Walking Disaster

keep them. Feelings of overprotection and jealousy chipped away at the oath I’d made just a few hours before.
    By lunchtime, Chris Jenks had pissed me off and I regressed. Abby was thankfully patient and forgiving, even when I threatened Parker not twenty minutes later.
    Abby had proved more than once that she could accept me for who I was, but I didn’t want to be the violent asshole everyone was used to. Mixing my rages with these new feelings of jealousy
was more difficult to control than I could have imagined.
    I resorted to avoiding situations that could throw me into a rage, and remaining oblivious to the knowledge that not only was Abby insanely hot, every dick on campus was curious how she had
tamed the one man they thought would never settle down. It seemed they were all waiting for me to fuck up so they could try her out, which only made me more agitated and cantankerous.
    To keep my mind occupied, I focused on making it clear to the coeds that I was off the market, which had pissed off half the school’s female population.
    Walking into the Red with Abby on Halloween, I noticed that the sharp, late fall air didn’t hinder the number of women wearing an array of slutty costumes. I hugged my girlfriend to my
side, grateful that she wasn’t one to dress up as Prostitute Barbie, or a football-player-slash-transvestite-whore, which meant that the number of threats I would have to make for staring at
her tits or worrying about her bending over would be kept to a minimum.
    Shepley and I played pool while the girls looked on. We were winning again, after having already pocketed $360 from the last two games.
    From the corner of my eye, I saw Finch approach America and Abby. They giggled for a while, and then Finch pulled them onto the dance floor. Abby’s beauty stood out, even amid the bare
skin, glitter, and glaring cleavage of the naughty Snow Whites and sleazy referees around her.
    Before the song was over, America and Abby left Finch on the dance floor and headed toward the bar. I stretched up onto my toes to find the tops of their heads in the sea of people.
    “You’re up,” Shepley said.
    “The girls are gone.”
    “They probably went to pick up drinks. Get to stickin’, lover boy.”
    With hesitation, I bent down, focused on the ball, but then missed.
    “Travis! That was an easy shot! You’re killin’ me!” Shepley complained.
    I still couldn’t see the girls. Knowing about the two sexual assault incidents the year before, it made me nervous to let Abby and America walk around alone. Drugging an unsuspecting
girl’s drink was not unheard of, even in our small college town.
    I set my pool stick on the table and made my way across the wooden dance floor.
    Shepley’s hand fell on my shoulder. “Where are you going?”
    “To find the girls. You remember what happened last year to that Heather chick.”
    “Oh. Yeah.”
    When I finally found Abby and America, I saw two guys buying them drinks. Both short, one was thicker around the middle, with a week’s worth of scruff on his sweaty face. Jealousy should
have been the last thing I would feel when looking at him, but the fact that he was clearly hitting on my girlfriend made this less about his looks and more about my ego—even if he
didn’t know she was with me, he should have assumed by looking at her that she wouldn’t be alone. My jealousy mixed with annoyance. I’d told Abby a dozen times not to do something
so potentially dangerous as accept a drink from a stranger; anger quickly took over.
    The one guy yelling to Abby over the music leaned in. “You wanna dance?”
    Abby shook her head. “No, thanks. I’m here with my—”
    “Boyfriend,” I said, cutting her off. I glared down at the men. It was almost laughable trying to intimidate two men wearing togas, but I still unleashed my full-on
I Will Kill
You
expression. I nodded across the room. “Run along, now.”
    The men cowered, and then looked to America and Abby before retreating behind the curtain of the crowd.
    Shepley kissed America. “I can’t take you anywhere!” She giggled, and Abby smiled at me.
    I was too angry to smile back.
    “What?” she asked, taken aback.
    “Why did you let him buy your drink?”
    America let go of Shepley. “We didn’t, Travis. I told them not to.”
    I took the bottle from Abby’s hand. “Then what’s this?”
    “Are you serious?” she asked.
    “Yes, I’m fucking serious,” I said, tossing the beer in the trash