Chapter 187
CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED EIGHTY-SEVEN
AKIO
After school, I sat across from Imani at Beestra, a fast-food restaurant where all the Redwood students hung out on the weekends. I picked at a fry on my plate and stared down at my Biology textbook.
My phone buzzed beside my book, Mom’s name lighting up the screen.
Mom: Since you’re a big boy now, I need your help in an hour.
Lips curling in disgust, I glared at the phone. I hated her.
Mom: Be home by six.
Once I flipped the phone over, I returned to the textbook. If she thought that just because I’d killed Joe and maybe Karmeen Kaiser, I’d start doing her dirty work for her, then she had another thing coming. I wasn’t going home until eight tonight.
Maybe later.
“I don’t know why Barnes decides to give us tests every other week,” Imani said.
“Because he has nothing better to do.”
I tapped my finger on the table and tried to focus on the material, but all that had been running through my head today was not kissing Nicole back last night. Why had I just stayed frozen to the spot? Nicole liked guys who took control, not geeky, nervous kids like me.
“We don’t even cover this much material in class,” Imani grumbled, angrily biting a fry and staring at the chapters. “Does he expect us to teach ourselves, understand the material, and ace the test?”
“We do, don’t we?” I asked.
She snarled, “Yeah, but still, he’s annoying.”
A couple of the football players strolled in to grab a milkshake after practice, Jace Harbor being one of them.
The other guys stopped to flirt with girls from Redwood while Jace seemed highly unamused and uninterested.
He typed aimlessly on his phone and barely looked up at the woman who was flirting with him at the counter.
Of course, he was probably texting Nicole. Making plans to hook up later.
Because I couldn’t even kiss her back.
Once Jace grabbed his milkshake, he turned around and made eye contact with Imani. He nodded at her, as if to say, What’s up? and followed the others out of Beestra.
Jealousy pooling inside me, I glared at the textbook.
Snap out of it, Akio. Nicole doesn’t like you like that.
Imani slammed my book closed. “All right, enough studying. Let’s talk.”
I readjusted my glasses. “About what?”
“Are your parents as annoying as mine are?” she asked me, dipping another fry in ketchup and kicking her legs back and forth under the table so hard that she accidentally kicked me.
But it didn’t hurt as badly as Karmeen Kaiser’s punch had last night when he was trying to defend himself from me.
The ketchup on Imani’s fry was almost as dark as his blood that I’d washed off in the sea.
She rolled her eyes and popped the food into her mouth, coily dark hair bouncing on her shoulders whenever she moved her head. “My mom literally scolds me if I don’t do the smallest things right. I just … ugh …”
If Imani thought being scolded was bad, she should try having a mom who wanted her to be a killer.
I ran a hand across my face. “My dad isn’t that annoying, but he pushes me to get together with you.
He wants me to be with you so badly, and it’s so annoying,” I said.
“All he does is talk about you when I’m at home.
How I have to be just like you, how we’d work well together. It’s nonstop, Imani.”
“Well”—she smiled—“I’m off the market.”
She accidentally kicked me again, so I kicked her back.
“Well, I don’t like you anyway.”
“Who do you like?” Imani asked, leaning forward and suddenly interested.
I shrugged and looked away, chewing a fry. “Nobody.”
How could I tell her that I liked Nicole?! She hated her.
“Who?”
“Nobody.”
“Oh, come on! You wanted to hang out and be friends. This is what friends do. They tell each other who they like, so their friend can go out, stalk their crush, and secretly make it happen!”
Brow arched, I stared at her like she was crazy because was that what friends really did?! That sounded horrible and traumatic if it didn’t work out.
I blinked a few times and shook my head. “Exactly why I can’t tell you.”
“So, you’re going to live the rest of your life alone?” she asked.
“God, you’re so dramatic.”
Tossing some curls over her shoulder, she smirked. “Thank you. I try.”
After rolling my eyes, I glanced behind her at a group of cheerleaders who had walked into Beestra. Nicole walked a few feet behind them, dressed in the tightest pair of leggings that formed perfectly to her ass and a white crop top.
“Ugh, she’s so—” Imani started, but then stopped. As if it all clicked. “You like her?!”
Cheeks growing hot, I snapped my gaze back to Imani. “Can you not scream that?”
She lowered her voice and leaned further across the table. “Nicole?” she whisper-yelled at me. “The head bitch of the cheer team and the police chief’s daughter?” She fake-gagged. “Gross. She sleeps with, like, the entire school.”
Ouch, that hurt.
“And you sleep with the three most dangerous guys in Redwood,” I said.
“All right, you got me,” she said with a smile and raised her glass of water. “Cheers to being a slut … but she’s the rudest damn person that I’ve met, and she has the unhealthiest obsession with Jace, Allie’s … stepbrother.”
“So? I think she’s hot,” I said, trying to brush off my jealousy as if it were nothing. “It doesn’t matter. She would never like me anyway. And if, miraculously, she did, my father would never approve of her. He’d take one look at her and judge her, the way that he judges everyone.”
But really, it was mostly the former reason.
Because Jace Harbor had a billion dollars he could give Nicole. He had the Redwood fame and prestige and a future in the National Football League that was almost certain. They’d be perfect together.
Unlike her and me.
“Every decision you make doesn’t have to be for him,” she said, offering another smile. “Sometimes, the best ones are the decisions you make for yourself because being the perfect son in his eyes will never be achievable. I’ve tried, so don’t worry about what he thinks. You do you.”
After mumbling a thanks that I wasn’t even sure she heard, I sank down in my seat and picked at another fry. Imani’s advice would be great, if my mother didn’t kill people for a living and my father wasn’t the dog who sat by her side, both expecting the best and worst life for me.
When the girls moved closer, I stared down at my textbook and wished that I could disappear. Nicole had skipped Anatomy and Physiology today, and it was probably because of how awkward I had been with her last night.
I ignored the girls until they began their stampede to the exit. Then, I dared to look over to see Nicole one last time. But instead of talking with the others, she clutched a brown paper bag in one hand, a milkshake in the other.
And she was staring back at me, her eyes wide and a frown on her face.
After her gaze drifted to Imani, she gritted her teeth and walked out of Beestra.
Not looking back again.