I look at it with mild disgust. “We’re not at a used car dealership. I’m going to blow your back out, Chase. That kind of arrangement does not qualify for a fucking handshake.”
“Yes, it does.” She doesn’t look like she’s going to change her mind.
“Urgh. Whatever.” I shake her hand, rolling my eyes. Once the deal has been made official in Chase’s eyes, I say, “Right. I’m out of here.”
“You aren’t gonna fuck me tonight, then?”
“Hell no. I’m not putting my dick inside you when you’re high, Chase. Ever. Remember that when you’re thinking about burning one down before you come and see me. I will not be happy.”
“What does it matter?”
I enjoy it far too much when I take her by the chin, holding her in place as I look at her. Her eyes look like warm honey. Her irises are crystal clear…but her focus is not. “I want you to feel it when I fuck you. I want your mental faculties fully intact when you agree to all of the messed up shit I’m gonna do to you.”
Her cheeks color. Her breath quickens, lips part beautifully, just begging to be kissed. And I want to fucking kiss her, which is why I let her go. If I start, I probably won’t stop.
Rather than climb back through her window, I grip the edge of the roof and I lower myself down the side of the building, hanging there for a second before I let go and drop down the remaining twelve feet, landing in amongst the rose bushes.
“Very impressive.” I look up and she’s there, peering over the edge of the roof, smiling at me.
“Oh, I know.”
“I guess I’ll see you in A.P. English, then.”
The taunt nearly stops me dead in my tracks. “Wait. You’re not in A.P. English.”
“Aren’t I?”
God. Is she? Have I just not noticed her there, this whole fucking time? She was in Econ, after all. Is it possible that I’ve been that checked out for so long?
She says nothing. Just laughs.
I flip her off as I run across the academy's front lawn, but by the time I hit the dirt road that cuts through the forest—the one that will lead me down the mountain and back to Riot House—the profound sense of satisfaction I felt at insulting Chase has gone.
23
PAX
* * *
“But what has she actually done?”
I repeatedly bang the back of my skull against Wren's headboard, gritting my teeth. I realize, all of a sudden that this—his headboard banging against his bedroom wall—is the source of the rhythmic, irritating noise I've been hearing late at night recently. I grab the book lying on his bedside table and hurl the thing at his head.
Wren ducks. The book collides with the wall but my friend glowers at me like the projectile hit its mark. “That is a first edition,” he seethes.
“Good. I hope it's fucking ruined. You've been up here, pounding away on that girl like a jackhammer, haven't you? Urgh!”
“While 'that girl' is better than the name you used to call Elodie, I’m gonna need you to use her name from here on out, man. Otherwise, things are gonna get unpleasant around here.”
You pick your battles with Wren. I take great pride in fucking with Dash. He's a slow burn. He'll tolerate a lot of poking and prodding before he reaches the point where he's had enough and clocks you. Conversely, Wren has no grey area. No middle ground. He has a very sensitive on/off switch. Once it’s flipped, it's notoriously hard to turn back the other way. Sitting up properly, I roll my shoulders back, closing my eyes. “Fine. Elodie. You've been up here fucking Elodie night and day.”
“Damn right I have. Has sex wound up on the exhaustive 'Things Pax Hates' list now? I don't know a single other eighteen-year-old guy who gets laid less than you. Especially an eighteen-year-old guy who looks like you. Jesus, dude. Go and get your dick wet and stop getting so fired up over a girl you never even cared existed until now. Soon, none of this is gonna matter. Once we’ve graduated, you’ll be in Massachusetts, and she’ll be in…?”
“Who fucking cares where she'll be.”
“Exactly.”
“Only, she'll probably show up in Massachusetts. She'll wind up going to Harvard, too, dude. Enrolled in the same classes. I'll probably join a frat, and she'll pledge to the same house, and everyone'll be too scared of getting canceled in today’s climate to tell her she needs to join a sorority instead.”
Wren directs a contemptuous glance my way. He crosses the room to his closet, pulling his black t-shirt off over his head. The three of us work out and run every day, but Wren's filled out quite a bit recently. Must be all the testosterone flooding his system, now that he’s fucking eleven million times a day. He emerges from his walk-in with another black t-shirt in his hand. This one has a white print logo that says ‘House Atreides’ on the front of it. “Have you considered that you might be overreacting a little?” He shoves the shirt over his head.
“Have you considered that you've completely fucking changed in the last few months, and that you would have thought it was super fucking suspicious that a girl who has been, according to you and all of her friends, madly in love with me for the past four years, has completely changed as a human being and is now everywhere I fucking look? And won’t get the fuck out of my head?”
He cracks a shit-eating grin. “I think that's the most I've ever heard you say in one go.”
“Fuck you, man.” I'm growing tired of this. Not too long ago, Wren would have seen just how fucked up this whole thing is. He would have been leading the charge in the mission to find out what’s going on with Chase and how to make her leave me alone. Now that his balls have been clipped, all he seems to wanna do is irritate me.
As if he realizes this himself, he finally sits his ass down in the chair at his desk and sighs. “All right, Fine. Christ. I'll help you, but only because I don't want to share a house with your petulant ass. You act like a kid when you're all bent out of shape. You still haven't told me what she’s actually done.”
“She’s just…there. Every time I turn around, she’s there.”
“And?”
“And when she’s not there, she’s inside my head like some treacherous little worm, polluting my thoughts.”
Wren frowns. “And that’s her fault…how?”
“How the fuck am I supposed to know! But it certainly has nothing to do with me!”
He looks down, flicking through the book I hurled at him just now, an annoying smirk twisting his mouth up at one side. “What?” I snarl.
“Nothing, man. Nothing at all.”
“No, tell me why you’re trying to hide that stupid fucking grin.”
He clears his throat, raising the book a little higher. “A bastard’s touch, the thought of you. Aye, a waking curse upon my days, I endure you like sun and rain, and both the heat and the cold you feel the same. I crawl atop the shattered panes that fell from the windows of the house you did destroy. And I relish the blood that seeps from me, even as I hate you, because it flows only through my wretched veins for you.”