Tipping The Scales: Knox (Mate Craze)(3)

Chances were, I had missed a ramble about her recent encounter with some frat guy. She had the worst taste in guys. She would argue I did, since I had turned down everyone this year. She’d be wrong. I just have my priorities, and they require all of my time and energy. She still thought true love could be found after a drunken make-out session.

“I’m driving.” I let out an exasperated sigh to counter her annoyance. If I immediately apologized, she would milk it for all it was worth and still be upset, but if I came back on equal footing, she seemed to drop it right away. We were so very different, yet at the same time so alike. It was no surprise we had become friends after The Great Roommate Fiasco of Sophomore Year, which had been more of an administrative confusion than a fiasco, but fiasco sounded so much more interesting.

Even so, a tinge of guilt hit me at my dishonest response. I mean, it wasn’t completely dishonest. I was actually driving the car, but my focus wasn’t on the road as it should’ve been. I was too deep in planning mode. I had one week to get an entire semester’s worth of work done, and get it done to beyond perfection. My thesis had to remain my focus. Sadly, that meant I needed every moment to plan, organize, research, and execute, even if it turned me into the world’s worst friend.

It wasn’t as if I had actually invited Rhi. She found out I was going to spend spring break in Castleton, remembered my drunken tale of the one that got away when I was there last summer with my mom, and next thing I knew, she was coming with. Not that I minded. Rhi was a pain in the rump, but she was my pain. Besides, I knew that while her family was much more well-off financially than mine was, something was not happy in Familyville. Rhi never said it outright, but my guess was either one, or both, of her parents were on the abusive side. I never witnessed anything concrete, but more than once I swore I saw fear cross her eyes as the phone rang and she saw it was them.

“Which can include listening.” Her sing-song voice pulled me back to the topic at hand. She always sang the silliest things—what she wanted for breakfast, that I needed to hurry out of the shower, what she was going to wear. Now, ask her to sing karaoke and all of a sudden she was a mute. Silly Rhi. I could feel her eyes giving me her famous “you know I’m right” roll and almost belted out a laugh. Almost.

“Truth,” I admitted not wanting her to realize the intense need I had to ace this thesis. She knew me well enough to know that more was going on than watching for road signs. Rhi didn’t understand my need to earn the Jonathon Johnson Scholarship, which included tuition, books, and fees to law school. Her parents paid full boat for her undergraduate under the condition she actually go to college. I would bet my big toe they would actually pay her to get a graduate degree, but she had zero desire to do so. “Sorry. What were you saying?”

“I was asking if we were almost there yet.”

“Sounds like I was smart to tune you out. What are you, five?” I waited for her to start chanting her question over and over again. It never came.

“Wise ass.” Pinch. I should have seen that coming. “Seriously. I need to pee.”

I was the worst friend ever. In my rush to get started on my work, I had skipped over the polite “Do you need to stop?” as we passed by the infrequent rest areas.

“A forty-two ounce cola tends to do that.” I attempted to lighten the mood more for myself than Rhi. She was much better about going with the flow than I was, and I bet if I told her I would pull over for her to heed nature’s call, she would take it as a challenge and get to it. Heck, she would wear it as a badge of honor.

“A girl needs her sugar and caffeine.” A high pitched squeal that only belonged in a boy band concert assaulted my ears. “Look, there’s a gas station.”

“We only have an hour to go,” I teased.

“Unlike you, I’m a quitter.”

We both laughed, knowing that neither of us were quitters, just focused on different arenas. I was all go and get ‘em with the grades and she was similar, only with loser guys and potential art exhibits.

“And I’m stopping.” I flicked on the blinkers. “I was only teasing.”

“You so have to pee, too,” she sang back to me.

“Maybe.” Or more accurately, I was fine until she put the idea in my head and now every second felt like an eternity. Darn the power of suggestion.

“Remind me again why we are going north instead of south for spring break?”

As we turned off the ramp, I passed a “gas one mile to the left” sign. It could’ve been worse. That morning we had turned off for coffee, and coffee was to the right seven miles. We were not in the city anymore.

“I’m going for research on my thesis,” I reminded her for what I had no doubt would be the first of five bazillion times for the week. I could already hear her pleas to go to the bar or the diner, for those were the choices in town. I had warned her multiple times. If she got bored, too bad, so sad. “You’re going because… I have no idea why. Maybe you would miss me too much.” I stuck my tongue out raspberry style just as the gas station came into view. Thank goodness.

“Maybe I wanna meet that sex on a stick guy you met last summer.”

Leave it to Rhi to remember my tales of romantic woe after a night of listening to her latest crash and burn with yet another loser. And met wasn’t an accurate word. No, it was more like stalking. Silly me had thought letting her know that I liked a guy so much I snuck out to follow a guy, only to discover he was at a bar while I was six months too young to enter would lead to laughter and forgetting her current heartbreak. After all, only I could orchestrate a masterfully rebellious escape to wind up back in bed a mere twenty minutes later.