Page 11 of Everything That Kills Me
Zeph glanced across when Jack reached his side.
“You okay?” Jack asked.
“I’m not going to cry, if that’s what you’re wondering.” Zeph walked faster. “They got you to react, so now you’re a target too. Congratulations. Welcome to the club no one wants to be in.”
“I can handle them.”
“Lucky you.”
Jack stopped walking. “I thought you could use a friend.”
Zeph faltered slightly, but carried on down the road. Jack stayed back. He thought he’d done the right thing in stepping in, but had he? Bullies were always after a reaction, though Jack hadn’t given them the one they’d wanted. He wasn’t scared or upset. He’d hurt Rufus as a warning. But Zeph was right. He’dmade himself a target.Bring it on.Jack didn’t have to break bones to make someone hurt.
“That’snotstaying under the radar,” Thomas pointed out when Jack replayed his day.
“It was the right thing to do.”
“Was it?”
Jack bit the inside of his cheeks. Thomas’s question didn’t mean he disagreed with what he’d done, just that he wanted Jack to understand his actions and defend them.
“What was I supposed to do? Walk past? Go into school and tell a teacher? It would have been over by the time anyone came out and I have the feeling Zeph would have denied it.”
“You probably didn’t need to go straight to DEFCON 1.”
Jack glowered. “I didn’t. They both walked away. No real damage. Well, one of them limped. I could have broken his leg if I’d wanted to.”
“I know. Watch yourself. Don’t give away how capable you are.”
That depended on whether they continued their bullying ways. Especially if they picked on Zeph. Jack wasn’t going to sit back and watch that happen.
Five
After dinner, Zeph went up to his room, sat at his keyboard and plugged in his headphones. When he needed to empty his head, music helped and so did writing poems. He’d chosen a difficult piece by Chopin, so he really needed to concentrate. After a few minutes, he settled in, gaining comfort from the familiar as his fingers mastered the intricacies of the notes.
He wished he had a piano rather than a cheap keyboard, but his father and Elisa said there was no room downstairs, plus it would be too noisy, and he could hardly have a piano in his room. He had the smallest bedroom, but even if he’d had the largest, a piano wouldn’t have fit.
Zeph built to a crescendo before falling to a mournful sadness. As the tempo sped up again, this particular section reminding him of a volcano about to erupt, something inside him changed. He wasn’t sure where the anger had come from, but he felt it racing through him, and the tone of his playing turned aggressive. He was raging at life, at Rufus and Scott, and most of all at his reaction to Jack Steel.
It hurt. Zephhurt.
Why had Jack stepped in?I thought you could use a friend. Why would a guy who a day ago had laughed at the idea of him not fighting back, now intervene to help him?Why would someone like him want to be friends with someone like me?Why hadn’t Zeph just said thank you instead of being a smart arse? He didn’t understand and he didn’t like not understanding. Unless Jack reallydidwant to be his friend.
Why, when no one else did?
Because they were both good at the subjects they were studying?
Maybe.
Because he likes me in the way I like him?His fingers faltered, wrong notes played. Not that Zeph liked him.I don’t. I don’t.He groaned. Would saying that ever convince him? There was no way Jack was gay. Still… a friend? Was that possible? He was new. Maybe Zephcouldbe his friend.
The futility of his thoughts broke his concentration again. Friends with one of those alpha types who always look good, always do the right thing and have the right friends? The guys who tell jokes people laugh at? Someone the girls long to be asked out by and gay boys hopelessly lust after? Boys who get invited to sit on the cool table with the cool kids?No way.
He and Jack had nothing in common apart from being clever. The guy had no idea how impossible it was for them to be anything more than classmates. How even that was going to be difficult for Zeph. Because how could he not blush when Jack talked to him? Not get that prickling sensation in his stomach? He was dead if he got an erection and someone saw.
The only way to survive was to avoid him. Not talk to him. Not even think about being his friend.
For two effing years?When all he wanted to do was stare at his face and drool?
