Page 27 of Riot Reunion
I realized my mistake almost immediately. He’d driven me to get ice cream from the airport, and while I was busy jamming the loaded spoon into my mouth, he’d told me with a very serious look on his face that I’d be meeting one of his friends at the hotel. A woman named Veronica. Veronica was one of his very best friends. He’d said he loved hanging out with her, but for some reason that he couldn’t fathom, my mother didn’t like him to see his friend.
“It’s like…” He’d frowned, looking wounded as he’d searched for the right words. “It’s like Bobby, right? You remember Bobby? The little boy you used to play with after school a couple of years back?”
I nodded, swallowing down my mint choc chip. I remembered Bobby.
“Your mom didn’t like Bobby, did she? She said she you wanted to play with boys who were…more like you.” Even then, I’d known that ‘more like you’ didn’t mean outgoing, or athletic, or smart. It meant that Bobby wasn’t from a well-to-do family. His parents didn’t drive an Aston Martin, and Mom thought her son spending time with a kid from a middle-class family meant that I was going to become poor by association.
“Does Veronica not have a good job then? Is that why Mom doesn’t like her?”
“Well, it’s not that Mom doesn’t like Veronica specifically. She’s never met her—”
“Then how do you know she doesn’t like her?”
“Because your mother is a vicious, cold bitch, Pax. She doesn’t like anybody.” He’d turned the color of shame and anger perfectly blended together. The vein in his temple throbbed like a piston beneath the skin. He’d taken a moment to compose himself and then said, “Your mother ruins your fun all the time, doesn’t she? She takes everything that’s supposed to be awesome, and she destroys it. Well, that’s what she’ll do if she finds out that we hung out with Veronica this week, okay? So we can’t tell her anything about it. We have to keep it a secret, just between us.” He’d leaned forward, taking the second spoon out of the mountain of ice cream, scooping some of the neon green dairy onto it. Lowering his voice conspiratorially, he said, “Look. I know you’ve wanted one of those new PlayStations for a while now. She won’t let you have one of those, will she?”
Immediate frustration had surged in my chest. “No.”
“And everyone else has got one, right? All of your friends at school?”
I’d nodded.
“Well, that just doesn’t seem fair, does it? It’s not right that everyone else should get one and you shouldn’t?”
The injustice of it had clawed at me.
“So…” My dad had cheers-ed my spoon with his, a fat dollop of ice cream landing with a splat on the table between us. “How about this. I get you one of those PlayStations here, this afternoon. A couple of games, too. And you get to play it all week, whenever you like. And I get to hang out with Veronica all week, too, and neither of us has to worry about your mom ruining our fun. That sound like a plan?”
I’d thought about it for a second. “But what about when we go home? Can I take the PlayStation home with me?”
My father had shaken his head. “Not home, no. But I can take it to my office. There are times I may wanna hang out with Veronica after I’m done with work. We could tell your mom that we’re going to play football together in the park or something, she’d probably believe that. You can hang out in my office and play your games on that big screen I use for presentations sometimes. You know the one I’m talking about?”
“Yeah.”
“That screen’s massive. I bet your games would look awesome on there, right?”
“Uh-huh.” I was getting brain freeze from the ice cream.
“And I could go have dinner and maybe spend an hour or two with Veronica, and then we could go home and tell Mom how much fun we’d had at the park. It’d be our secret. Do you think you’d like to do that? Then we both get what we want.”
I’d known on many different levels that I was getting played. I’d known. But I’d still nodded my head, wincing against the sharp pain that lanced through my brain—
“Never pegged you as the suspicious type.” Wren bumps me with his shoulder as we climb the steps up to the third floor of Chase’s halls of residence; a frazzled-looking guy with dreadlocks had pointed us in the right direction—according to him, the new redhead from New York has been causing quite the stir.
The student accommodation is deserted. Not what I’d imagined at all. It feels like a fucking youth hostel. A shitty one. The carpet in the hallway is thin as paper, the crazy pattern faded to muted oranges and browns. The walls are scuffed and dinged, covered in posters and sign-up forms, petitions, and crude drawings of what look like they’re supposed to be dinosaurs. A faint tang of mold lingers in the air. It’s almost as cold in here as it is outside, for fuck’s sake. I roll my eyes at Jacobi.
“Can we justnot, dude? I rarely ask you for anything—”
He snorts. “You ask me for shit all of the time.”
I swear to God, I will knock this fucker out in a minute. Despite the cold, I’m sweating inside my heavy jacket. My skin feels all itchy, and my heart is squeezing in the weirdest way. Feels like it’s galloping behind my ribs.
Elodie jabs her boyfriend in the back as if sensing my impending explosion. “Leave him be.”
“I don’t needyoudefending me. I can kick this motherfucker’s ass in three seconds flat and he knows it.”
“Jesus. You two are as bad as each other. What number did that guy say was Presley’s room again?”
“313B,” I say through gritted teeth.
