Joey had been doing so damn well.
No goddamn way was I allowing this piece of shit to throw him off kilter.
“Hey!” I screamed, when the familiar black Honda Civic came into my focus, parked up at the far end of the school carpark. “Hey!”
Barging through a group of stoners from the year above me, I whipped out my phone, which absolutely did not have a camera on it, and pretended to take a picture of Shane’s car.
“Get out of the car, asshole!”
My whatever-the-hell-he-was, who was sitting in the passenger seat of a car full of much older boys, turned to look out the windscreen, with a look of confusion etched on his face.
However, the moment his eyes landed on me, his confusion quickly morphed into recognition before settling on anger.
Oh, be angry, fucker, because I can be angrier.
“I said get out of the car, asshole,” I demanded, slamming my hands down on the bonnet, uncaring of how much attention I was drawing on them. “Now!”
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” Joey snarled, throwing the car door open and climbing out. “Jesus Christ, Molloy!” Rounding the bonnet, he quickly slid between me and the car. “What are you thinking?”
“What am I thinking?” I strangled out, chest heaving, as I quickly searched his eyes for the familiar signs that he was high. “What are you thinking?”
Losing my cool, I shoved him out of the way, and kicked the number plate of Shane’s car.
“Hey!” Shane roared, rolling down his tinted window. “Get a handle on your doll, Lynchy, or I will.”
“I’d like to see you try, asshole,” I screamed back at the big bastard, and then I flung my phone at his windscreen for good measure. “I’m not afraid of you!”
“Molloy—“
“No!” Pushing Joey when he tried to wrestle me away, I strode back to the car and kicked it again before retrieving my phone. “He’s not interested in what you have to offer anymore. Do you hear me? He’s not fucking interested. So back off!”
“Molloy!”
“You said you’d try, Joe!” Feeling my eyes well up with tears, I roughly pushed on his big shoulders. “You fucking promised me that you wouldn’t—“
“And I haven’t!” he snapped, quickly snatching up my flailing arms and pulling me roughly against him. “Do you have a death wish?” Furious, crystal clear green eyes glared down at me. “You don’t fuck around with guys like him, Molloy.” Keeping my arms pinned my sides, he hissed, “And you definitely don’t go around making a scene in public and kicking their goddamn cars.”
“I don’t care,” I screamed back, and I meant every word. “I don’t. I don’t care about his bullshit threats. What I care about is what you were doing in his car, Joey!”
“I don’t answer to you, Molloy, which means I don’t need to explain myself either,” he was quick to say, eyes burning with frustrated heat. “I’m not fucking around behind your back with other girls. That, you can be rest assured of. I’m with you, and only you. But everything else I do, or who I do it with, when we’re not together, is not your business.”
“You are my business, asshole!” I strangled out.
Reckless and wild, I broke free of his hold, knotted his jumper in my fist, and dragged his mouth down to mine, kissing him hard and rough.
Pulling back, I hissed, “And if you gave one single shred of a shit about me, then you would understand why you need to walk away from this car.”
“Molloy.”
“Right now, Joey,” I cried out angrily. “It’s not a matter of pride, here. It’s a matter of laying your cards on the table and proving that I matter to you just as much as you matter to me.”
He stared down at me for the longest moment, nostrils flaring and chest heaving with temper.
Finally, thankfully, he relented with a stiff nod.
I could feel the fury emanating from him as he muttered something in the car window to Shane, before following me to where I had bravely driven and parked my car at school today.
“Don’t talk to me,” Joey warned, when I passed him my keys, and slid into the passenger seat.
The fact that he had climbed into the driver’s seat beside me wasn’t a victory that I could celebrate, not when I could feel the war brewing between us.
“Not one fucking word.”
JUMP OFF THE DEEP END
MAY 7TH 2004
JOEY
Fury.
I’d never tasted it quite this bitterly.
Unable to look at Molloy for fear of what I might say, I kept driving away from the school and further out from Ballylaggin, hoping that some distance would help cool me down.
“We need to talk about this.”
She was right, we did, but I wasn’t ready for a conversation.
I couldn’t listen to her words right now.
I couldn’t hear her reasoning for doing what she did earlier.
Talking, while I was wrestling with my temper like this, wouldn’t do either one of us an ounce of good.
I would lose my head and spit my poison all over her feelings. It wouldn’t matter if I meant the words coming out of my mouth or not; they would explode from my lips like bullets intended to decimate my intended target. A self-preservation tactic that had been programed into me since birth.
Right now, my head was telling me that the target for my fury was the girl sitting beside me, which was a stark contrast to my heart. That was warning me to lower the proverbial gun and don’t shoot.
“Are you sure that the insurance my father put you on at work covers you driving this?”
She was trying to get me to come around with small talk.
It wouldn’t work.
“I still can’t believe you got your full license before me.”
If she couldn’t, then she was the only one. Judging by the way she drove – like a ninety-year-old, with poor eyesight, and a serious lack of awareness – I had a feeling Sean would pass his driving test before she did.
“I’m mad at you too, you know.”
Yeah, I got that loud and clear when she went batshit and attacked Shane’s car.
Parking up at the beach, I killed the engine, and took a deep steadying breath before I turned in my seat to face her.
She was already facing me, with her arms folded across her chest, and her face set in a hard line.
Her blonde hair fell loosely down her shoulders to her elbows.
She looked like an angel, poised and ready to go to war with me, and that was unnerving as fuck.
“You don’t get to do that, Molloy,” I finally said, when I was sure that I could control the words coming out of my mouth. “You don’t get to stamp your feet and throw a tantrum at school when I’m talking to someone you don’t approve of.”
With her back leaning against the car door, she glared at me sulkily, but didn’t respond.
She looked ridiculously sexy, with her full lips set in a pout, and I wasn’t sure if I wanted to fight with her or fuck her in that moment.
“I’m serious,” I told her. “If any other girl pulled a stunt like that on me, then I wouldn’t be sitting in a car with her, trying to talk it out. No, because I would have told her where to go back at school.“
“But I’m not any other girl,” she said huffily. “That’s exactly the point.”
So fucking confident.