Page 12 of The Drop

“Cut me some slack.” I swig from my beer. Deciding the easiest thing to do is to let this conversation go, I’m not looking to hook up with a girl who’s just had her heart broken. “She’s just broken up with Jim; I’m not that bad.”

“He’s an idiot for letting her go,” Adam says. “I feel a bad for him.”

I couldn't agree more.

“We should have gone back to the party,” Bear moans an hour later. He’s half hanging off the sofa while I kick Adam’s ass at Mario Kart.

“You’re the assholes who wanted to leave,” I state while aggressively pressing buttons.

“It was a SOS from Cami,” Adam grits, matching my aggressiveness. “She would have killed us if we didn’t answer.”

“Yeah, well, now we are stuck at home.” Bear checks his watch. “At 12:30 on a Saturday night, this blows.”

“Why does my being home early on Saturday have to be suspicious?” Gunnar says, walking past the couch into the open-plan kitchen. His long-distance girlfriends Sasha giving him shit again. He could do the most perfect thing, and it would still be wrong. I had the misfortune of meeting Sasha during our freshman year, and quickly discovered she’s the most negative person I have ever met. She came to watch one of our games, and nothing could have made her happy. The arena was too cold. It took too long to park. Gunnar agreed to go to the bar without asking her. He had already planned their next day together, which he had off without telling her. She could have had the best day ever, and something would have been wrong with it.

He opens the fridge and cracks open a can of beer while cradling the phone between his shoulder and ear; he motions to us if we want another; we all nod, and he chucks them to us.

“What?!” He pauses,Why does it matter if I’m drinking?” He runs a hand through his hair, leaning against the island.

We all share looks; we all hate her, but what can we do? They’ve been together since high school. Adam once said offhandedly that she ragged on him too much and she could cuthim some slack, and Gunnar exploded at him. So we’ve all learnt just to hold our breath until the arguments are over.

There is a knock at the door, and Bear shoots up and runs to it, escaping the awkward one-way conversation we can hear from Gunnar.

“Umm, did we order pizza?” he shouts from the door.

“Oh, shoot. Sorry, it’s for the apartment next door.” We hear the pizza guy say.

“We can take it over to them,” Adam shouts, jumping off the sofa. Bear stares at him as Adam runs up to the door. “We can run it over, we know them,” he repeats, and I lean over the couch to see the pizza guy shake his head.

“I’ve got to deliver it straight to the door.” The poor guy sounds conflicted when faced with the wad of cash Adam has pulled out and is waving around.

“Look, I don’t want to be a gossip, but the girls next door are super broke. They will not tip you,” he says. The guy doesn’t take long to decide and grabs the money, shoving the pizzas at Adam.

“Adam, what the fuck?” Bear says, shaking his head and shutting the door. “We can order our own pizza; we don’t need to steal it.”

“I’m not stealing it, asshat.” He glares at him, grabbing his phone from the sofa. “The girls have been blasting breakup songs for the past half an hour, and I know Cami has broken into her stash of tequila by now.”

“How do you know that?” I ask, standing up.

“I heard it through the wall of my bedroom,” he answers, shrugging.

“Bud.” I wipe my hand down my face as Gunnar and Bear shake their heads. “That’s creepy.”

“Whatever, I’m going to bribe my way into whatever they are doing; it’s got to be more fun than this Dick Fest.” He grabs the pizzas and strolls towards our door.

I choke on my beer as I hear Gunnar say, “I don’t know why Adam is talking about girls and dicks, Sasha, I’m not Adam, am I?” he snaps. “Fuck.” He frowns down at his phone. “She hung up on me.”

“Great, let’s go then,” Adam says, motioning towards the door with his stolen pizza boxes and raising his eyebrows, looking at us like he can’t believe we haven’t moved yet.

“Adam, we can’t crash a girl’s night,” Gunnar states, leaning his forearms on the back of the sofa. “Rule number one of having a girlfriend.”

“Neither of them is our girlfriend, and there is no way they are eating all this pizza.”

He has a point; there are like four whole pizzas and sides he’s holding.

“Fuck it,” Bear says, grabbing a hoodie from the coat rack and looking towards us expectantly.

“Eh, I mean, my night can’t get any weirder,” I say. I nod my head towards the door at Gunnar. “Let’s go.”

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