Page 22 of My Revenant
What the fuck was I doing here? Lying in the grass, looking up at the clouds. Why didn’t I want to leave?
“Smoke?” He spoke again after what could have been seconds or minutes.
“What about it?” Something like panic fluttered in my stomach every time I heard the low rasp of his voice.
“You’re kinda stupid, huh? I mean, do you want one? A cigarette, City Boy.”
My brain short-circuited at the insult, and I sputtered and stuttered, torn between responding to the insult or the offer.
“Go to hell,” I landed on.
“Where do you think we are?” I couldhearthe smirk in his voice.
It felt accurate, though.Hell, a.k.a.Port Skelton. “If this is hell, are you supposed to be a demon?” I responded before I thought better of it.
He chuckled, and my chest tightened.
“Nah, baby, I’m the devil.”
“Don’t call me that!” I snapped, mostly because I didn’t like whatever feelings suddenly sprang into existence at hearing the word “baby” leave his battered lips. His very soft-looking batteredlips. I hadn’t even realized I’d turned to face him until he was staring back at me again.
“Whatever you say, City Boy.”
It wasn’t an insult, not really, but the way he said it made it feel like one. “Don’t call me that either. My name’s Jonah.”
“I know.” His lips tugged up in amusement. I don’t know how he knew my name, but the fact that he already did made that feeling building up inside me even stronger. Made it feel more urgent, like again I was supposed to do something with it.
“I’m not stupid,” I said after a moment, and even I could hear how sulky it sounded. I wanted to punch myself.
“Debatable.”
“The fuck is that supposed to mean?”
“I mean you picked a fight with one of the Deltran fuckheads last night and started a gang war. Sounds stupid to me.”
“I didn’t start a gang war.Yougetting involved started the damn gang war. If you hadn’t gotten involved, he would have just beaten me up, and that would have been the fucking end of it.”
He smiled again. “Yeah.”
Yeah? I didn’t know how to argue withyeah.
“Why did you do it?”
“Why did I get involved?”
I nodded. He shrugged. It pissed me off.
“You’rethe stupid one,” I added,stupidly, knowing that provoking Dex Weller was not at all a smart thing to be doing, but instead of seeming insulted, he just smiled wider.
“We can both be stupid, then,” he said simply and turned back to the sky. I did the same, expecting us to fall back into silence but he spoke again. “Why didyoudo it?”
“Do what?” I asked, even though I knew what he was talking about.
“Why did you pick a fight with that waxed sasquatch?”
It took more effort than I would ever admit not to smile at that. “He said homophobic shit.”
He made a contemplative noise. “About me.”
