My Father's Best Man

Chapter 7

The road from Vegas to San Diego was a whole lot of nothing. It was very easy for my mind to wander about. But what April said about Brooke was something that I could not move on from. She was probably right. Brooke probably didn't want me there. She probably only sent me that invitation to gloat, to hurt me. But she did "invite" me, so fuck it!

And fuck her! I already drove over 700 miles and crossed over two states, I wasn't going to turn back now!

I was driving a bit mad because I couldn't figure out why she would do something so heinous to hurt me. She knew I was infatuated with her for so long, and something like this would definitely destroy me. But did I deserve it? I wasn't the one in the wrong in that relationship. She was the one who cheated on her boyfriend. Granted, he was a piece of shit, and I didn't stop seeing her after I found out they were still together. But by then, it was already too late; I was already in love with her.

"Hey...! Hey! Fucking asshole!"

Those were her first words that I could remember. She came rushing out of a portable potty and was chasing after a speeding van. Her friends, including her then boyfriend, thought it'd be funny to leave her at the local fair. They were on their way to a rave. This was where they decided to have their restroom break. With her purple tutu and furry boots on, she was definitely the odd woman out.

"Dude. Check her out."

Justin was the slow one in our group. He tried to get our attention to look at Brooke, but Fulton and I had been looking at her for a while now. Brooke was now on her phone, frantically typing on it, probably texting to her friends, "IT'S NOT FUNNY!!" over and over again. After about a minute, she seemed to have finally given up. She lowered her hands, and I was waiting for that angry grunt.

"I'm gonna go get another beer."

Fulton seemed a bit bored by the anticlimactic end. He was more interested in testing out our new fake IDs. The last batch he got for us were poorly made. These new ones just arrived for our spring break.

"Come on!"

Even though he liked to act tough, Fulton was still afraid to buy alcohol alone. We followed him to a new booth and got ourselves some German sounding beer. The guy with the mustache didn't check our IDs because we still had our wristbands on from our first purchase, so Fulton was just being paranoid.

Initially, we were going to invite the girls, too. But Hannah went back home to her grandparents', and according to Justin, the ferris wheel ride would be too awkward with an odd number. But in reality, we didn't even need to worry about that. Just five minutes in, Justin was already bright pink. Fulton being Fulton, felt the need to escort him back to our school, even though there were plenty of drunk people around us.

We went back to the parking lot, and I saw Brooke still standing at the same spot alone. Her arms were crossed like it was cold outside. It wasn't really that cold, but the way she was dressed, I was feeling the goosebumps myself.

"Don't go picking up any stray cat, man."

Fulton saw me looking at Brooke again. He motioned me over to help load Justin. We strapped Justin in and got back to our campus within ten minutes. After we safely settled Justin back in his room, I realized Justin didn't have his band uniform with him. Then Fulton started to freak out...

"You have to go back and get it, man! If someone finds it, they'll know we were there! They'll--!"

"Dude, relax. It's probably in my car. And besides, there were plenty of kids at the fair. They're not gonna see his jacket and think we were drinking--"