Page 4 of Just the tip

We wonthe game and stopped at a pizza joint to celebrate on the way back. By the time the bus pulled back to the school parking lot, it was almost midnight. Three texts I’d sent to Graham about my paper had gone unanswered, and I was officially antsy.

On a hunch, I skimmed his Instagram, and sure enough, he had a new update. The photo was grainy in the darkness in front of a stage, one hand thrown up in devil’s horns that looked sardonic given that wild, wide display of teeth.

That motherfucker had thrown me under the bus. I should’ve known better. He’d had it out for me for months, and I’d handed him the perfect excuse to fuck me over.

My blood boiled all the way home, and as soon as I stopped by my parent’s room to poke my head through and tell them I was home, I stalked moodily toward Graham’s bedroom, rage bubbling through me with every step closer. His door was closed, no light coming from beneath it, but I didn’t even knock. I half expected him not to be there, despite the fact that the car had been in the drive.

Graham glanced up from his keyboard as I flung his door open brutishly. The light from the computer screen painted his face in a white-and-blue cast. He had his glasses on and nudged them up carelessly with a little knock of one knuckle as he leaned back. He was shirtless, just a pair of dark boxers on, lithe chest smooth and hairless, his nipples dark and flat and tiny, one of them pierced through with a miniature tusk. Barb had lost her shit over that, but not as much as the quirky jellyfish tattoo on his left pec. It moved with every breath, and I caught myself staring at it until I shook my head, remembering what a jerk he was.

“I thought we had an agreement, you prick.” I had to squeeze the words out through my teeth.

Graham gave me a lazy, leonine smile and extended his middle finger high in the air. Just as I was about to reach out and grab it the way he’d done to me that morning, he turned it upside down and jabbed a button on his keyboard.

The printer on his desk came to life with a whir and began spitting out page after page. I wanted to punch that self-satisfied smirk off his face. He knew. He knew what I’d been thinking.

“You did that shit on purpose just to make me sweat, didn’t you?”

“Just helping you exercise your skills at remaining calm under pressure. You’re failing, by the way.” Graham arched his back in a stretch, and I forced myself to keep my eyes on his face before bending to yank the pages from the printer and flip through them.

“They’re all there,” he said, eyeing me and grinning as I skimmed the paragraphs. “Including enough grammar and syntax errors for credibility.”

I pressed my lips together and exhaled through my nose. It was insulting, even if it was probably a good call. And plus, some fucked-up part of me kind of liked that he’d gone to the effort to make it as realistic as possible. “Your Instagram, though…you were out. How did you…?”

“Not all of us need days to write a basic-ass paper.”

It was too far. Even he knew it. I wasn’t fucking Newton, but I wasn’t a dumbass by any means. I made B’s and C’s, and I worked hard. I wasn’t a slacker, but I also wasn’t ever going to be on Graham’s level scholastically, the same way he wasn’t ever going to be on my level on a basketball court or soccer field. It still stung. “You know what? I’m fucking done with this. It’s old. I don’t know exactly what I did to piss you off so much, but I don’t even care now. It’s either jealousy or some fucked-up twist on mommy issues.” I rolled up the paper and took a backward step toward the door.

Something shifted in his expression. A shadow passed through that I could glimpse before his eyes hardened again. He said something softly, but I’d already backed fully through the doorway and spun on my heel, pulling the door shut firmly behind me. As mad as I was, somehow I felt relieved. Because all of those feelings I had for him, they weren’t supposed to exist anyway, and the more genuinely angry I was at him, the more they faded in the background, and I felt less like a mental case.

The next morning, when Graham inevitably laid on the car horn, I slipped out the front door, walked down the driveway to the car, and then just kept on walking past it without even looking at him.

3

Graham

I’d seriously underestimated Ryan’s cold shoulder game. In weeks he’d barely spoken a word to me and, what was more, he hardly looked at me. Or if he did, it was with a glazed, vacant-eyed look that suggested his mind was light years away, that he wasn’t really seeing me. That I didn’t exist.

I hated it. More than I could ever hate him.

He lay stretched out on his stomach on the rock next to me at Fall’s Creek, his head turned away, his mile-long golden back soaking up noon sun. The muscles of his shoulders studded that sleek landscape with gentle hills and valleys I wanted nothing more than to mold myself to, so I could feel the heat of his skin pressed to mine. The scent of the sunscreen we’d rubbed over our skin rose off his body, and I swear it smelled different on him, better on him, than it did on me. I shifted an inch closer, imagining I could feel the warmth rising off his skin.

Over on the shoreline that ran along the creek, my mom studied us from where she lounged on a picnic blanket with Ryan’s dad. No doubt she could tell something was up. I’d caught her shrewd glances between us all morning during the mandatory family outing she’d been so excited about. We’d been whitewater rafting first, and I purposely stuck myself in the front of the raft, where there wasn’t room for another body as massive as Ryan’s. As we returned our paddles and lifejackets, Mom kept an eye on us, and again as we helped her set out the picnic. When Ryan tromped through the muddy shoreline and dove into the water, swimming to the rock formation that lay in the middle of the gently flowing creek, she’d caught me by the arm, glancing over her shoulder to make sure my stepdad was occupied before she’d asked me quietly, “Is everything between you two okay?”

Never mind that we’d not spoken and hardly looked at each other in a month. Or, well, Ryan hadn’t looked at me. I’d gotten used to sneaking glances of his back, of the way his hair curled just slightly over his collar, of his profile as he jogged past the car in the mornings. I’d stopped waiting after a week, when it was apparent he wasn’t getting in again and my sense of pride had been thoroughly crushed underfoot.

But I nodded instantly. “Of course.” And then, just to show her, I’d waded into the creek and splashed after Ryan, the frigid water spiking my skin with goosebumps. “My mom’s worried about us,” I’d said, hoisting myself atop the rock, giving a rough shake of my head and stretching out nearby.

Ryan had turned his head and swiped at the droplets of water I’d sprayed onto his shoulder, then gave me a brief, dismissive look. “So?” Then he’d turned away, and we’d been lying there in mutually stony silence ever since.

“I don’t hate you.” I folded my arms behind my head, cradling my neck. The sun lashed warm over my chest, edging out the chill of the water. A muscle in Ryan’s calf twitched, and I followed the smooth line over the bulge of his hamstrings to the rucked-up hem of his swim trunks. Fuck, his body was something else. Honed to perfection, like one of those stupid black-and-white posters filling the windows of Abercrombie stores.

Ryan didn’t bother looking my way as he spoke. “Doesn’t matter anyway. A couple more months and we won’t be breathing down each other’s necks, thank fuck.”

I wanted him breathing down my neck, though. Desperately. And preferably while naked.

My mom looked over at us again, and I beamed at her, empty and false and purely for her benefit.See, Ma, just two bros hanging out getting some sun.

I took a deep breath.“I wouldn’t ever fuck things up for them, okay? I mean my mom and your dad. I’m glad they’re happy, so can we just call a truce or something?”