Rock Bottom Girl(98)

“Come on,” I said, herding her down the hall, careful not to touch her. “Let’s go to the locker room.”

“I wanna go home!” Amie Jo wailed.

“You can’t get in your car like this,” I told her, guiding her into the locker room. She drove an Escalade worth more than my sister’s husband’s medical school student loans. Donkey shit would probably total the car.

Fat tears trickled down her cheeks, sluicing through her thick makeup.

I turned on the water in one of the individual shower stalls and pushed her toward it. “Go, shower. I’ll bring you a bag for your clothes and something to change into.”

Amie Jo was still sucking in angry, shaky breaths but didn’t argue. She simply snapped the curtain closed.

I dug out a plastic grocery bag from my office and delved into my emergency clothes. Yoga pants and an oversized hoodie. I found a left Puma sneaker and a right flip-flop in the lost and found box and a couple of scratchy sweat towels. Returning with my arms full, I dumped everything in the dressing area of the shower stall.

Ducking my head back out in the hall, I saw that cleanup was beginning on the Shit Heard Round the World. The shop teacher was patting Donkey Ote’s nose with his good five-fingered hand. It looked like it was all under control. I turned to head back into the locker room when someone calling my name stopped me.

Travis. I wondered when I’d stop reacting to him with visceral guilt.

“Hey,” he said.

“Hey.” He really was pretty. I wondered what a nice guy like him was doing with a hell beast like Amie Jo.

“Uh, is Amie Jo okay?” he asked.

“Oh, yeah. She’s in the shower. But I think she’s going to need new shoes.”

“She’s got her driving Uggs in the car. I’ll grab them,” he volunteered.

“Cool,” I nodded. Driving Uggs. Eye roll.

“Yeah,” he said, running a hand through his thick hair. “Hey, it’s nice to have you back in town.”

I bobbed my head in what I hoped was an appropriate response. “It’s nice to be back.”

“Well, I guess I’ll…” He pointed his thumb over his shoulder toward the parking lot.

“Yeah.”

He walked away, and I watched him go. His butt was nice. Not as muscley and firm as Jake’s but still appreciable. I’d rather stare at his butt than have another conversation with him though. My guilt over the breakup and ensuing broken leg still weighed on me.

Travis and I hadn’t spoken much after I broke up with him. Really only to confirm that he was not the fake father to my fake baby. After Homecoming, well, he’d understandably avoided me. By January he’d been dating Amie Jo. We moved in different circles, and I’d hurt him. Mentally and physically. I didn’t know if he hated me or if he was grateful that I’d ended things when I did so he hadn’t been saddled with me. There were a lot of things I didn’t know. But one thing I did know was that between the teenage and adult versions of Travis and Jake, only one of them consistently tied me up in knots.

And I’d be walking away from him in a few short weeks.

“Mars?”

I jumped, turning away from Travis’s retreating butt. Jake was eyeing me, his hand firmly grasping Bertha’s bridle.

“Everything all right?” he asked. Bertha crossed her eyes at me.

I nodded. “Yep. Great. I, uh, gotta check on She Who Shall Not Be Named.”

Amie Jo was out of the shower and done crying when I returned.

I was annoyed by how cute and approachable she looked with wet hair and my clothes. Why couldn’t mean people be ugly on the outside, too?

She handed me the plastic bag full of shitty clothes as if it were my job to dispose of them.

“They all laughed at me,” Amie Jo said flatly.

“Well, you did do the backstroke in a half ton of donkey shit,” I pointed out. “Imagine if it would have been me. You would have laughed.”

She looked at me, eyes narrowing. “But you didn’t laugh. Everyone else did.”

“I know what it’s like to be laughed at.” It was as simple as that.

“Oh,” she said.

“Travis is getting you your driving Uggs,” I said, pointing at the mismatched shoes on her feet.

“Why? I want to go home!”

“Look, Amie Jo. Take it from me. If you go home in shame, this will follow you. However, if you march out there in your driving Uggs and your borrowed clothes and collect donations and at least pretend to laugh it off, it’ll slide right off of you, and you’ll be back to your reign of terror in no time.”

There was a knock on the locker room door. “Amie Jo? Honey? I’ve got your Uggs and your emergency perfume,” Travis called.

Nostrils flaring, Amie Jo straightened her shoulders and marched around me to the door.





58





Jake





“Everything go okay in there, or do you need a mop for the bloodshed?” I asked Marley when she came back out of the locker room.

She took her donkey’s bridle and scratched his nose with a small smile. Dressed in a hoodie and jeans, her hair in a messy knot, she looked edible to me.

“Everything’s fine,” she said.