“You think you’re tough shit because you’re on the football team, don’t you, jock strap? You think scaring defenseless girls in the middle of the night is funny? Do you?” I stab a finger in his direction, glaring.
“I don’t see no defenseless girls ’round here.”
Don’t see no. Lord, has this guy had any formal education?
“It’s me.” I stab at my chest. “I’m the defenseless girl, you halfwit.”
He is completely missing the point—hasn’t picked up on my sarcasm. Either he’s choosing not to, or he’s dumb as a box of rocks.
I don’t know for a fact that he’s a complete moron, but based on stereotypes and what I’m staring at, I’m going to assume he is. Big truck. Bigger muscles. Shaggy hair. Bruised eye. Crooked smirk I want to wipe off his face.
He looks like he was raised in the backwoods and sounds like it, too.
“You hardly look defenseless.” He’s staring down at me from his perch in the driver’s seat.
“Do you see any weapons?”
“No, but I keep hearin’ one.”
Huh? “What does that mean?”
“Your mouth is runnin’.”
Inside the cab of the truck, his buddy laughs.
I glare at them both. “How dare you!”
“I’m not the one who slammed on her brakes and hopped out of her car in the middle of the street,” he has the nerve to point out.
“Your bumper is jammed so far up my ass I can taste chrome when I swallow.” Did those words just come out of my mouth? Damn, I’m kind of impressed with myself.
The kid in the passenger seat laughs, and I wish I could reach in and smack him.
“How about you be quiet?” I have to get closer to the truck to see his face, but I can make him out in the shrouded, dimly lit cab. He looks like a jockhole: big and built and strong—and smiling.
Ugh, so annoying.
“What did you expect me to do, keep driving?”
“Nope. Kind of wanted you to slam on your brakes and hop out of your car in the middle of the street.”
I can’t decide if he’s full of crap or not. He laughs, the Adam’s apple in his thick throat bobbing, tendons visible from here, even in the semi-darkness.
“Besides, if my bumper was up your ass, we’d both know it.”
It doesn’t sound like he’s talking about car parts. It sounds like a metaphor for butt stuff, the bumper being his—
“Darlin’, you look fit to be tied.”
“Don’t you darlin’ me. I’m still half blind from those dumb lights, you jerk!”
He rests his forearm on the window, leaning out while talking down to me. The sleeves of his plaid shirt are rolled to the elbow. “Sorry ’bout that.”
I peel my eyes off his muscles. “You’re not sorry—you were doing it on purpose!”
“It worked, didn’t it?” His teeth are blaring white, almost as bright as his headlights and aimed in my direction. “What’s your name?”
“None of your damn business.”
Wow, I sound salty.
The guy turns his body, neck craning away from me. “Tyson,” he says, “listen to the mouth on this one.” He smirks, grinning down at me, the stupid asshole. “She’s spittin’ fire, and I bet she’s hungry for a chicken sandwich, too.”
Finally, an acknowledgment that he knows who I am.
I try to get a good look at this Tyson, but it’s difficult given the dim streetlights above and the lack of one in the cab of the truck.
What I do see, however, is the telltale glow from a cell phone, illuminating this mysterious passenger person’s face.
“Wait a second—are you filming me?” It most definitely looks like this guy is pointing the camera of his phone in my direction.
“Yeah.”
“Why?”
“Proof.”
Proof? Of what! Of all the ridiculous, stupid things to say!
“Uh, excuse me, I’m the one who should be taping you—you’re three times my size, and you’re the one harassing me.”
“No one is harassin’ you, and no one made you get out of your car.”
“Do I have to keep repeating that you could have gotten me in an accident with your headlights?”
He turns and says something to his friend that sounds suspiciously like, “It might be easier to forget about this one.”
I strain to hear the rest, but it’s difficult above the sound of cars easing their way around us on the street.
I step a bit closer, confident that although this bo-hunk is an imbecile, he’s harmless—not a kidnapper, not going to sexually harass me, not going to harm me in any way.
Call it intuition.
“I’m sorry, what did you just say to him?”
He turns his attention back to me. “I’m not the