Page 63 of Riot Act
“But what has she actually done?”
I repeatedly bang the back of my skull against Wren's headboard, gritting my teeth. I realize, all of a sudden that this—his headboard banging against his bedroom wall—is the source of the rhythmic, irritating noise I've been hearing late at night recently. I grab the book lying on his bedside table and hurl the thing at his head.
Wren ducks. The book collides with the wall but my friend glowers at me like the projectile hit its mark. “That is a first edition,” he seethes.
“Good. I hope it's fucking ruined. You've been up here, pounding away on that girl like a jackhammer, haven't you?Urgh!”
“While 'that girl'is better than the name you used to call Elodie, I’m gonna need you to use her name from here on out, man. Otherwise, things are gonna get unpleasant around here.”
You pick your battles with Wren. I take great pride in fucking with Dash. He's a slow burn. He'll tolerate a lot of poking and prodding before he reaches the point where he's had enough and clocks you. Conversely, Wren has no grey area. No middle ground. He has a very sensitive on/off switch. Once it’s flipped, it's notoriously hard to turn back the other way. Sitting up properly, I roll my shoulders back, closing my eyes. “Fine. Elodie. You've been up here fuckingElodienight and day.”
“Damn right I have. Has sex wound up on the exhaustive 'Things Pax Hates' list now? I don't know a single other eighteen-year-old guy who gets laid less than you. Especially an eighteen-year-old guy wholookslike you. Jesus, dude. Go and get your dick wet and stop getting so fired up over a girl you never even cared existed until now. Soon, none of this is gonna matter. Once we’ve graduated, you’ll be in Massachusetts, and she’ll be in…?”
“Who fucking cares where she'll be.”
“Exactly.”
“Only, she'll probably show up in Massachusetts. She'll wind up going to Harvard, too, dude. Enrolled in the same classes. I'll probably join a frat, and she'll pledge to the same house, and everyone'll be too scared of getting canceled in today’s climate to tell her she needs to join a sorority instead.”
Wren directs a contemptuous glance my way. He crosses the room to his closet, pulling his black t-shirt off over his head. The three of us work out and run every day, but Wren's filled out quite a bit recently. Must be all the testosterone flooding his system, now that he’s fucking eleven million times a day. He emerges from his walk-in with another black t-shirt in his hand. This one has a white print logo that says ‘House Atreides’on the front of it. “Have you considered that you might be overreacting a little?” He shoves the shirt over his head.
“Have you considered that you've completely fucking changed in the last few months, and that you would have thought it was super fucking suspicious that a girl who has been,according toyou and all of her friends, madly in love with me for the past four years, has completely changed as a human being and is now everywhere I fucking look? And won’t get the fuck out of my head?”
He cracks a shit-eating grin. “I think that's the most I've ever heard you say in one go.”
“Fuck you, man.” I'm growing tired of this. Not too long ago, Wren would have seen just how fucked up this whole thing is. He would have been leading the charge in the mission to find out what’s going on with Chase and how to make her leave me alone. Now that his balls have been clipped, all he seems to wanna do is irritate me.
As if he realizes this himself, he finally sits his ass down in the chair at his desk and sighs. “All right, Fine. Christ. I'll help you, but only because I don't want to share a house with your petulant ass. You act like a kid when you're all bent out of shape. You still haven't told me what she’s actually done.”
“She’s just…there. Every time I turn around, she’sthere.”
“And?”
“And when she’s not there, she’s inside my head like some treacherous little worm, polluting my thoughts.”
Wren frowns. “And that’s her fault…how?”
“How the fuck am I supposed to know! But it certainly has nothing to do with me!”
He looks down, flicking through the book I hurled at him just now, an annoying smirk twisting his mouth up at one side. “What?” I snarl.
“Nothing, man. Nothing at all.”
“No, tell me why you’re trying to hide that stupid fucking grin.”
He clears his throat, raising the book a little higher. “A bastard’s touch, the thought of you. Aye, a waking curse upon my days, I endure you like sun and rain, and both the heat and the cold you feel the same. I crawl atop the shattered panes that fell from the windows of the house you did destroy. And I relish the blood that seeps from me, even as I hate you, because it flows only through my wretched veins for you.”
I scowl at him with the dark lividity of all of the bruises I’m about to give him. “And what the fuck isthatsupposed to mean?”
He tosses the book back to me. “The Watchman’s Curse. Read it back.”
“You call that help?”
“It’s all the help you’re getting. Figure it out, dude. I’m outta here. I’m late to meet Little E.”
24
PAX
