Tough Guy: A Bully Romance (Providence Prep High School Book 2)

by Jacob Allen

  “Hey, easy,” Emily said, perhaps the only person in my life who wanted things to at least be stable and sane.

  “Easy?” Adam said with a laugh. “It’s the Broad Street Boys, this is what we do. We talk shit about this.”

  “Not today,” I said with a low growl. “We can mock me tomorrow. But not today, OK?”

  “Not today?” Adam said. “But, Kevin, the news is a twenty-four hour cycle now! The news cannot wait until tomorrow! The audience is demanding to be updated all the time.”

  I rolled my eyes. In what I assumed at the time was a moment of saving grace, Nick walked in and joined the three of us.

  “Then let’s get Nick a date,” I said.

  “For what?” he said, as if he’d stumbled into his own prank.

  “Sadie—”

  “Oh, fuck no,” he said, moving past. “I’m not fucking going. I need to work on my game right now. Playoffs aren’t that far off.”

  “Nick—”

  But I didn’t finish my sentence. I let it go. Unlike Adam, I had empathy for my friends and could see when one of them was dealing with an issue too close to them to be made fun of. Unlike Adam, I knew when to drop certain topics.

  “Well, well, well,” Adam said, demonstratively sighing. “It looks like the only person who’s going to get laid that night is going to be me.”

  “Hey!” Emily said, hitting his arm. “Watch it. That’s going too far.”

  “But—”

  “Enough,” Emily snapped.

  I hoped that the words of his girlfriend would get him to shut up.

  I thought wrong.

  And because of that, we both wound up in detention.

  “Fine,” Adam continued. “I guess Kevin will be the only one jerking off at home while he thinks about Jackie as he and his Dad drink Bud Light, since that’s all poor people can afford.”

  I wasn’t fucking Kevin Torres anymore. I was a goddamn animal who had been poked and prodded too many times. In a flash, I grabbed Adam by the collar, pushed him away from Emily, and then grabbed him again and slammed him into the locker. I cocked my fist back and punched where his head had been. He ducked at the last possible second, but my fist, as I’d suspected it might before, left a massive dent in the locker.

  He stood up and tried to shove me, but I grabbed him by the throat and shoved him back into the lockers.

  “FIGHT! FIGHT! FIGHT!”

  Students were gathering around us, chanting and cheering on… me, for the most part. Emily was begging us to stop, her anger almost matching mine. Teachers were coming over and telling us to break it up, but there was no chance that I was going to break it up at this point.

  Adam kicked me hard in the shin, causing me to drop my hands around his throat. He then delivered a very weak blow to the top of my head, while I punched him right in the gut. I swung a fist that collided with his eye, knocking him to the ground. I mounted him and went to deliver another blow, but he bucked his hips up, knocking me off and creating some distance between us.

  “Not so much of a puppy now, huh?” I said, spitting on the ground. “I’m a goddamn pitbull and I’m gonna fucking tear your skin apart.”

  “You’re a goddamn bitch!” Adam roared.

  Emily started to get between us, but she ducked out at the last second, realizing getting between two dudes who weighed over two hundred pounds and were barreling at each other was suicidal. We again wound up against the lockers before some very firm hands—that of some teachers—pulled us apart. Emily came over and slapped Adam hard across the face.

  “Serves you right, motherfuck—”

  But before I could finish, Emily also came over and slapped me.

  “The hell was that for?!?”

  “He acted like an asshole,” Emily said. “But you did too.”

  With that, she deliberately stood between us, refusing to let either of us come close. I looked over at Adam and saw his right eye starting to swell. Oh, that shit would look purple and black tomorrow. Good. Pretty boy needed some fucking sense knocked into him.

  My forearms were already starting to bruise, but I didn’t care. Whatever Adam had done to me didn’t hurt nearly as much as what my father did to me, and I didn’t mean emotionally. Adam actually was a pretty weak fighter, or maybe I was just a really good fighter. Either way, he had no effect on me.

  A school security guard came up and had us march down to the principal’s office. He ordered us to sit side-by-side as we waited for him to go and get Adam’s stepfather to come and lecture us. We were both in some major trouble, I knew that.

  At least now, Adam knew I didn’t like when he mocked me for being poor or being called a puppy. Whether or not he took any of that to heart, whether or not he actually listened to it and changed his ways, was up to him.

  The two of us stewed in silence, our arms crossed, our breathing heavy, and our legs crossed over, trying to intrude on the other person’s space. No one came by the check on us—not Emily, not Nick, and certainly not Jackie. We were alone, just the two of us.

  Adam’s stepfather finally came around the corner, saw both of us, and gasped.

  “What sort of tomfoolery is this?!?”

  Neither of us said a word.

  “You boys have acted disgracefully. I’m going into my office. Both of you stay here while I figure out what the proper recourse is for the both of you.”

  He mumbled something more about how “Mom is going to have to knock some sense into that boy” before he went into his office, not taking particular care to soften the blow of the door slamming. I took a deep sigh and shook my head. Adam did the same. I suspected both of us had something to say, and neither of us wanted to be the first to speak.

  My words would have just made things worse.

  “Whatever happened to good boy Kevin?” Adam said.

  “Fuck off,” I scowled.

  “Wow,” Adam said. I knew he was being sarcastic, but his tone hinted at some truth behind him being surprised at my reaction. “You were always the most obedient Broad Street—”

  “Don’t fucking start,” I snapped. “I will beat your ass right here. I’m sick of your bullshit, Adam, and now you see what happens when you push too far. You can lie all you want about how you won this fight, but we know the truth. So maybe you can think about not being such a fucking dick next time.”

  I had never hated Adam so much as I did right there. And when I said “hated” it wasn’t metaphorical.

  I really did hate him.

  I hated his smarmy, snarky attitude. Someone who had as much going in his favor as he did had no right to feel anything other than gratitude.

  I hated how rich he was, how easily money could be spent by him, and how he had no concept of value. The Corvette he owned wasn’t something that he took great care of; the interior smelled of fast food and booze frequently. When he threw house parties, he never gave a damn about the costs. I hated that he could be so rich as to not care about that.

  I hated that he had a girl as beautiful and sweet as Emily. How the fuck he’d won her over baffled my mind. Yet here I was, admittedly an asshole, sometimes a bully, but not nearly to his degree, and I was as single as a celibate monk. What in the actual fuck was that? How could life be fair like that?

  I hated his goddamn connections. No matter what Adam’s stepfather said in our meetings, Adam would never get punished as much as I would. That, probably most of all, pissed me off more than anything. Money could be wasted, sex and love would come and go, but connections meant that even if everything else around him fell apart, he would always have a way to get back together.

  I didn’t. If I fell on my ass, I was on my own. My mother’s words to take care of myself and not rely on anyone else were more ominously true and important she could have ever known.

  And mostly, I just hated the fact that Adam had everything that I ever had and didn’t even seem to realize it. He was an ungrateful bastard who had no empathy, didn’t realize when he was pushi
ng people too far, and would now probably cower and quiver in private to me but publicly would talk shit about how he could control me whenever he needed.

  His stepfather opened the door and ushered us both in. I took a seat without looking at Adam. Not surprisingly, I really didn’t want anything to do with him or anyone else right now.

  “Providence Prep is a highly respected school in all of Tennessee, not just Nashville,” he said in his most condescending tone yet. “I cannot believe that two of my students—seniors, my son, my son’s friend—would resort to violence. I’m not going to ask what happened and why. Frankly, I don’t really care what happened. Unless someone’s life was being threatened, there is never any reason for violence on campus. Am I correct in assuming this was the case?”

  We both nodded.

  “As I suspected,” he said. “The punishment needs to be harsh and severe. For now, you both are in detention for the rest of the week, starting today. You will stay after school until 5 p.m. in silence in our detention room. You may work on homework, but you will not be allowed to listen to music, go on any websites other than those required for school, or leave the room except for the restroom. You are not to talk during that time either. Do I make myself clear?”

  All too well. As long as Dad doesn’t find out—

  “Adam, I am going to call your mother here shortly and inform her,” he said. “Kevin, I am going to call your father and tell him as well.”

  “No!”

  I blurted out the word before I could contain it.

  “Sorry, Kevin, but you should have thought of that before you and Adam fought,” he said.

  This was the worst. Now, Adam’s words—and, my reaction, let’s be honest, that’s what landed me here—were going to get me beat even worse when I got home. My father drunk was a nightmare. My father drunk and angry at something that happened at school would be beyond anything I ever wanted to consider.

  “The first class bell will ring in about half an hour. In the interim, I want you in the detention room until the bell rings. At that point, you are expected to head to your class and do your work as normal. Do not make me bring further action.”

  There was no worry about that on my end.

  There was zero chance I was going to do anything to make my father even angrier at me.

  11

  JACKIE

  TEN YEARS AGO—SAN FRANCISCO, CA

  I SAT at the edge of the Fisherman’s Wharf, quite possibly the happiest place on Earth for me.

  I just loved to see all of the sea life in the area—otters, seals, and pelicans all adorned the area. I loved to see the people in the area, their freedom and their weirdness on full display. I loved to spend time with my Mom and Dad—they had always said that when I was born, they dreamed of taking me here as much as they could.

  Standing here now, listening to an otter clap and bark, was nothing short of magical.

  “Jackie,” my mother said. “There’s something your father and I need to tell you.”

  “That’s right, munchkin,” my father said, squatting in front of me. “Good news. We’re going to move to Nashville to be closer to your grandparents.”

  “What?” I said.

  That wasn’t good news. Nashville was far, far away! Too far away. Any place that took me away from the wharf and from San Francisco was too far away.

  And now I had to accept that I was going to move across the country to someplace that I’d only been to a couple of times? A place that I hated for its lack of diversity—relative to San Francisco, at least—a place that didn’t have as good a food, and a place without sea life?

  “You’ll be near your grandparents and your cousins,” Mom said, holding my hand. “It won’t be quite as cultured as San Francisco, but that doesn’t matter as much as being near your family. You’ll come to love it.”

  “But why?” I said, despite both of them having already said we’d be near family. “Just have Grandma and Grandpa come here! Or we can visit them! Do we have to be near them?”

  I wasn’t on the verge of tears, but I was clearly upset. My mother hugged me tight, but her hugs weren’t doing any good. I didn’t want to have to deal with this right now. I just wanted to be near my friends. My parents were so stupid to think Nashville would be better than San Francisco!

  “Your grandparents won’t be around forever, dear,” my mother said. “It’s important that we be as connected to them as possible while they are alive. Our connection will be strongest when we are both beyond this realm, but when we are in separate realms, it is not as strong as when we are both of this world.”

  I didn’t want to fight them over this. I was just upset and hurt. I so loved being in San Francisco, but now…

  “I promise you that someday, you’ll be thankful for being in Nashville,” my mother said. “It is a peaceful area. It is a nice area. It is a spiritually energized area. Do you trust me, Jackie?”

  Did I?

  I always trusted my mom and my dad. I always believed they told me the truth and did the best for me.

  But I could only say I trusted her because she was my mom. I wasn’t sure that I believed the words myself.

  I had to take a leap of faith that Nashville would work out for the best.

  “Yes.”

  Present Day

  The rattling of the lockers was what first told me something ugly was happening in our hallway.

  Headphones blocked out much of the initial noise reaching me, but the rattling of the lockers and the shouting of other students screaming “FIGHT!” were impossible to ignore. I took off my headphones, clutched my backpack closely to me, and cautiously moved forward, curiosity getting the best of me.

  I was shocked to see Kevin and Adam fighting like so. I knew boys had a tendency to fight and shove more than girls did, but this wasn’t just a posturing fight; this was a full-scale brawl in which both were seemingly legitimately trying to kill the other. It horrified me to see them fighting like so.

  I stepped away from it. I wasn’t going to condone this carnage and fighting by staying close to them and watching all of it unravel. I wasn’t going to indulge in people who fought like so.

  I didn’t want to sound arrogant or superior, but I felt like I’d risen above the chaos and the madness of the fight. I wasn’t indulging in something harmful to myself. I was focusing on me and my energy, which I was currently directing at my AP Spanish class. I was sure Emily would talk about the fight later—especially since I could hear her voice trying to keep order, followed by two loud slaps—but I was proud of myself for staying away from it.

  Still, I couldn’t totally eliminate the thought that the way I had treated Kevin that morning might have played some part of it.

  And if I had, was I responsible at all? Or, perhaps of more importance, what did that say for how Kevin felt about me?

  I didn’t hear any of the fight gossip until school finally ended. At that point, Emily, who normally would have walked out with Adam hand in hand, stormed out of the building by herself, disappointment and anger on her face.

  I had an initial, brief fear that her attitude suggested she might have even broken up with Adam, but that seemed a bit ridiculous and extreme. I’d always admired Emily for keeping her cool in stressful situations, and I found it hard to believe that one fight between two friends was something that would cause her to dump him. For sure, a fistfight between her and Adam would have ended it, but she didn’t look hurt.

  “Emily!” I shouted.

  She didn’t look particularly keen on staying at Providence Prep any longer than she had to, but when she heard me, she turned back. She smiled, but I didn’t smile back—not for any rude reason; I just didn’t want her to feel like she had to give a fake appearance.

  “What happened this morning?” I said.

  “You don’t know? The entire school knows!”

  “I was trying to stay away from it,” I said. “I figured you’d know since Adam was in it.”

&nb
sp; Emily snorted.

  “You’re the lucky one, staying above the fray,” she said, clearly exasperated. “It was bad.”

  She then outlined everything that happened, down to every word that Adam and Kevin said to each other, including Adam’s words that started the whole fight. I was amazed that Emily had never once gotten in the crossfire of the fight, but she had expertly managed to weave herself into separating them while staying out of the fists.

  Now, the question that had come into my mind this morning about if what I had said sparked Kevin to act as he did told me the answer. He most definitely had acted out as violently as he had because of my action.

  He really liked me. He didn’t just kind of like me. He liked me enough that when Adam made a crude comment about him and me, he went so far as to start an actual fistfight with Adam.

  I strongly disliked how he went about showcasing his interest in me, obviously, but maybe it took something so extreme to get me to realize how much he liked me. Maybe that fight was what I needed to see that he wasn’t someone that needed to be ignored. He was someone that needed to be reached through. Like your mother said.

  I began to think that if I could somehow get Kevin in a private setting where he didn’t feel like he had to show off for the other students, if he didn’t have to look tough for the sake of being a Broad Street Boy, he might be worth taking out. He might be worth going to Sadie Hawkins with.

  But I had to know how he was in private first. That was non-negotiable.

  “Wow,” I said, coming back to the present as Emily finished her story. “That’s crazy.”

  “I’m so pissed at Adam,” Emily said. “I told him not to call me when he got off of detention. I told him I wasn’t going to see him until Friday night.”

  “That bad, huh?”

  “Honestly, I’m angrier at how he treated Kevin than him getting a detention. He’s a boy, he’s going to do stupid things. But the things he said to someone that was supposed to be one of his closest friends was just too much.”

  “Yeah, I can imagine. Are you going to be OK?”