I clicked out of the message and swallowed past the tightness in my throat.
She wasn’t always heartless—the beginning was great. Lots of laughs, cuddling on the couch, and she made the best chocolate chip cookies I’d ever tasted—besides my grandma’s. But as soon as we hit the year mark, everything went downhill. If I took my head out of my ass, I probably would have been able to tell she was more into my roommate than me.
Dad’s voice cut through my thoughts. “Are you listening?”
“Sorry.”
“You and that damn phone.” He shook his head. “If you spent as much time studying as you did texting, you’d be well on your way to graduating. For Christ’s sake, you had one more year.”
I shook my head, staring down at the floor. Making me feel like a dipshit wasn’t going to get me any closer to having my name printed on a college degree. “I know. Sorry.”
He sighed and scrubbed his hands over his face. “If this is going to be your job for the summer, or maybe your career, you need to take it seriously. Take the company truck and bring Jules along to help.”
Hell would freeze over before this was my career. He kept pushing this on me, didn’t think I should join Uncle Gary in the police force. Being stuck indoors all day in the suffocating recirculated air? I’d die a slow and torturous death, Britney Spears on the speakers pushing me over the edge of insanity, if this was my end goal. I got it, he was proud of the store, building it from the ground up, but the apple fell ten miles from the tree in terms of career aspirations.
I focused back on what he’d said about the shipment. “This isn’t a two person job.” I didn’t need Jules to help me with three crates of paper.
“Company rules, Ryan. Always two people—one and it’s a liability.”
I nodded and grabbed the slip of paper from his hand, the address scribbled in illegible print.
I was just about to exit Dad’s office when he piped up. “Son?”
“Yeah?”
His intense gaze turned my marrow to ice. “Be nice to her. I saw how you treated her on Monday. That’s not how I raised you.” He lifted a brow, waiting for a response.
I nodded. He knew how to go straight for the nads. Not one of my finer moments and, of course, he had to see. Smoothing a hand through his frosted tips, he dismissed me.
I walked out of his office, out to the Customer Service counter, where Peach was helping a customer. She saw me and flashed a bright smile. Dad seemed to think I was bad news, but being nice got me steamrolled by Lex. Not anymore. I wasn’t going to be anyone’s doormat. I looked over at Jules again. This summer would be just what I needed before I started the academy: fun.
Fifteen minutes later, we loaded crates into the company truck and made our way to Howard Fern’s house.
I glanced out of the corner of my eye as Jules knocked her head back into the seat and sighed.
“Do you know where we’re going?” she asked, holding her phone up. “My phone doesn’t have service in these hills. Does yours?”
“I think it’s off of Farmington Road. Shouldn’t be too hard to find.” I shifted in my seat to grab my phone out of my back pocket, a little X over the reception icon when the screen lit up. “No service for me, either.” The back roads of Spring Hill sometimes got confusing, twists and turns everywhere, but I was sure we’d find his house.
She glanced around at the barren landscape, not even a building within view, her eyebrows scrunching together. “Should we go back?”
I purposely kept my eyes trained on the road, not chancing a glance over at her. Jules was a tough one to crack. She didn’t act like all the other girls I’d gone after who’d shown interest immediately (not a huge surprise since I was a total tool to her when we first met). If I wanted to get with her, I needed to play it cool.
“Nah, we’ll be fine.”
Forty minutes later I was eating my words. The gas needle teased the eighth-of-a-tank line and I had no clue in hell where we were on this old country road. To Peach’s credit, she didn’t once give a smartass remark about how we were lost but, as we drove deeper into the boonies, I knew I had royally screwed up.
The smell of motor oil, old fried food, and worn truck made my stomach churn. Added to the massive book hangover from last night, taking every aptitude test in that damn text—which didn’t tell me much more than I liked being outdoors—this day was going down the shitter pretty fast.
She let out a sigh as we passed a herd of cows grazing in a pasture. “Why don’t we stop somewhere and ask for directions?” There was a slight annoyance twisting in her voice.
“Just five more minutes. If we can’t find it by then, we’ll stop somewhere.”