“What do you mean?”
“Ariya was a bully,” Hennessy explained, taking another sip of her drink before she continued. “She made my high school life a living hell. And God forbid she be in my Sunday school class at church. That sucked worse than anything.”
“What did she do to you?” I frowned.
Hennessy’s mouth quirked. “What did she not do?”
My stomach burned, and I shifted from foot to foot as I tried to figure out what I wanted to say.
“You need to calm down,” she laughed. “High school was a long time ago, and the things that she did are long over.”
Just because they’d happened a long time ago, didn’t mean that it should carry any less significance than it did.
I stopped pacing and took a seat on the bench that was underneath the awning of the gas station, and then patted the seat.
She got up from her lean against her car and walked toward me, taking a seat at my side.
“Tell me about it.”
I hadn’t realized that Ariya had been that way. Now I was curious to know what she’d done.
“Tell me.”
Hennessy lifted the drink back up to her mouth, sucked on it until there was nothing left, and then set it on the ground by our feet before she dove in.
Head first, might I add.
“When I was in middle school, the day at the party where I got dressed up and my dad told me to wait in his office?”
I nodded, remembering that vividly.
“Later that night, I was in my room—grounded mind you, and Ariya came to the door.”
I frowned.
I’d been with Ariya that day. I remembered it vaguely.
“She left to go get some dinner that day,” I said. “Brought it back almost an hour later.”
Hennessy started to laugh, but her laughter wasn’t one of an amused woman. No, this was darker, more sinister.
“She came over and told my father that I stole her clothes,” she admitted. “My father came back into my room after she’d left, and proceeded to let me know that if I ever did that again, I’d find myself kicked out of the house on my ass.”
“I thought you said that Krisney let you borrow them?” I leaned forward, resting my elbows on my knees.
“She did.”
I frowned. “Then why would she say that you stole them?”
“Because she walked by while my father was ripping me a new one in his church office, and I saw her outside. She had a smile on her face that clearly said, ‘Sucks to be you.’”
I gritted my teeth.
“Give me the rest.”
She shrugged and flipped her hair out of her eyes.
“Little things. Went out of her way to buy the last roll at school knowing that I got to lunch late my senior year since I had to have surgery. Or complaining to teachers that I was getting preferential treatment since I was on crutches. It got to the point where they no longer argued with her and stopped letting me go early. Meaning that it took me forever to get to the lunchroom, and by the time I arrived, all the pizza would be gone. When I was forced to go in the main line, she’d purposefully go up there and get another tray. Taking her time, talking to the lunch ladies, and forcing me to wait for her. Then when the bell would ring for me to return to class, I’d only have half my lunch eaten.”
That sounded like her. She was always petty when it came to fighting.
One time when we were just starting out, I’d decided to go hang out with my friends instead of her one Friday night after a baseball game.
Thinking that I hadn’t gotten to visit with Baylor in quite some time, I’d decided to do the friend thing, but Ariya had called halfway through the night saying that something was wrong with her car, and she was stranded in the middle of nowhere.
When I got there, it was to find out that there wasn’t anything wrong with her car as much as the woman driving it.
When I’d pulled in, it was to find that Ariya had ‘sprained’ her ankle, and she couldn’t press the gas to get home.
After taking her home, leaving my car on the side of the road, Ariya’s ankle had suddenly, miraculously healed. Then I’d had to walk back three miles to my car, and she’d cried when I left, making me feel like utter shit.
“Sounds like something she’d do,” I admitted. “But that doesn’t really explain why you’d hate her. Or she’d hate you, for that matter.”
“I found her sleeping with my father.”
I blinked at the sudden outburst, and turned to study her seriousness.
At the complete lack of emotion on her face, I realized that she wasn’t joking.
“When?”
She started to squirm in her seat.
“Hennessy.”
She looked down at her hands and started fiddling with her fingers. “When you were deployed that first time.”
The time that she’d broken up with me while I was a month into deployment. I guess at least she hadn’t cheated on me, precisely.
“Gross.”
At that, she burst out laughing.
“That about sums it up. Walked in to find the two of them on our couch. That was the day I decided that college out of town was going to be good for me.” She shrugged.
“And it was,” I told her. “You were a scared little mouse when I used to watch you when you were younger. When I first found out that I was going to have to see you for my anger management, I gotta admit…I was a little worried. But it turns out that you’ve really grown into your skin. It makes me happy that you’ve not fallen into that same ol’ same ol’ once you got back.”
“My father was…my father.” She shrugged.
I could also tell that she was uncomfortable with the subject, but then she surprised me.
She grinned, and was about to say something more when a truck pulled into the parking lot.
It as a familiar truck.
Bright red, flashy, with polished chrome wheels that screamed ‘clean.’
Speaking of the devil.
Reverend Hanes stepped out of the truck, his eyes locked on his daughter…and me.
He missed nothing.
Our closeness, nor our smiling faces—at least until he’d pulled in.
His eyes were on my arm that was running along the back of the bench, my fingers playing with a small strand of her hair that was near my hand.
“You’ve not been stupid, have you Henny?” the pastor asked carefully.
I wanted to smack him as I let the strand of hair I was playing with go.
I hated this man. I’d always hated him.
I hated the way he looked at my mother like she was a lowly piece of trash, and then used her when he needed something to fill the void his wife had left.
I hated when he looked at me like I was no good for his daughter, as if he knew my inner thoughts and didn’t agree with them.
Mostly, though, I hated the way he’d treated his daughter.
I didn’t think she was abused physically—at least nothing more than any other child, but emotionally was a completely different story.
And the hate in his eyes right now? Yeah, that was directed wholly at me.
“I’ve done nothing wrong, Father.” Hennessy stood up and bent down to reach for her empty cup.
My eyes automatically went to her ass, and when they returned to the man in front of me, I nearly winced.
Yeah, he’d caught me checking out his daughter’s ass.