Chapter 2 #2
"Well, I might have a solution," Riley says. "It's probably not exactly ideal, but it's something."
I swallow hard. "What do I have left to lose, at this point?"
"Follow us. It's just around the corner." He pauses, frowning. "Shit, you grew up here. It's the old Cartwright place, over on Spruce. The corner lot? The colonial with the awful purple shutters."
I nod. "I remember. I saw Lainey and Layla earlier. How are they?"
He shrugs. "Good. They own a health nut place down on Main right on the Crooked Trout."
Cadence frowns at him and then addresses me. "The Alt is not a health nut place. It specializes in gluten-free, vegan, and vegetarian cuisine, and it's wonderful."
Riley rolls his eyes. "Health nut stuff. No cheeseburgers. Fuckin' rip off. If I wanted to eat rabbit food, I'd go munch on my front lawn." He winks at me, smirking as Cadence stares at him for a long moment.
"Oh. You are teasing me." She turns her attention to me. "He is a bit of a prankster, and I tend to be rather literal."
I sniffle, nodding. "He has always been a prankster. Junior year, he somehow managed to put six beehives in the varsity football coach's office. As in, filled with live bees."
Cadence frowns. "Riley, that was dangerous."
He cackles. "Oh man, that was a good one. Worth the thousand down-ups I had to do."
"What is a down-up, please?" Cadence asks Riley.
He snorts. "A burpee, more or less. But with jogging in place. They're fucking terrible, as in excellent conditioning, which is why coaches love to use them for punishment."
Cadence's frown only deepens. "But…how did you manage to get the hives in the office without getting stung?"
He shuffles his feet, shrugging. "Well, the hives belonged to Jeremy Gorevich's family, because they raised them and made honey. Still do, actually. Jeremy was the second-string Q-B. So we used the beekeeper suits and smokers. And for the record, no one got stung. The office stayed closed, and Jeremy’s dad showed up to take them back.
He was almighty fuckin' pissed, but also sort of impressed.
Mainly because Jeremy remembered to block off the HVAC vents. "
Cadence's face contorts into a new expression of consternation. "I hadn't considered that possibility. That would have been a disaster of quite epic proportions."
"I didn't think of it either," Riley admits. "Jeremy didn't think of it until we were back in the parking lot and we had to go back in and tape 'em off before the hives woke up. Scariest part of the whole thing."
"What I do not understand, my love, is why?"
Riley just laughs. "I mean, I was a crazy kid, what can I say?
We did it for the adrenaline rush, just to stir up some shit, for the social clout…
and also because the principal at the time, Dr. Zuckerman, was a major asshole who hated jocks, so he took every opportunity he could to fuck with us just for being popular athletes. "
"That hardly seems fair," Cadence says. "Surely you're remembering things with whatever the opposite of rose-tinted glasses would be."
"Shit-tinted glasses?" Riley suggests. "I dunno.
And no, I'm not. He was bullied hard in high school by the jocks.
He was later pushed into early retirement by the board specifically over this issue.
" He shrugged. "It was a big deal, as a matter of fact. There were hearings about it. Me, Chelsea’s partner, Mike Rollins, Cole, Felix, and few others all testified at the hearings about our experiences.
To be totally honest, it was pretty fuckin' vindicating for me in particular. "
"Why?" Cadence asks.
I answer this one. "Dr. Zuckerman was terrible to Riley. Everyone knew it. Apparently, back when Dr. Z was a student at Three Rivers, his worst bully was the star quarterback who had black hair and blue eyes."
Riley snorts. "Meaning my old man. He reformed later in life, but admitted to both Fee and me that he regretted the person he was in high school.
Still made my life at the school a living hell, though.
Dr. Z would come down on me for every little infraction he could find.
He once suspended me the day before one of our biggest games.
I was roughhousing in the hallway with some friends, and he claimed I was instigating a fight. He pulled that shit all the time."
"As amusing as this trip down memory lane is," I say, "I'm mentally and emotionally drained. I don't care if the old Cartwright place is a construction zone—if it's out of the elements and there's a horizontal surface for me to pass out on, I'll be immensely grateful."
"It is a work in progress," Riley answers, "but the kitchen and primary suite are livable. I wouldn't go in the basement, and there's no back deck, but it's totally livable."
"I'll pay you whatever the going rental rate is, Riley. I can't thank you enough."
He frowns. "Rental rate? Are you on fuckin' drugs, woman? I'm not charging you shit, and not just because you’re crashing in a construction zone.”
"Riley," I start, but he interrupts me.