Page 9 of Flipping the Script

“Not with the swill my parents are serving.” I swirled the contents of my cup. “It’s a bit pedestrian for me. I’m glad you like it.” I shot him a fake smile.

He rolled his eyes. How I could tell with his sunglasses obscuring half his face, I had no idea, but I could. “Right, because your tastes are so mature. Weren’t you the one who used to mix bourbon and orange juice?”

“Weren’t you the guy who used to crush beer cans on his forehead?” I asked innocently.

“That was one time.” His tone was cold.

“More times than I’ve done it.” I sipped my drink. “But back to your colors question.”

“My what?” Jesse asked.

“Your question about hostile colors. Those are my mother’s guidelines.”

Why the fuck was I continuing this conversation? Silence was better than whatever the hell we were doing.

“Didn’t you wear a red shirt to your dad’s fiftieth?” he asked.

I cracked a smile. “Yup. Figured I might as well make the night memorable for her and Dad.”

“Your dad cares what color shirt you wear?”

“No, but he has to listen to my mother bitch about it, so it’s a gift for both of them.”

“I aspire to be that level of petty.” He toasted me with his cup, but his tone was mocking. “Too bad I matured past sixteen.”

“Oh, you sweet summer child,” I said patronizingly. “You think adults aren’t petty?”

“Real ones aren’t.”

“They aren’t?”

“No.”

“And what arerealadults, if not petty?” Did that even make sense?

I was already losing the thread of our conversation, and most of what I’d said had been reactionary, like how I used to argue with Hannah and just say the first thing that came to mind that would piss her off.

Jesse was the only other person who could make me lose control like that. And I had no fucking clue why.

“Petty is a pointless emotion.” He shot me a lazy grin, obviously following the conversation. “What separates a kid from an adult is their ability to reframe pointless emotions into purposeful ones.”

“That sounds like something a therapist would say.”

“It was.”

“I don’t buy into that toxic positivity shit.” I dumped the contents of my cup out and put it on the closest table. Whoever mixed it went a little crazy with the sugar, and it was way too sweet for my tastes.

“Toxic positivity?” Jesse put his cup next to mine, some of the liquid sloshing over the edge.

“Yeah. That ‘everything is awesome’ and ‘love yourself no matter what’ crap.”

“That has nothing to do with what I just said.”

“It’s literally the same thing.”

“How?” he asked.

“You said adults don’t feel negative emotions. That they reframe them and turn them into something positive.”