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best and that is what I would give her.
    When I turned back to Ryan and Jake, they both shook their head s. “Would you look at that shit-eating grin on his face.” Jake laughed as he removed his ball cap and ran a hand through his hair before sticking it back on. “She must’ve agreed to go out with him,” he said to Ryan.
    “Pathetic.” Ryan rolled his eyes, but got distracted when a tiny brunette passed by. He immediately started following her onto the dance floor.
    But I was the one that was pathetic.

F OUR
     
     
     
     
    Sophia
     
    “We’re go ing to Mom and Dad’s?” I ask Tia incredulously from the passenger seat of her rental car. She waited until we were half way there to tell me, knowing I wouldn’t go if I had known before we left. This is the world adventure she wanted to take me on? Our childhood home?
    “Yeah. I haven’t seen them in a year. I figure I better squeak it in.” Tia pops a piece of Trident gum in her mouth before offering the pack to me.
    I shake my head no. “Couldn’t you have done this before you came to me?” I’m in no mood to play middle man between Tia and our parents. They get along for the most part, but Tia enjoys getting them worked up, mostly my father, with tales of her wild adventures.
    “It’s just a nigh t, Phi. Geesh.” She rolls her eyes from the driver’s seat of her rental car.
    Grace and Gary Campbell are two fine southern conservatives that love the Lord and live frugally. Unfortunately, there is nothing conservative about Tia and when you mix oil with vinegar… you know how it goes. My parent’s relationship with Tia has been futile to say the least. We were raised to get an education, find a good man, and make babies. Tia stuck her nose up at that and did the opposite. Instead of finding true love, she found lovers. Instead of going to college, she took off for world travels, becoming a student at the school of life. Though it took many years, my parents have mostly come to terms that she’ll never do as they heed. But even still, Tia avoids home, maybe visiting once or twice a year, usually at Christmas and my mother’s birthday.
    “Please don’t provoke them , Tia,” I warn. Last time we were all home for my mother’s birthday, Tia announced she was considering getting breast implants. My father nearly had a coronary.
    Tia smiles and nods, running a hand through her thick blonde hair, but says nothing. I cringe internally. This is going to be a long two days.
    My mother and father aren’t expecting us and I have no idea what to tell them when my mother asks, “Why aren’t Brandon and the girls with you?”
    “Because I begged Brandon to let me steal her away for a week or two. I may not make it back to the states for a year or so,” Tia pipes in and I could kiss her. She knows I’m not ready to talk about it with them. And her bomb about not coming home for a year or two is sure to get my father upset and keep his focus off me.
    “Why so long, Tia?” my father grumbles, obviously displeased with Tia’s announcement. Gary Campbell, a retired police officer, is an easy target for Tia. I learned a long time ago, my father and Tia had a completely different relationship then he had with me. Once, when Tia was sixteen, she got caught skipping school and when my father grounded her for six weeks, she fasted in protest because she’d have to miss her homecoming dance. Tia didn’t eat for three days. My mother was to pieces and so, by the fourth day, my father told Tia she could go to the dance.
    I was never jealous of Tia. She was my bestie, but I knew if it had been me, my father would have let me starve. I asked him, “Daddy, why’d you let her go?”
    His smile was weak and he didn’t meet my gaze when he said, “Sophia, sometimes the Lord presents us with dilemmas and we have to handle them best we can.”
    I wasn’t entirely sure what he was talking about, but I knew he too, like most people that stepped into Tia’s pat h,