Lisa summed up my latest thoughts on the matter. “You think maybe he was just making a booty call?”
I’d started to come to the same conclusion, but just hadn’t wanted to admit it to myself. But there it was.
I finally conceded. “Yeah. I don’t know. Maybe. Probably.”
“Well, screw him! What the hell is that?”
“Your guess is as good as mine.”
“All the time you two spend together and he takes advantage of that to pay you a latenight? You’re better than that! God, you must be so relieved that nothing happened.”
I don’t think “relieved” was even in the ballpark of what I was feeling. All morning, I’d been fighting the thought that Trip was possibly a big, fat user. I had spent almost three whole months completely infatuated with him, jumping at his every beck and call, wasting countless hours hoping for any sort of return on my investment.
And what had he offered? Nothing.
I was his buddy, his pal, someone whom he got a kick out of on occasion. He probably only came over after the dance to make sure I was still going to be his adoring little mascot. The one time I don’t show up and fawn all over him, he has to swing by to test the waters. It was worse than a latenight! He was probably only stroking his ego, making sure that I was still in love with him.
The inescapable epiphany hit me like a Mack truck.
I finally realized just how completely pathetic I truly was over him. I saw myself from Trip’s perspective and grasped what a truly wretched, ridiculous idiot I’d been all along. The revelation fueled my insecurities; but in an unexpected way, it also obliged me take stock of my assets, too.
I mean, maybe I wasn’t Tess Valletti, but I sure as hell wasn’t some complete loser that deserved to be treated like a runner-up, backburner consolation prize to be utilized at his convenience!
From then on, I made the conscious decision to stop being the butt of everyone’s joke, stop making myself so available and most importantly, stop being so completely obsessed over Trip Wilmington.
I cracked the window and was met with an icy chill, snickering to myself at the thought that Trip’s first winter in Jersey was going to be even colder than he could have imagined.
Bye bye, drooling puppy.
Chapter 18
THE RIFT
I readied myself all morning for The Big Production I was going to be putting on; the one-woman show entitled, “Fuck You, Trip Wilmington.”
By lunchtime, I was all fired up. Which, in my world, meant my Big Plan was nothing more than to give him the cold shoulder, letting him know that I wasn’t going to be his hungry little lemming anymore, being so available to him in exchange for the few crumbs he’d deign to throw at my feet.
So, when Trip sat down next to me and gave me a big, grinning, “Hey there,” I completely ignored him and turned my attentions across the table to talk to Cooper.
“It was such a good game on Saturday! I couldn’t believe the score. What was the final? Twenty-eight to ten?”
Coop swiped the back of his hand across his chocolate milk mustache and said proudly. “Twenty-eight to seven.”
“Wow, seven! Even better. God, and that wasn’t even counting your last touchdown that the ref ruled out!”
Trip, unwilling to be ignored, thought he was being funny when he nudged me in the arm. “Layla? Hellooo. What? You don’t even say hi?”
I gave out a sigh, as if I thought him rude for interrupting. I turned my head to face him and used the most bored voice imaginable to say, “Hi,” then went back to my conversation with Coop.
“It’s so weird that that was the last game. I’m not going to know what to do with myself on Saturdays now!”
Cooper gave me a dirty look out of the corner of his eye, smiled and invited, “I’m sure we could think of something.”
I didn’t hesitate to smile back and respond, “I bet you could.”
Game on.
I knew I was being overbright and more than a little flirty while talking to my ex-boyfriend right in front of Trip. He’d never seen me like that before and I’m sure he’d thought I’d gone schizo. But I wanted to show him that even though he didn’t think I was all that and a bag of chips, there were plenty of other guys who did. Plenty of other guys who would be honored to have the full force of my attentions. Plenty of other guys that wouldn’t make me feel like I was wasting my time.
I locked onto Trip with my peripheral vision, could tell he was intensely watching my conversation with Coop like it was a tennis match, a dazed look on his perfect mug. Good. He probably didn’t know what the hell was going on, but at least I had the satisfaction of throwing him off balance.
Cooper took my response as motivation, leaned across the table and said matter-of-factly, “Well, okay then. We’ll have to think of something to do on Saturday.”