Page 53 of Revenge At Raleigh High
Alex stares down at the small, haphazardly wrapped gift that Ben places down onto the table and slides toward him. The paper’s Christmassy, covered in dancing elves. “What’s this for, Bud?” Alex asks.
“I was going to wait to give it to you at Christmas, but we won’t be here now. So…Mom said I should give it to you now.”
Alex reacts sharply to that word again, the muscles in his throat straining, his face bleaching of color, but he doesn’t correct his brother. He doesn’t say a thing. He manages to smile at Ben—a sick, unhappy, miserable smile that makes me want to burst into tears—as he picks up the gift, inspecting it, turning it over in his hands. “That’s really cool of you, man,” he says. “Early Christmas presents are the best kind. I’ll give you your gift on Wednesday, before you go away, okay?”
Ben’s head dips a little. He picks at the bottom of his milkshake glass with his fingernail. “Mom said I won’t be able to come next Wednesday. She said there won’t be time. I can get it when I come back, though, right? That’ll be like an extra Christmas, after the real one’s over.”
Fuck. I can’t bear the void look on Alex’s face.
He clears his throat. “Yeah. Yeah, man, that sounds great. I’m still going to talk to Jackie about you coming next week, though, all right? But if it doesn’t work out, then that’s what we’ll do. In the meantime, I’m not going to open this just yet. I’m gonna wait until we haveourChristmas, okay?”
We walk back to the movie theater, and Ben chatters away happily, telling us about the girl who likes him at school and keeps following him around; Alex is there for all of it. He interacts and he makes jokes, and Ben’s none the wiser. My boyfriend is simmering with rage, though, dangerously close to boiling over.
Jackie doesn’t get out of the car. She honks the horn, shouting at Ben to hurry up and get in out of the passenger window, and that’s it. Ben goes, and Alex is finally able to drop his happy façade.
It's snowing again as he takes me by the hand and charges up High Street toward the Camaro. “Alex. Alex, wait. Just slow down. Where are we going?”
“The Rock,” he snarls over his shoulder. “Fair warning,Argento. I’m about to get seriously fucking drunk, and it ain’t gonna be pretty.”
22
SILVER
The music thumps up through the soles of my feet, pounding and raucous. The Rock is jam-packed with half-drunk patrons, the make-shift dancefloor writhing with bodies. The tequila shots we threw back when we got here haven’t seemed to make anything better. The only thing that’s changed is Alex is now sullen, frustrated, and a little buzzed.
“Of course she never lets me pick him up and drop him off. If she did that, I’d get two extra hours with him, even if it is in the car. And she couldn’t fucking have that, could she? Anything she can do prove to me that she’s the one in control, she does it. She’s trying to fucking take him away from me for good. She’s gonna try and adopt him, I just know it.”
“You don’t know that.” Playing devil’s advocate seems like the only way to stop him from diving off the deep end. He’s right, though. It does look like Jackie’s planning on keeping Ben on a permanent, more official basis. She wouldn’t be letting him call her Mom if she wasn’t.
Ben was so small when their real mother died. He can’t remember a single thing about her, but Alex does. Alex remembers plenty. And to hear Ben call Jackie by the name must cut him down to the quick.
“Another round for ya, asshole!” Paul, the bartender yells at Alex over the racket. “And another shot for you, too, Angel.” He’s much more pleasant to me when he sets my tequila down on the bar in front of me. Alex touches his glass to mine and downs the amber liquid, drinking it straight, without the salt or the lime.
“Jesus. You really are blowing off steam tonight,” Paul says.
Alex presses his knuckles into the edge of the bar, so hard it looks like it must hurt. “You have no fucking idea.”
I wish I could do something to help him. Fuck, I wish I could take away this hurt. That’s all I seem to wish for these days—the magical ability to stop the people I love around me from suffering. Paul only sees Alex’s anger. He doesn’t see his pain. He reaches a hand into the front of his bar apron’s pocket and pulls something out, slapping it down onto the bar in front of Alex. “There you are. Go downstairs and give your beautiful girlfriend an orgasm or two. That’ll make you both feel better in a quick fucking minute.”
Downstairs.
Downstairs?
Takes me a minute to remember what takes place below the Rock, in the bowels of Montgomery Cohen’s establishment. This isn’t just a bar, after all. There’s something far more scandalous in the basement….
The Rock’s very own sex club.
Alex curves an eyebrow at the two tickets Paul has just shoved at him, his eyes turned almost all-black in our dimly lit corner. “I don’t think that’s the way to solve this particular problem,” he says, his tone unamused. “And besides. I don’t think we’d need tickets.” He slides them back across the bar to Paul. “I’ve never needed aticketto an event being held at this place.”
“Tonight’s different.” Paul pulls a face. “There’s a burlesque act down there. Monty sold spots, there was so much interest. The bouncers aren’t letting anyone down unless they have one of these.” He waves one of the tickets in Alex’s face. The silhouette of a naked woman has been embossed in gold on the front of the black, flocked card. At the bottom of the ticket are stamped the words, ‘Admit One Only.’
Alex doesn’t seem to care about the tickets in the slightest, or what’s going on downstairs. “If you really wanna make me feel better, have another shot of tequila lined up and waiting for me by the time I get back.” He turns to me and plants a swift kiss on my temple. “I’m just gonna run to the bathroom,Argento. Stay here and keep our spot?”
“Sure.”
Paul forcefully plants the tickets in my hand as soon as Alex has disappeared, swallowed up by the crowd. “If you’ve never been down, then you never know,” he says. “Could be fun, right? Don’t you wanna be a little freak, just for one night?”
Go down into the club? With Alex? The thought’s never occurred to me.
