Page 130 of Riot Act
PRES
THE END
The book comes to an end, as all books do.
Our story is too late for Jarvis’ writing challenge, but we finish it anyway. I’m melancholy as I write the last word of the final chapter. The project symbolizes something far more significant than an end to the warfare I engaged in with Pax, or our time at Wolf Hall. After graduation, it transitioned intoourstory. The characters became us, and they fell for each other, even as Pax and I fell harder and harder. The book also turned into a way for the hard, aggressive boy who saved my life to break down the barriers in his own mind, as he found ways for his character to be soft and tender. To put down his armor and to speak of love. Some of the things he’s written over the past few weeks have been so poetic and beautiful that I’ve curled into a ball in my bed at night, the white glow of my laptop screen casting off the shadows, and I’ve cried, knowing that those words aren’t for my character. They are for me, like the ones he spoke in his graduation day speech.
It's still very hard for him to vocalize his emotions. Often, he shows me how he feels instead: a single, lone wildflower waiting for me on my pillow. A shared meatball sub. A hand on my leg under the table, fingers drawing small circles on my skin; threatening grimaces whenever Wren or Dash say something I might not like when I’m in their presence. That is, after all, the biggest way that he’s shown me what I mean to him—he spends as much time with meandhis friends as possible. It’s as if he’s proving to me that I’m important to him. That he isn’t ashamed of me.
At first, he couldn’t even sit still on the couch next to me. He’d thump the pillow and grumble excessively about not being able to get comfortable. And that was with me sitting onthe other endof the couch. After a while, he started to inch closer, though. Then, he’d touched my leg. Hold my hand. Soon enough, he’d have his arm around me, drawing me close, arranging me possessively so that my head rested on his chest. Every time he traces his fingers along my side now, not even thinking about it, I marvel at how far he’s come and how affectionate he can be.
The academy closes its doors to its students not long after graduation, and the teachers and the students all leave the mountain. Everyone apart from us. Elodie, Carrie and I all move into Riot House. There’s no Europe trip. We have so little time left together that we decide to stay in Mountain Lakes a little longer, savoring what remains of the summer before we all have to go our separate ways.
Dash and Carrie, off to London,
Wren and Elodie, off to Harvard.
Me, to Sarah Lawrence.
And Pax?
Well…
Pax has made other plans.
PAX
“Wake the fuck up, douche bag!”
I crack an eye open, wincing at the morning light flooding through the blinds. Next to me, Chase stirs, scrunching her nose, wriggling into my side like a creature burrowing for warmth. I swear to God, if Lord Dashiell Lovett the Fourth wakes her up all the way, I’m going to castrate his pompous ass and remove the possibility that there will ever be a Lord Dashiell Lovett the Fifth. “Fuck off, man!” I growl. “It’s Saturday!”
“Trust me. You’re gonna want to see this.Now.”
“The only thing I wanna see are the backs of my eyelids.”
Chase lightly pinches my nipple. “Go and see what he wants,” she groans. “He’s ruining a perfectly good dream.”
He’s also ruined the perfectly good morning wood I was planning on saving until Ifeltlike waking Chase up. My erection dies a sad death as I fling back the covers and launch myself from the bed, ready to raise some hell. On the other side of the bedroom door, Dash is perfectly turned out, bright blond hair styled and swept back, wearing a button-down shirt and some pressed pants—the kind of clothes he hasn’t worn in a very long time. “What? What is it? The fuck’s the matter with you? Why do you look like that?”
He shakes his head, brushing aside every single question. “Come down to the kitchen. And put some pants on. I can see the entire outline of your dick through those boxers, for fuck’s sake.
I’m not fucking happy about this—not evencloseto happy—but the prick is already running down the stairs. I pull on a pair of sweatpants and clean t-shirt, imagining all of the different ways I could punish Dash for ruining my morning. A second before I’m about to leave the room, I have a thought.
Quickly, I check to make sure Chase isn’t watching me—she’s fallen back to sleep, her hair a crimson halo around her head against the white pillow—and then I tiptoe into my makeshift dark room. Having grabbed what I went in there for, I sneak stealthily out of the room and then thunder down the stairs, where I find both DashandWren sitting on the outdoor sectionals on the patio.
It's a little cold this morning, a chilly wind teasing through the trees. Give it a couple of weeks and fall will be in full effect in New Hampshire. A pity all of us will be gone by then. Wren sits on the arm of one of the patio chairs, his bare feet on the cushions, his hair an unruly mass of waves. His takes a sip from the coffee cup in his hands, passing it to me as I throw myself down in the chair next to his.
The coffee is black, bitter, and strong as all hell.
Perfect.
“Well? Explain,” I say, addressing Dash.
He holds up a magazine—one I recognize. My Kingston’s Photography Journal. Looks like the latest edition of my subscription has arrived. And I’m on the front fucking cover of it. “What the hell isthis?”
I snatch it out of his hands, trying to make sense of what I’m seeing: me. Busted up. Bruised. Black eye. Split lip.Naked. I’d like to say that you can’t see much of my junk, but you fucking can. I hadn’t blinked when Cross had asked me if I’d pose nude. There aren’t many places that’ll plaster a guy’s cock and balls right across their front fucking page. I wouldn’t have thought the Kingston Journal would have either, but it looks that I was wrong.
“I see why the girls can’t leave you the hell alone now. Evenafterthey’ve gotten to know you.” Dash bounces his eyebrows. “I knew you were packing, but that…” He pulls an impressed face, slapping a hand down on my bare shoulder. “I am secure enough in my sexuality to admit that that is one fine cock, Davis. Congratu-fucking-lations.”
