over again at the memory.
Also, it was super annoying that my best friend knew me so well because I had been thinking about that.
Thinking. Not brooding.
I was not a freakin’ Salvatore, and I was definitely not an Edward.
“You couldn’t get her to swoon all over you like she did for that half a minute when you two were a thing—”
“We were never a thing,” I interrupted.
She ignored me. “She’s batted her pretty, long eyelashes at every guy in the school since then and it drives you nuts, because you’re not the only person she’s wrapped around her finger—”
“She didn’t have me wrapped around her finger.”
“You thought you could play the same game and have her back like that.” She snapped her fingers. “And your fragile male ego is hurting because it wasn’t that easy.” She didn’t even try to hide her gloat. “She wasn’t that easy.”
I glared at her because…well, crap. She wasn’t totally wrong. Not about that stuff about me watching her fawn all over other guys for the past two years. I’d written her off as soon as she’d walked away from me that day. I hadn’t given a second thought to the guys she was dating or the way she was giving them the same soft dreamy smiles she’d given me.
Nope. She could have dated every guy in our school and I wouldn’t have cared.
She pretty much did. I mean she skipped over the underclassmen and the losers, but any guy who didn’t have B.O. or a girlfriend had been fair game for the serial monogamist from hell.
“Face it, Jax,” Simone said with a smirk. “You crashed and burned today. Say goodbye to that money and—”
“You think I’m giving up?” I arched my brows in shock. “You seriously think I’d give up all that money and the chance to buy a new amp because Miss Attention Whore didn’t take the bait?” I stretched my legs out. “Think again.”
“Take the bait,” Simone repeated with a shake of her head. “Do you even hear yourself? Who are you and what have you done with the decent gentleman I know is lurking inside there…somewhere.” She wiggled her fingers in my direction with her nose wrinkled in disgust. “Way down deep.”
I leaned forward. “Hey, I am a decent guy. I’m a good guy. I’ve never made promises I don’t keep and I’m totally straight with the girls I’m into.”
“Yeah,” she said in a flat voice. “You were really straightforward with Rose today.” She dropped her voice and leaned toward me with an obnoxious wink. “If Ryan gives you trouble, I can help.” She rolled her eyes. “What was that?”
“I was being nice!” I shouted. “And what thanks did I get for offering to help her if and when Ryan turns his anger on her?” I scoffed at the memory. “She laughed at me.” I stabbed a finger into the bedspread. “Laughed at me. At me! Girls never laugh at me.”
“I laugh at you every day,” Simone said.
“You don’t count.” I was working myself into a righteous anger and it felt good, better than sitting here stewing—not brooding—over the way she’d openly mocked me. “Seriously, though, is that what I get for being nice?”
“No, that’s what you get for being sexist.”
“Sexist?” I crossed my arms again. “Girls like it when guys are protective.”
Simone stared at me for a long moment. “Where are you getting your information these days? Please tell me you’re not still stealing your mom’s Cosmo magazines.”
“No, I stole your copy of Twilight.”
“You shut your hole about Twilight.” She glared at me and I glared right back. “You need to let this go,” Simone said. “You should never have gotten into it with Ryan and you definitely shouldn’t have taken him up on that stupid bet.”
“Why not? Are you going to give me the money for an amp?”
“This isn’t about money, it’s about respect,” she said. Her cheeks were getting all pink which meant she was honestly getting fired up about this.
I smirked. “Are you going to start singing Aretha Franklin to me now?”
She narrowed her eyes. “If you are seriously considering trying to make that girl feel something for you, just so you can win some money—”
“To feel, she’d have to have a heart. She’d need to have emotions,” I shot back. “I think Rose Parson has made it abundantly clear over the past few years that she doesn’t have feelings.”
“Everyone has feelings, you moron.”
“You know what I mean,” I said.
“I really don’t.”
“She’s a flake. A superficial vapid airhead