about ten minutes ago.”

“What can I say, man.” Tate places his hand over his heart. “I had faith.”

“Whatever.”

I try to stay pissed, because what he did was really out of line, but my anger fades fast. High as I am, these strong emotions are too f*cking slippery to hold on to for very long.

Tate hands me a plastic packet filled with little pills, a rainbow of color. “Jesus.” I know all too well exactly what this shit is. “X? You’re f*cking higher than I thought. We’re supposed to start small, bitch. Move a little bud, see how it goes.”

Tate shrugs. “We’ll make more money this way. Like, I know we can sell to the girls tonight. Hell, I bet we can talk them into buying our hits.”

He’s laughing at his own ingenuity, but I ignore him. I’m too busy trying to count the pills in the packet. But being in the condition I am in, it’s a bit of a challenge.

“How much is this anyway?” I ask, giving up on figuring it out for myself.

“Twenty hits,” he tells me, and then he has the balls to throw another packet in my lap. “Make that forty…maybe a little more.”

“You’re f*cking crazy. If we get caught, Tate, this isn’t possession. This is possession with intent to sell.”

“That’s why I’m leaving the shit here with you.”

“Oh, that’s real f*cking cool.” Back to being pissed, even my high can’t calm me now. I whip one of the packets back at Tate. “I am so not getting caught with forty hits of Ecstasy, *.”

“Calm down, man.” He gingerly picks up the packet I’ve just thrown and holds it out for me to take back. “If a cop shows up just hit the road.”

“What about you?” I ask as I grudgingly accept the X.

Tate grins. “Don’t worry about me. You know I can play it cool. Just swing by after the heat’s gone, and we’ll be back in business.”

“The heat? What is this, the seventies?” I ask, laughing, but Tate’s already out the door.

I tuck the two packets of Ecstasy into the back pocket of my jeans and think nothing more of it. Until a few short minutes later when a state cop pulls into the lot. Then, I panic.

I start climbing over the console to get the f*ck out of there, but, suddenly, with every fiber of my being, I know I’ve just made the dumbest mistake of my life. That, however, doesn’t stop me from slipping down into the driver’s seat, throwing the car into reverse. I hit the gas, peel out of the parking lot, and leave a cloud of gravel and dust in my wake.

I’ve got the Focus up to eighty, music playing…loud, loud, f*cking blaring. Maybe I can outrun this cocksucker? I’m tapping my hands on the steering wheel along with the beat, flying so fast it’s amazing I don’t lose control and crash.

But I don’t, I stay steady.

I even make it a good five miles down the road before a cop heading my way—backup, I’m sure—screeches to a wide arced stop in front of me. His patrol car blocks the entire road, so I have no choice but to hit the brakes and squeal to a halt.

My car ends up parallel to the cop car, both of us straddling the lanes, engines idling like we’re in some f*cking action movie. The air reeks of burning rubber, and smoke billows around us. The speakers beat out a song from 50 Cent that is frankly ironic at this point.