Coven Read Online Free PDF Page B

nodded like a wooden puppet. They
hadn’t let him shave—his current hand and mentality could not yet
be trusted to hold a razor to his throat. But they’d gotten him
cleaned up and walking.
    “ I’ll have a beer,” he
eventually said.
    “ You’ll have coffee, you
dumb schmuck,” Wade corrected.
    “ And food,” Tom
said.
    Jervis groaned.
    Wade ordered from a
waitress whose frilled bräuhaus dress exposed enough cleavage to dry dock a
runabout. Tom and Wade glanced warily at each other, contemplating
a strategy to open Jervis up. Tom recognized the fragility of the
situation. Wade, however, preferred a slightly more direct
approach.
    “ So she dumped you,
huh?”
    Jervis wailed. Tom shook his head.
    “ Look, Jerv,” Wade said,
“you can’t hide from this thing forever. You’re gonna have to face
it, grab it by the balls.”
    “ Life’s got its ups and
downs,” Tom said. “This is one of the downs.”
    Jerv’s forehead was on the table. “But I
still love her!”
    Some can of worms, Wade thought. “Take my word for it, buddy. You’ll
get over it. You got your whole life to look forward
to.”
    “ Not without her,” Jervis
told the top of the table. “We were gonna get married. I even
bought a ring. It was going to be perfect.”
    “ Jervis, no girl is worth
getting this bent out of shape over,” Tom offered. “When things
don’t work out, you find someone else.”
    “ But I don’t want someone
else. I want Sarah. I want my Sarah back!”
    Wade tried to reason. “She’s not your Sarah
anymore. That may sound cold but it’s the truth. Women can be
treacherous, cunning monsters. One minute they’re telling you they
love you forever; the next minute they’re in the sack with someone
else, balling like there’s no tomorrow.”
    Jervis jerked upright, pop eyed. He
began to make croaking noises. Then he jumped up from the table and
staggered away.
    “ Good going, Wade,” Tom
smirked. “You really have a way with words. Why not just buy him a
bus ticket to Lover’s Leap?”
    Perhaps the direct approach had been a bit
harsh in this instance. Wade had blown it.
    The waitress with the St. Pauli Girl
cleavage brought their orders, a Spaten Oktoberfest for Tom, a
Samuel Adams for Wade, and coffee and gumbo for Jervis. “I knew he
was serious about her,” Wade said. “But I had no idea it was this
bad.”
    “ Bad isn’t the word. Jerv’s
a sensitive guy. He keeps a lot of things to himself.”
    “ Too many things,” Wade
concluded. “I warned him not to go falling silly in love with that
girl. I never liked her anyway.”
    “ You just never liked her
’cause she’s the only girl on campus who never made a play for
you.”
    Wade rolled his eyes. “Just because I’m the
sharpest looking dude in the state doesn’t mean I’m
conceited.”
    Tom laughed out loud.
    After some time, Jervis returned, holding
two bottles of Kirin Dry, one of which was already close to
empty.
    “ Jervis, I didn’t mean to
shake you up,” Wade apologized.
    “ Don’t worry about it.”
Jervis sat down. “You guys are right. I’ve got to put this whole
thing behind me.”
    “ Now you’re talking,” Tom
said.
    Wade pointed to the bowl. “Eat your gumbo.
It’s good for you.”
    Jervis dumped the gumbo into a potted plant.
Then he began: “She dumped me by letter, during the break. She told
me about the German guy, about how they’d been friends for a while,
about how caring and ‘sweet’ he was, and all of a sudden she didn’t
love me anymore. She’d stopped loving me months ago, she said, but
hadn’t realized it till then. That was it, that simple. She said
she didn’t want to see me anymore. And the last line”—Jervis
gulped—“the last line of the letter was ‘Have a nice life.’”
    “ Serious bummer,” Tom
commented.
    “ Oh, man,” Wade said. “That
really sucks.”
    Jervis continued, as if
speaking from the grave. “I made mistakes, sure. I’m not perfect.
But true love is