Page 53 of Reckless At Raleigh High
SILVER
Orange chicken doesn’t even take an hour and a half to cook from scratch at home. I know from many, many experiences (no, I amnotproud of myself) that it takes less than twenty minutes to order, wait for, and collect said dish from the Imperial Dragon over by the post office, so I begin to get a little worried. I try to call Alex, but his phone’s sitting dead on his bedside table. He was going out to get his charger when he suddenly came back into the apartment, talking about supplies and Chinese food, and then he left without even plugging it in to power up.
I’m getting ready to call over at the diner—maybe Alex went there to pick up the guitars and all of the gear we just left sitting there after our performance—when he creeps in through the apartment door like a criminal trying to sneak past a guard dog.
From the kitchen, I peer out into the hall, folding my arms across my chest. “Alex, what are you doing?”
“Figlio di puttana!”He puts a hand out, bracing himself against the wall. His dark, wavy hair looks like he’s run his hands through it a thousand times, and his eyes are…wait…
“Alex,why the hell do you have a black eye?” I rush toward him, reaching up for the swollen, bruised contusion on the side of his cheekbone. “Oh my god, your eyebrow’s split open. What the hell happened?” Less than two hours. He’s been gone less than two hours, and he still manages to find trouble.
He grimaces when I touch my fingertips to the cut just above his left eye, sucking in a sharp breath. “Well, the black eye’s courtesy of your dad.”
I can’t have heard him right. “What? Mydad?”
“Turns out he’s really fucking good at putting two and two together. Did you know that about him?”
“I spent most of my childhood trying to pull the wool over his eyes unsuccessfully. Yeah, I know that. What are you talking about?”
“He knew I asked you to marry me. And he wasn’t very happy about it.”
I step back, covering my mouth with both hands. “Oh, shit.”
“Yeeaahhhh.”
Quickly looking him up and down, I scan for any other injuries. If Dad figured out what we did tonight, then he wouldn’t have left it at a black eye. He would have gone for castration, no doubt about it. “Are you okay?”
“I’m good.”
“Then…what’s with the sneaking in? And what’s with the weird look on your face?” He really does look weird, like he’s holding a swarm of bees inside his mouth and they’re stinging him repeatedly, but he can’t let them out.
“I thought maybe you were asleep. I didn’t want to wake you.”
“It’s nine-thirty and you promised me Chinese food. Why the hell would I be asleep? Alex? Hey, what’s going on? What is it? What aren’t you telling me?”
The look on his face is really beginning to freak me out now. He was smiling when he left the apartment, but now he looks like the world went ahead and ended on him. My nerves are shot to hell when he reaches out and takes hold of my hand, guiding me into the bedroom.
“Alex?”
“Sit down,Argento.”
“Why? God, just spit it out. I’m about to have a goddamn nervous breakdown.”
“Just sit down a second. I need to think.”
He looks like his nerves are fried. Pacing up and down the bedroom, he chews on his thumb nail, breathing heavily. I sit on the bed, pulling my legs out of the way of the path he’s wearing into the area rug, tucking my knees under my chin. The waiting is fucking killing me but rushing him isn’t an option.
Following him with my eyes from one side of the room to the other, my mind races. Something’s happened. Something terrible. I can’t figure out what, though. Sadly, the worst things that could ever happen to Alex actually did happen recently. His brother fucking died. He can’t be trying to brainstorm a way to break up with me; he only asked me to marry him four hours ago. Hopefully it’s going to take a long longer than that for him to get sick of me. Which means this can’t be about him. So that means…
Oh.
It must be about me.
A sharp pain begins to throb behind my right eye—forewarning of an epic headache. For Alex to be this wound up, whatever this is about has got to be bad.
“Is it Dad?” I ask quietly. “You were just with him. Is he hurt or something? Sick?”
Alex shakes his head, eyes briefly meeting mine before he looks away again. “No. No, Cam’s fine. Well…he’s pretty worked up, but…”
