Free Down 'N' Derby by Lila Felix Page B

face, “Oh, I didn’t see a girl with you,” then she looked to Nixon, “Oh, I see.”
                  “What? No, that’s my cousin.  I’ve got a girlfriend.” She removed an invisible piece of lint from my chest and answered, “Well, she’s not here, is she?”
                  “Look, Lydia, I appreciate the offer but I’m not interested.” I took a step back from her to drive the point home and it finally registered with her.
                  “Whatever.  I was just looking for a good time.  You guys look like you’re underage anyway.”
                  Good, let her get bitter.  Whatever made her stop trying to get with someone who wasn’t going for it. 
                  We decided to walk back to the hotel since we had eaten enough for a herd of elephants and needed to walk it off.  The strip was just like the travel channels said it was; busy and weird, full of every different kind of person under the neon lights. 
                  We had to stop at every street performer and let Nixon listen for a while, drop a dollar or two and move on.  We roamed the streets of Vegas until the sun broke through the clouds and alerted us of morning.  We walked back to the hotel and people watched us, assuming we were doing the walk of shame but we were completely innocent—at least I was.  Nixon I wasn’t sure about.
                  After showers to wash off the smoke and city smells, we both fell into bed exhausted.  I teetered on the edge of sleep when I heard Nixon speak to me. 
                  “I don’t think I like Vegas as much as I thought I would.” If I didn’t know him better I would think, by the slur in his voice, that he was drunk.
                  “You don’t wanna stay,” I asked him as I rolled over to my back to hear him better.
                  “No, I wanna see some California girls.” All of the sudden I felt like I was a father consoling his toddler with bigger and better things when he woke up.
                  “Alright, when we wake up, we drive to Cali.”
                  He rolled over while throwing up some awkward wannabe gang signs singing, “I’m going, going, back, back to Cali, Cali.”  He passed out after that, fingers still twisted in calls to invisible homeys.
                 
                  We stayed in the hotel room that day, mostly because we slept until two in the afternoon.  We ordered pizza in—I ordered wings since I hated pizza and watched TV and played on our phones until I fell asleep again about eleven that night. 

Chapter 16
    Storey
    I’d like to think that if I ever saw Simon again I’d take the opportunity to punch his boys so far up that they’d sprout out of his head like two dilapidated dog ears.  But I knew better.  Plus, that’s what I had a badass bestie for—beating my enemies to a pulp and making them look like puppies.
     
                  “Look, Louise, I’m tired and I want to go home.  Take all the money if you want to but I’m not going back.  In fact, I’ve already packed up my car and I’m about to drive home.”
                  She answered some smartass comment back at me and with my contract ending in four weeks I didn’t have to put up with it anymore.
                  “Do whatever you feel like your big girl panties will let you do.  I could give a shit.”
                  She always treated me like a commodity and while I’d always hated it, I had to put up with it—not anymore.  She assumed that in a month I would renew my contract with her like I had every year since I was seventeen but I had saved up enough money to move back to Louisiana and go to Loyola.  I had taken some online classes and was technically entering college as a sophomore.  It also let me prove to the admissions board