After our pseudo fight in the gym, Zander gives me a wide birth, though he does jam the odd Post-It through the vent of my locker, bearing highly creative, colorfully offensive names that I assume are all aimed at me.
Goat Ball Licker.
Gooch Stain.
Jizz Monkey.
Occasionally (and disturbingly), the name-calling is accompanied by a diagram depicting the name in question. At first, I screwed up the Post-Its and tossed them in the trash, making sure Zander could see me do it, but I gave up halfway through Wednesday and started collecting them instead. The inside of my locker door is covered in pink, orange and lime-green sticky notes with doodles on them that would make a sailor blush.
When Friday rolls around, I wait for Silver in the driveway like usual, but when the door swings open…it isn’t my girlfriend who comes stomping down the steps. Wearing a thick black puffer jacket over his red and black flannel pajamas, Cameron evidently hasn’t spent much time prepping for his day yet. His hair is a fucking nightmare. I cringe as he makes his way around the Camaro, opens up the passenger door, and climbs on in like it’s totally fucking normal.
He looks out of the windshield, back up toward the house. When he lifts his mug of coffee to his mouth, the steam from the hot liquid inside fogs up his horn-rimmed glasses. “Asshole,” he says into the cup.
“I’m sorry? Did you just call me an asshole?”
He nods. “You bet I did.”
I mull this over. “Well…I’d say you were the asshole. Where’s my coffee?”
His stupid puffer jacket rustles when he turns his head to look at me. “It’s in the pot. In the kitchen. Inside the house. You remember how that works, right? You actually get out of your car. You walk up the stairs. You knock on the front door. No, wait, y’know what? Fuck it. You don’t even need to knock. You already know you don’t. We moved past that stage a long fucking time ago, didn’t we?”
“Are you mad that I haven’t come over to say hi, Cameron?” I ask flatly.
“It’s more of a manners thing,” he counters, his voice weirdly trailing up at the end. Blowing into his coffee, he leans forward and turns the radio on, scrolling through the channels until he finds some CCR. “You and I went on a mission to make another man bleed. You’d think that might earn me the odd hello every once in a while.”
“This is cute. You’ve missed me. It’s my charming, sunny outlook, right?” I slouch down into my seat, breathing down the front of my jacket, trying to spread some warmth into my torso. My nipples are so cold, they could cut glass.
Cameron scowls, his lip curling disdainfully. Grumbling, he holds out his mug of coffee. I accept it, taking a deep slug. The liquid inside is scalding hot and bitter as hell, and I almost cry from how beautiful it feels, thawing out my insides. When I go to pass the mug back to Cam, I notice the curly black script that wraps around the white ceramic.
“You’ll always be my Daddy?” I read out loud.
“Silver gave it to me on Father’s Day when she was six. It’s my favorite mug.”
“Can I keep it?”
“Stop talking, Moretti, before I rip your tongue right out of your head.”
He saw my, ‘she calls me Daddy now,’ joke coming a mile away. “Okay, okay. That might have been a little on the nose.”
Cam glowers at me out of the corner of his eye. “My fist’ll be on your nose if you’re not careful.”
“You trudge out here in the snow and the cold just to call me names and threaten me, old man? You need to get out of the house more often.”
He takes a sip of coffee and then hands me the mug again. I drink from it and pass it back without comment this time.
“I know you don’t wanna talk about Ben,” he says quietly. “At least not with me. I wouldn’t want to either. But I have this cool architectural software I wanted to show you. Figured you might be interested in it. It pisses all over CAD. You can build these 3D liquid surfaces that make buildings look fucking crazy.” He chuckles, sipping again, and I try not to feel like he’s just punched me in the fucking gut.
I’m so used to most men being monumental let-downs on the father figure front that I’m always taken aback and surprised by how consistently good Cameron Parisi is at this. Sure, he might not be my father—I don’t want him to be—but he makes a pretty fucking epic friend.
Before I can change my mind, I lean across the other side of the car and I pull the dumb bastard into a quick, tight sideways hug. I release him right away, returning to my side of the vehicle, clearing my throat as I grab his mug from him again. It’s easier to drain its contents than it is to meet his eye. Cam sits in stunned silence for a second before he says, “All right. Well. Cool. I guess we won’t talk about that either, then.”
“Probably for the best. I finished your coffee.” Fidgeting in my seat, I lean on the car horn, willing Silver to hurry the fuck up and come outside so that this tragically uncomfortable moment can be over. “I s’pose I’ll come up and grab my own on Monday. Just to be polite.”
Cameron smiles, his eyes creasing in the corners, but he does a magnificent job of holding in his laughter. Opening up the passenger door again, he gets out of the car. “Sounds like a plan. See you then.”
The door slams with a thunk, dislodging a chunk of snow from the Camaro’s roof which slides down the windshield, onto the hood. Silver’s dad ambles back up to the house, his mug dangling from his index finger. Just before he disappears back inside, he turns and flips me the bird, grinning from ear to ear.
18
ALEX
“Class, this is Detective Lowell. He’d like to ask a few of you a couple of questions. He’s assured me it won’t take long.” At the front of the room, Dr. Harrison looks nervous, like he’s secretly been cooking his own meth in the science labs, Heisenberg style, and he’s afraid that this DEA Agent might smell the crime on him. The Agent in question—a shortish guy with a wolfish look to him, doesn’t look like he works for the Drug Enforcement Agency. From his slicked-back hair, black bomber jacket, and his Nike high tops, he looks like he’d fit right in at a men’s clothing store. The kind where hipsters pay through the nose for vintage Gucci fanny packs and secondhand Versace jeans.
I already fucking hate him.
I hate him even more when Silver passes me a slip of paper that reads:
That’s the guy who made out I was lying about Jake.
My knuckles crack spectacularly when I crush the slip of paper in my fist, eyes narrowed at the greasy punk standing in front of the class. He radiates smugness in a way that makes me want to take the heel of my fucking Stan Smiths to his face.
“Thanks, man,” Detective Lowell says. Dr. Harrison recoils, stepping behind his desk, probably unsure how to proceed since no one has ever called him fucking ‘man’ before. He’s just not that type of guy.
“Before any of you start freaking out, I wanna make it clear that no one here is in trouble,” Lowell announces. He twists a gold ring around his pinkie finger, his eyes skipping over the faces of the students on the front row. “There have been some accusations made against one of your fellow students, and I’m just here to try and get to the bottom of the whole thing. No stress. No drama. This whole thing is gonna be dealt with nice and quick.”