Bad Things(60)
“Natalie wouldn’t know how to be anything but self-serving. A lot of conversations with her end like that. When you’re no longer useful to her, she just walks away.”
“Hmm,” I said.
“She’s a gold digger. You know the type. What she said about her ex, Howard, says it all. That was gold digger code for, we’re not dating, but I give him a blow job every time he pays my bills. Howard is almost sixty years old, by the way.”
“Yuck,” I said, watching the bombshell blonde approaching Jared and Dean. “She has to still be in her twenties.”
“She is. And that’s not even the worst of it. The whole story is just awful. She was Tristan’s high school sweetheart.”
That made my heart twist painfully in my chest.
“The fact that he won’t date, that he only hooks up, is at least partially because of that twat,” Frankie said.
That word made the side of my mouth kick up in spite of the way her statement made me feel. “Twatalie made him like that?”
Frankie threw back her head and laughed. “Oh, I like you. Yes, she did. Or at least, I blame her. Twatalie started seeing Howard when she still had Tristan’s ring on her finger.”
I went from mildly disliking Natalie to openly hating her guts with that one sentence. I couldn’t have said which made me hate her more; the fact that she’d been engaged to Tristan, or the fact that she’d cheated on him.
“That twat,” I said softly.
“Exactly,” Frankie agreed.
We reached the front of the line, and a very friendly bartender got me two margaritas, and an entire tray of tequila shots for Frankie.
I eyed up the shots dubiously. “Please tell me those aren’t all for you.”
She shrugged. “For us. I don’t like to drink alone. How hard do you think it will be to get Jared away from his pretty boyfriend?”
I glanced over at the two men. Natalie was gone, but they hadn’t stopped talking quietly to each other. “They don’t look like they want to be disturbed.”
“Well, then, let’s start without him. He’ll find us when he’s done.”
We hopped into a shallow corner of the pool, setting the drinks on the edge.
She talked me into a tequila shot, and I downed it with a grimace.
“So I know that Tristan had to work tonight. Does he know that you’re here with his brother?”
“He doesn’t.”
“Be careful about that. I know you aren’t dating, but it feels…messy to me. Those two are close. It would be a pity to drive a wedge between them.”
I sighed. “I know. I thought about dating Jared, but I’ve decided tonight that it’s not happening. It just feels wrong. I don’t want to come between them, and I don’t want to lead Jared on.”
“Have you told Jared that? He seems to be sporting a big crush.”
“I told him. It was awkward, but he was very nice about it.”
“He’s the nicest guy in the world, but I worry about him.”
That surprised me, but before I even asked, I knew what she was referring to. “Why?”
“I worry about both of the Vega brothers, but I especially worry about Jared. He’s just too open to anything, you know? He doesn’t seem to have a slow down button when it comes to drugs and alcohol. Neither of them do, but Tristan at least sticks mainly to the booze. I don’t think there’s anything Jared hasn’t tried, and at some point, you can’t just call it all experimenting.”
“Does Tristan know?”
Frankie sighed, looking like a worried mother in spite of her age. “He knows. He’ll be the first to say it’s normal to try things. When you’re smoking joints with your mother before you’re twelve, it’s hard to get perspective about it.”
I grimaced. “I went to dinner at her house, and saw some of that. I’m a total prude about drugs, and I know they’re grown-ups now, but that raised some red flags for me.”
“Don’t get me wrong, I love that woman to death, but that’s just messed up, and it isn’t even the half of it.”
“Dean handed Jared a baggie of something the second he showed up,” I told her, my voice pitched low, since Jared was approaching the pool.
“See now, that’s the shit that worries me. Dean will get him anything he wants, with no thought to what’s good for him. And I can guarantee that wasn’t just a baggie of weed.”