This Night

This Night (Part 4)

"What? What is it?"

I groaned. "He went to my high school. I've told you about him before. I was seeing him after graduation, remember?"

"That's bad?"

"He just wanted to mess around," I whispered. "So I eventually stopped talking to him. Jayden." My hand came up to fist my golden brown hair, as I leaned my elbow on the table and tried to shield myself from him.

"He looks pretty cute," she said. "And like he's still interested in you." She shrugged sweetly. "Maybe he realized he made a mistake." She pondered for a moment, then her eyes lit up with realization. "Wait a second. Wasn't this the guy who tried to be a rapper? The one who freestyled a rap about you in a McDonald's drive-thru?"

"He couldn't even buy me an Oreo McFlurry because his card got declined," I said and sighed. "His aspiring rapper name was J-Jay or Jay Jayden, some shit like that. But believe me, he has not changed. He just wants to fuck around. He's an asshole."

"Well, one of his friends is walking over now," her voice said in a sing-song, watching the shrimp of a male coming our way.

He placed himself in between our awaiting gaze, "Would you two be interested in joining our table?" he asked nonchalantly, his hand gesturing to Jayden surveying my response.

I couldn't stop myself from grimacing. I should have expected this. This was Jayden who would go up to a drug addict on the street to ask for a cigarette, then strike up a whole conversation with him, his boldness was something else. I had a gift of picking the best guys to be attracted to. Whoever was writing the love interests of my story, was doing me very dirty so far.

Ava, taking note that I needed time to think, spoke first. "I'm not sure about that, it seems like you came over here because your friend asked you to. And from what I've picked up on, Liz stopped talking to him for a reason." There was a layer of ice beneath her words.

"Really? He didn't tell me any of that. I swear," he said in a sad attempt at disbelief.

Ava scoffed, then reclined in her chair looking towards me shrugging, "Whatever, it's up to Liz."

I had no choice, even if she did leave it up to me. If we didn't go, he'd continue to feed lies to his friends about me or would persist in getting my attention, snickering and watching us the whole time. While I was there, I knew he wouldn't let it go. "Okay, fine. We'll come over. Just give us a sec to grab our stuff."

"Alright, cool."

Once he was far away from earshot, Ava straightened up in her chair, "Why'd you say yes? I thought you didn't want to talk to him."

I grabbed my half-finished drink, standing up, "I don't, but I knew if I said no, he wouldn't leave us alone. Plus, he'd think he won if I avoided him. I didn't want to give Jayden that satisfaction."

Ava grabbed her Long Island, as well as her leather jacket. "I guess you're right. This is gonna be interesting."

"You're right about that," I said as we approached their table. Jayden, who hadn't stopped looking at me, had a harder time containing his smirk as I got closer to him. I hated that I was going through with this, I didn't owe him anything, but I wanted to see that annoying taunting smirk leave his face. How long had they been sitting there? They must have seen me punch Greg.

He and his two friends sat on the other side of the table, with him in the middle, which left three available seats across from them. I took the one to the right, to purposefully not give him the satisfaction of sitting dead set across from him, while Ava sat beside me.

I sipped my Long Island unhurriedly, eyeing Jayden while doing so. I knew everyone was watching me. It was fine, I wasn't going to squirm over this interaction with him.

"Hi, Jayden," I said with phony enthusiasm. His smirk subsided as he looked away briefly to regain his aloofness, then back to me. "Or are you going to pretend you don't know me?"

He scoffed. "I never said I didn't know you."

"Really? That's not what your friend was saying."

Jayden took a swing out of the plastic water bottle in front of him, clearly avoiding my question. I noticed then that only one of his friends had an empty liquor cup in front of him. "Why the fuck aren't you guys drinking?" Ava asked. "You're at a bar, ya know."

Jayden's lazy eyes focused on her. "I'm driving us, so I'm not drinking."

The one that had approached us before stated, "We just had one beer so far. I don't think the two of us are going to be drinking that much tonight."

I scoffed. "That's pretty lame." It was close to being as lame as the people that decided to read books at bars, it was just dumb; why do that when you could drink your sorrows away like I was doing?

Every second that I was under Jayden's gaze made me more and more annoyed. I did feel calm all things considered, that was most likely thanks to the alcohol flooding my system, and why my words were becoming more blunt. I didn't care that I had no filter. It was nice to be able to know how to get under someone's skin and say the right things that would hurt their egos. I always refrained from speaking what was on my mind, but drinking alcohol coaxed me to say the brutal truth. Usually, I felt bad later, hence why I kept a lot of thoughts to myself, but tonight it was a blessing. In simple words, I did not give a fuck right now.