From the way he’s looking at me I can tell he’s having the same primal thoughts I am. I slowly lower my towel from my head and cover my breasts. He watches my movement like a hawk when I do.
“No need to do that.” He says. “I’ll be seeing you naked soon again, anyways.”
Why must he always ruin a moment. “What the fuck are you doing in here?”
He raises his hand, with my cell phone firmly grasped. “I don’t mind you drinking in my body with your eyes. That’s fine.” He wipes my cellphone to the ground, smashing it into several pieces. He picks what remains of the cell and throws it into a toilet stall. “But no flash photography.” He storms out of the changing room. It sounds like he almost kicks the door down when he leaves the gym.
Chapter 12
Bryce throws a french fry at my face. Although my mouth is wide open, it smashes against my cheek and flops to the floor.
“Pitiful!” Bryce exclaims. “Danna, show her how it’s done.” Bryce throws two fries towards her and she catches both.
I slow clap. “Guys, truly. Amazing. Start booking road trips.”
Danna laughs. “Don’t be jealous. All it takes is having too much time on your hands and you will be a pro too.”
“My life had no meaning until now.”
I reach down to my pocket for my cell, then remember it’s not there.
Danna laughs. “You must feel so naked right now.”
I sigh. “It feels weird not having it with me. I know it’s just a phone, but I had important pictures on there, you know, of my family.” I’m not sure why that matters to me. It’s not like my family and I had too many fun moments that were truly picture worthy. I thought of Candice. I have no fucking clue what her number is without looking at my cell. From the amount of times I’ve called her you’d think I would. “I don’t know how I’m going to keep up with my friends back in the city.”
Danna smiles. “You still have us. That is until you realize you should be hanging out with cooler people.”
I snap at her. “Shut up Danna! I hate it when you talk like that. I wish everybody had a Bryce and Danna in their life.” Bryce sips his fountain drink, until it’s obviously empty. He moves the straw with his mouth to try and find a spot in his drink to continue sipping. The sound is driving me crazy. “Well, at least Danna.”
Bryce stops sipping and makes a funny face at me. “Danna’s right though. You got a lot of people talking at school.”
“What do you mean?”
“Word is you’ve been making moves on Jaxson, Chase and Lance. You got some of the girls jealous.”
I laugh. “Do they somehow forget about the pies incident? Maybe some of them don’t know about adventure in the woods. Pissy Pants I believe is my new nickname.”
Danna snorts while taking a sip of her drink. “I heard that one but didn’t want to hurt your feelings.”
Bryce rolls his eyes. “What a bunch of macho shit. If anybody else was in your shoes, they’d have PTSD for life.”
Danna looks at me. “So did the police find out anything? Did they figure out who shot at you, find poachers in the woods?”
I shrug my shoulders. “Beats me. I haven’t talked to Chase or principal Aldridge about it. Something tells me they both would prefer if I forgot about it.”
“How was it being with Chase before- everything went bad?” Danna asks.
“We were having a fun time, until, you know.”
“You pissed your pants?” Bryce says. I burst out laughing, not being able to control myself. I feel like if most people had said something like that after what I’d been through, I would have at minimum, stormed out of the restaurant. Worse shit has happened to me though.
I’m still here.
I reach for my jeans pocket again. “Fuck!”
Bryce looks at me weirdly. “I sincerely still don’t understand this. So, you took a pic of him, and he just smashed your phone to itty bitty pieces?” I nod my head. “Fucking anger problems.”
“Right before it happened, he was kind of flirting with me too. I don’t know. He’s been kind of dick to me the whole time I’ve been out here, but I thought things were changing.”
Danna waves her head side to side. “My gawd girl. You seriously have all the hunky guys going gaga for you. You either make them fall for you or make them go crazy. Teach me your ways! How?”
Bryce raises his hand. “And when you’re done with her, show me next.”
We continue to joke around. We’ve probably been sitting in the back of the diner for over an hour. Even though I had just met them, it feels like I’ve known them forever.
Danna hits the table with her fist. “Okay, lets get the fuck out of here.”
“Where to next?” I ask.
“A hike in the woods.” Bryce says.
I look at him playfully. “Not funny.”
Danna laughs. “We can do a movie night at my place. I’ve got Netflix.”
Bryce rolls his eyes. “I hate watching Netflix with you. You take like thirty minutes to even find something to watch. Then you put it on and decide you don’t want to watch it after five minutes, and take another hour to find something else.”
“That only happened like one time! Before we go to my place I just need to stop by the school.”
“It’s past curfew.” Bryce says.
Danna mocks his voice. “Past curfew. So what? I got a key. I need to grab some shit for the article I’m finishing.”
I raise an eyebrow at her. “So, after movie time you’re going to write? When do you sleep?”
Bryce laughs. “She has one cup of coffee and her skinny ass is up all night.”
She nods her head. “Sleep. Over-rated.” She says in a robot voice.
∞∞∞
Danna drives close to the school grounds and parks on a nearby street.
“Why don’t you
