Page 13 of Riot Rules
I weave my way through row after row of cars, squinting into the murky night, trying to remember where the hell I parked my car while at the same time doubting very much that Pres had the wherewithal to make it back to there in her slightly drunk, very mortified state.
Why did he have to be such a prick to her? She’s been besotted with the evil piece of trash for so long. God knows why, but he’s all she eats, sleeps and breathes. And in such a short span of time, he managed to be so unbelievablycuntyto her. What a fucking asshole.
“PRESLEY!”
I nearly take a nosedive down an embankment midway through screaming her name. I only manage to save myself from a painful tumble by launching myself sideways, into the driver’s door of a monstrous, souped-up F-150.
“Steady on, love,” a polite voice warns. “Wouldn’t wanna scratch the paint.”
I’ve studied that English accent at great length. I know the cadence of it. The rise and the fall. The subtle upward inflection that implies condescension rather than enquiry. It’s sheer, dumb luck that I’d run into him again, for the second time in one week, out here, in a dark field. I look up, and bam. He’s lounging across the hood of a Charger that I recognize as Pax’s. The beaten-up Firebird Alderman bought me for my sixteenth birthday is only a couple of cars down. The Charger wasn’t here when we arrived earlier; I would have noticed it if it was.
If Pax could see how Dash is lying on his pride and joy right now, his back resting up against the windshield, his legs crossed at the ankles, the heels of his sneakers sitting neatly right in the very center of the Charger’s hood, he’d probably have an embolism.
I couldn’t give a shit about the car. All I can see is the boy sitting on top of it. Sandy blond hair turned to burnished gold in the dark. The strong jawline, and an arrow-straight nose in profile. Eyes dark, roving over the sea of cars as he looks off toward the house, huffing gently.
He's wearing…wow, he’s wearingjeansand…a bomber jacket overa t-shirt?I’ve never seen him out of his crisply pressed shirts and dress pants. Apart from at the hospital the other day. Then, he’d been naked aside from a pair of boxers and a blood-soaked tea-towel, pressed up against his junk. I won’t be forgettingthatany time soon.
“Don’t suppose you saw two losers inside, did you?” He has something in his hand. He raises it—a bottle of something clear—and presses the mouth of it to his own, swallowing once, twice, and a third time before lowering the bottle again and wincing. “One of them has dark, wavy hair. Looks like he might have been sent to end the world. The other one looks like he just escaped from a prison camp. But…y’know. The good kind, where he was well-fed and worked out all day.”
“Iknowwho Wren and Pax are,” I say slowly. “We’ve been over this once already this week. I’ve been going to school with you for nearly three whole years, Dash. You think I don’t know all of your names? You think there’s a single student at Wolf Hall whodoesn’tknow your names?”
He rocks his head to the side, raising his eyebrows. “I guess we have made quite the impression, haven’t we.” He takes another slug from the bottle, his throat working as he swallows down more of the clear liquor inside. It has to be liquor. No one would poundwaterlike this. Dashiell considers the bottle, squinting one eye at it, and then he holds it out to me by the neck.
I just look at it. “You’re offering me booze?”
“Someone ought to take it away from me. I can’t feel my face anymore. Do your worst, Carina Mendoza.”
I close my hand around the bottle, taking it from him, tempted to laugh. Instead, I drink, and the vile burn of neat vodka sears a pathway down my esophagus. With a past like mine, a girl learns how to deal with this kind of heat without reacting externally. Dash says, “huh,” like he’s impressed, nodding as he takes back the bottle.
I lean against the side of the car, watching him. He seems…weird. Out of sorts. Angry. Maybe it’s like he said. Maybe, he’s just drunk. “So. You seriously didn’t know my name until four days ago,” I say.
Without a trace of shame or embarrassment, he replies immediately with a, “nope,” that makes me want to scream. “Wolf Hall’s a big school. I’m not about to learn the names and faces of every single student in attendance. I have a very limited quantity of fucks to give, and my father’s made itveryclear that they have to be cashed in on my assignments.” His words are so bitter that they bite.
“How can you be around the same group of people, day in and day out for years andnotknow who they are? You’d have to do it on purpose. Like,willfullyblock everyone out. That takes effort.”
He hikes his legs up, bent at the knees, soles of his sneakers flat against the hood. He rests his elbows on his knees, slowly turning the bottle of vodka around in his hands. “So what if I did? What’s the point in making connections with people who won’t impact your life in any way? Sounds like a waste of time and energy to me.”
“Wow. That’s…really depressing.”
“I tend to have that effect on people,” Dash agrees. “See. If I were making friends with everyone at Wolf Hall, the entire student body would be miserable. I’m doing you all a service by forgetting you. Here.” He holds out his hand, leaning toward me, and it takes me far too long to figure out what he’s doing. He’s trying to help me up onto the hood. To sit up there. With him.Besidehim.
Holy shit.
I can’t move.
Dash tips his head to one side in an ‘oh well’type of gesture. He laughs into the open mouth of the vodka bottle as he holds the beveled glass against his lips. “It’s not catching, y’know. The melancholia. This level of deep unhappiness stems from well over a decade of pressure, neglect and intense judgement. Doesn’t transfer with a little skin contact.”
“I didn’t think that taking your hand would turn me into a pessimist.”
Dashiell shrugs again, his nonchalantmakes-no-difference-to-meresponse to everything. It’s irritating, that stupid shrug of his. The spark of annoyance that he kindled in me back at the hospital strengthens, like an ember, blown upon and stirred back to life. He really does think he’s so apart from all of this. He considers himself an outsider. A tourist, observing the rest of us as we go through the motions of getting an education, eating, sleeping, breathing, getting good grades and bad grades, missing home, and getting our hearts broken. He thinks he’s above all of it, like none of it is happening tohimat the same goddamn time.
Scowling, I place my hands on the hood of the Charger and I plant my foot on top of the car’s tire, using it to boost myself up. Next thing I know, I’m sitting so close to Dashiell Lovett that I can feel the soft brush of heat from his body as his arm makes contact with mine. Oh fuck. I’ve just clambered up here without thinking, and now my arm is resting up against his, and there’s nothing I can do about it because I haveno roomto move. Dash has plenty of room. He has about three feet of room to his right. He could shift over and put some space between us, so that we’re at a comfortable distance from one another, but does he?
Does he hell.
He chuckles mirthlessly. I know what he’s thinking, the evil bastard.You acted on impulse and got yourself into this position, sweetheart. Now you have to deal with the consequences.Damn it, even his fake voice in my head has a highly annoying, sexy-as-hell English accent.
He jerks his chin in my direction. “What aretheysupposed to be? Marbles?”
