Free It Was Always You (Gaming the System) by Brenna Aubrey

Chapter One
Michaela
     
    The nausea from the twists and turns up this mountain road was nothing compared to the pukey feeling I was getting from the couple in the front seat of the car. They were going at each other. Again.
    “I’m not saying I’m not happy for them but do they really have to drag us up this godforsaken mountain just for a party?” my roommate, Tiffani, said to Jeremy, her boyfriend of six months, who was also my friend.
    “ They didn’t drag us anywhere, Tiff. We all agreed that it would be fun to rent a cabin and have a whole weekend-long last hurrah instead of stupid bachelor and bachelorette parties.”
    “I dunno. I could have hired her an awesome male stripper and then we all could have had some fun.”
    “Yeah, because Donna really wants some oiled-up beefy dude wagging his junk in her face,” I quipped.
    I should really have stayed out of it. I knew better. When these two were bickering—which was often—it was always best to keep my mouth shut and leave the room. But as I was a captive audience during this two-hour drive from Orange County to Big Bear, I had no choice and I was a bit bitter about that fact.
    Jeremy was cracking up but clamped his mouth shut when Tiffani jerked a glare at him through narrowed eyes. “I had better things to do this weekend,” she said with an affected sniff and a toss of shiny, raven-colored hair.
    “It’s not like our friends get married every day. This is their time. Let’s let them enjoy it. It’s not about us. It’s about them,” Jeremy said.
    But Tiffani wasn’t buying it. She folded her arms tightly against her chest and turned her head to stare out the window.
    They hadn’t been getting along lately and though I worried, I couldn’t help but hope that they might decide to call it quits. It wasn’t entirely for selfless reasons, like wishing them to be happy with someone who better suited them.
    No, part of it was the fact that Jeremy had been a longtime crush and the day he’d asked out Tiffani and they became a couple had been a difficult one for me. But what could I have said about it? At the time, I’d been in a relationship with Sean. What a mess, I thought. By the time Sean and I had called things off, Tiff and Jeremy had gotten more serious. And then…I’d had no idea if Jeremy would ever see me as anything besides his best friend’s kid sister.
    My eyes met Jeremy’s large green ones in the rearview mirror and he gave a slight eye roll. I shrugged helplessly at him. It wasn’t uncommon for him to send me unspoken pleas for help when it came to Tiffani, but I was in no mood to save his ass right now. I was barely managing to keep lunch down.
    “Can you either go a bit slower or maybe crack the window or something? I’m dying back here.”
    Tiffani sniffed. “It’s freezing out there. I’m not opening the window.”
    “It’s not freezing.” We might’ve been in the mountains, but this was Southern California and the sun was shining. There was snow on the ground, in patches, but as far as mountain weather went, the temperature was not intolerable. But Tiffani didn’t budge. “Oh well. You’re the one who’s going to be wearing a vomit shirt in a minute…”
    With an explosive exhalation of air, she hit the window control, barely cracking it enough to let a tiny stream of air in on her side, though I could feel nothing. The only way you could tell that it was open was the flagging sound of air rushing in. I leaned back with a groan.
    “Sip some ginger ale or something, Michaela. God. Stop whining so much.”
    My eyebrows shot up and I glared at her. Tiffani had been a good friend, had been there for me through the worst of my grief when I’d lost my dad last year. At that time, I had felt like she’d do anything for me. But lately, pretty much since she’d begun seeing Jeremy, she’d changed. There was distance between us now and I had no idea why. I had always been extra careful to hide my feelings for her