Chapter 11
CHAPTER ELEVEN
taylor
I stood at the door of the Thinkers’ House for a minute, listening to Jason’s booming voice. “Dud jump with no plan to stop arrow hitting Shiny Knight,” he declared loudly.
A tired dungeon master proceeded to recite, “Dud rolls a one for luck. It’s multiplied by a hundred from when he fell into a luck pot as a baby, and all the arrows seemingly slide off his greasy, green skin. Shiny Knight lives to fight another day.”
Laughter shook the walls of the nerd den. Bennet’s voice cut through it. “Shiny Knight pets Dud on the head.”
I knocked then before hearing any more of it. The last thing I wanted to hear was Dud the Cave Troll dragging his Shiny Knight into a nearby cave and making love. Barf. Not that I was against trolls and humans getting together. I was just in my anti-love mood.
Someone shouted for me to come in, so I did. “Am I interrupting?” I asked.
Jason looked at his phone and got up. “Nah, we just finished.”
“Let’s go drink, then,” I said.
Jason tapped Bennet’s shoulder, and Bennet stood up.
“You’re all invited,” I clarified.
Bennet’s friends looked at each other with growing frowns and made up excuses one after the other. Bennet, too, wavered and broke. “I’ll drink with you at the cookout. How’s that?”
“If you swear it on the blood of your ancestors,” I said.
Bennet crossed his heart. “May they never find peace if I flake.”
“What about you?” I asked Jason.
“Come on, man,” he said, incredulous that I would even doubt him. “You know I’ve got your back.”
It was nice to hear a reminder of that, even if I knew it.
The night was warmer than it had any right to be for this time of year, that false-spring warmth that showed up occasionally like an uninvited guest who didn’t read the room.
I unzipped my jacket before we’d even cleared the Thinkers’ House lawn.
Jason left his fully open, hands loose at his sides, walking with that particular ease of someone who never needed to decide what to do with their body.
Jason said something about the cookout, and I made a sound of agreement.
Ahead of us, the street opened toward the strip of bars and late-night places that existed specifically for people who needed somewhere to be.
The lights bled orange onto the sidewalk.
Music from somewhere, competing basslines, neither of them winning.
I wanted a drink the way you want something when you can’t name the actual thing you want. A placeholder. Jason held the door, and the noise came out warm and stale and familiar, and I walked into it like I’d been doing it my whole life, which was close enough to true.
Our usual booth was occupied and far too large to warrant two guys taking it on a bustling Friday night.
In fact, most places were occupied. Most except for a round table with three chairs in the corner, where Harrison had been reading Lord Tennyson on the night Greg had dared me to go over to him and ask him out on a date.
I hesitated only a little before realizing how pathetically ridiculous I was being.
So I sat down and waited for Jason to bring over the first round.
There was a thirst in me that only a good beer had a chance of quenching, but I wasn’t holding my breath while waiting for that to happen. The odds were slim.
My foot tapped the floor restlessly while I waited, and Jason appeared with two beers, calling me a little drummer boy because of it.
“Can’t believe everyone flaked,” I said. “Greg and Finn both just up and left before I had a chance to ask. Did I do something?”
“No,” Jason said. He tilted his head. “Did you?”
“I don’t know,” I said. I’d been in a bit of a mood, but that just happened to people from time to time.
We drank, and the tangy bite of a cold beer did nothing that I’d hoped it would. I set mine down on the table. “What’s up with you? What’s keeping you busy?”
Jason groaned. “I’m counting the heads for the cookout all day today. Is Harrison in?”
I shrugged.
“Have you asked him?” Jason asked.
I noticed a loose thread on my sleeve and pulled it free.
“Dude,” Jason sighed. “I need to know how many people we’re feeding.”
“There’s time,” I said.
“There isn’t. It’s on Sunday, and I need to go shopping tomorrow morning. We need shit to, you know, cook.” He drank his beer with frustration, which I couldn’t blame him for.
I searched my sleeve for more loose threads, but none were there. “Sorry,” I said. “You probably shouldn’t count him in. What can I do to help tomorrow?”
Jason watched me for the longest time. Long enough that I began to frown back at him. “Why haven’t you asked Harrison?” he asked.
I scoffed dismissively and looked away. “Why would I? He’s not one of us.”
“See, I thought he was kinda one of us.”
“You thought wrong.” As had I.
Jason was quiet for a little while, and then he rested his arm on the table and leaned in a little. “Taylor, you do realize we know, right? It’s not like you worked hard to hide it.”
“Know what?”
“I wasn’t gonna do this,” Jason said, his face seeming honestly regretful. “We agreed to wait for you to come to us, but you’re clearly not doing well. And I think it’s better if we talk about it.”
“What do you think you know?” I asked coldly. But before he could answer, I told him. “It was fake, Jason. The whole thing was a prank. I wanted to mess with you for putting me up to it. And I succeeded. There you go. I win.”
Jason didn’t laugh. He looked at me like I was crazy, and maybe I was, but he didn’t react in any way I’d imagined while that whole thing was going on. “You faked it.”
“Yeah,” I said, searching for some pride to inject into my tone. “The party at our place? I sprayed myself with water and did my buttons wrong. You should have seen your face when you noticed. And before that, you three were literally buzzing with curiosity.”
He didn’t jump into a fun retelling of all the situations that were now complete with context. Vibe-killer. “You two agreed to do that.”
“Yep. Planned the whole thing and all.”
Jason leaned back and drank a little, then tilted his head the other way as if to see me from a different angle. Like it would reveal something. “Okay.”
I stared at him in disbelief. “You think I’m lying.”
“I never said that.”
“You do. You think I’m making this up,” I said. “You think we were together, and for some reason, we split, and now I’m saving face by lying about it.”
“Nope,” Jason said.
I lifted my hands and shook my head, waiting for him to say more. “Then what?”
“I think that you tried faking it,” Jason said. “Even if that’s the dumbest prank I’ve ever heard of. And I think that something happened to turn it sideways, and now you’re hurting.”
“I’m not hurting,” I insisted. “Look at me. I’m fine. And you noticed that Harrison is a dude, right? I’m not interested in guys. Never was, never will be.”
“So what? He was becoming your friend,” Jason said. “And now he’s not even invited to our cookout.”
“Yeah,” I said, shrugging in surrender. “Something happened, and we’re not really talking, and it was all too fast to call him a friend. People move on. And I’m fine.”
“Okay,” Jason said in the end. “If you say you’re fine, you’re fine. I’m not gonna drag it out of you. I just thought, the way you danced that night and he watched…”
“You thought wrong,” I repeated. He’d watched me because he had wanted to get his girl back, and he’d wanted to help me with a prank.
He’d watched me that way because he’d been on a stage throughout high school and was practiced in acting.
And when I’d taken the leap with the character of my own, kissing him in a sweet moment like last week, he’d reminded me just how fake it all was, given me strict notes, and disappeared altogether from my life.
Screw him.
He was probably back together with Emma already, because that stupid, childish, possessive impulse that had driven me to kiss him had done precisely that. It had made Emma realize, against all odds, just how good it was with Harrison and how terrible it would be not to have him in her life.
Jason didn’t bring it up again. Instead, he settled in his chair and gave me the time to turn my mood around. I asked him about his Dungeons & Dragons campaigns, and he said he was considering retiring Dud the Cave Troll.
That was a safe topic to discuss, so we did. And we did it for a solid two hours before we were both a little tipsy and a little disarmed. So when we got up to leave, Jason gave me a hug, and I somehow melted into him.
His arms came around my back, and he held me tight as I buried my face in his hoodie, right there, in the middle of the bar, in front of everyone. I held on to him as strange and wild emotions surged through me, none clear enough to name.
When I finally stepped back, Jason wore a small smile. “Let’s go home.”
“You go ahead,” I said, putting a hand on his shoulder and giving it a squeeze. “I’ll go for a walk first.”
Jason hesitated, then nodded in support.
He turned right, and I turned left after exiting the bar.
The air was cooler already, but my head was clear.
Well, clear was exactly the wrong way to call it.
My head was stuffed with cotton, and my mind was completely fogged, but I had one straight line to stick to, and that was what I did.
I followed this one clear thing I was sure of, even if I wasn’t sure of anything else at all.
Because Harrison was too good to lose just like that.
As a friend or as…well. I didn’t know. It didn’t make much sense.
What I felt just now, as I imagined it, wasn’t too unlike the fluttery excitement of coming up to a girl at the bar.
And when I’d kissed him, and when my spine tingled with it, the sensation didn’t end there.
It had gone down, lower, pooling in my groin and making heat flow all through my body.
I didn’t even think I stood a chance, but dammit, if I didn’t check, I’d regret it for the rest of my life.
So I followed it, this one thing I thought I knew, to the brownstone building with three steps leading to the door. I pressed the doorbell because I’d seen the light was still on in his apartment.
And when Harrison’s voice crackled from the speaker, I simply said, “It’s me. Let me in.”
Silence.
Then the door unlocked. And maybe, if I played my cards right, a friend lived here.