Read Online Trying the Knot by Todd Erickson - Free Book Online Page A

Vangie is some clingy
ditz, and Nick Paull is the most honorable guy I know –
    “A jock with a conscience,” Thad interrupted,
and Chelsea shook her head sadly as if she had firsthand evidence
to the contrary.
    “Well, it’s fair to say something happened
between them,” Chelsea insisted.
    “Objection, isn’t that speculation?” Ben
asked of the future lawyer. “This is total bullshit.”
    Ben rose to his feet in a huff and fumbled
for his wallet. He threw a wad of bills down on the table, along
with coins and a folded piece of stationery. Chewing on a
fingernail, Chelsea eyed the crumpled paper suspiciously, but Ben
snatched the note away before she grabbed it.
    Thad grabbed hold of Ben’s sleeve and tugged
him back into the booth. Seated, Ben flung free from Thad’s loose
grip, but he made no effort to leave. “It’s too weird. Even if
something did happen, it’s their business,” Ben said. “Let it
go.”
    “No one is saying anything happened for
sure,” Chelsea countered. “This is not from a place of
judgment.”
    “I’ll say it happened for sure.”
    “Like how sure,” Ben demanded, again rising
to his feet.
    “Like I saw it for sure—outside the bar, near
the bushes,” Thad confessed.
    “How primal,” Chelsea said, relieved her
suspicions were confirmed. “Like I’ve always said, never trust a
man with two first names.”
    Oblivious to the wafting steam and pungent
odor, Ben failed to respond when the waitress asked if his coffee
needed a warm-up.
    “Hey, guy, wake up,” said the pregnant
teenager. Ben looked away, adamantly disinterested, and she flashed
him a toothy grin, sucked in her belly, and poured him a refill
anyway. “You going to eat that, or just play?” Ben lifted his plate
toward her, and she asked, “Yous guys need anything else, or you
all set?”
    “Just the check,” Thad said. The server
slapped the check down on the table before Chelsea could ask for
separate checks, and she turned and teetered away.
    “Yous,” Chelsea repeated. “I don’t know why
the proverbial white trash S needs to be added to the end of every
other word around here.”
    Ben watched the waitress sashay across the
room as seductively as her bowed legs and pigeon feet allowed. “Too
skinny,” he mumbled. He felt sorry for the fetus inside her. It’s
sure to be born with a greasy spoon its mouth, its only future
entailed working in this dump, or out in the strawberry fields with
the boys.
    Ben pushed his coffee cup out of the way and
said adamantly, “I don’t even drink this shit.”
    “Really? I drink mass quantities,” Chelsea
said. “Java keeps me alive. I wish there was a way to have it
filtered directly into my veins.”
    Mockingly, Ben said, “I bet that means you’re
rilly-rilly busy without enough hours in the day to contact
everyone in your Rolodex.”
    “Enough already, Benjamin,” Chelsea spat,
smacking her palm onto the tabletop. “I don’t know why you have to
be such an antagonistic prick all the time.”
    Thad shot him a look, and for the sake of
maintaining peace, Ben sat back down and agreed, “Okay, nuf’s
nuf.”
    Sensing another argument percolating, Thad
asked casually, “Ben, is Vange still pregnant?”
    Chelsea’s jaw dropped as she exhaled
incredulously. “How do you know that?”
    “She told me Easter weekend.”
    Ben shook his head slowly. With his middle
finger, he mindlessly twirled a spoon around and around on the
table’s sticky, sea-foam surface.
    “Ben—
    “What?”
    “Is she still pregnant?”
    “No.”
    “And how would you know?” Chelsea asked.
    “Because I’m the one who took her to get the
abortion. They sent her away because she was too far along,” he
said reluctantly. “She had a miscarriage. I was the one who took
her to the hospital and stayed with her.”
    “Who’s the father?”
    “I dunno,” he mumbled.
    “Did you even bother to ask?” she
inquired.
    Ben continued twirling the spoon and watched
it as if