38. Kyle
38
KYLE
Only Jayden’s car was there when I got back to the house. Well, Tori’s car was there, too, but it wasn’t like she ever drove it. No one was on the first floor, so I went downstairs. Jayden was sitting on his bed scrolling on his phone.
“Did you drive Tori back?” I asked. She was supposed to get a ride home with me but of course she’d taken off after that meeting not that I blamed her.
Jayden looked up. “You look like hell, dude.”
I gritted my teeth. “Did you give her a ride back?” I’d turn around and go right back to campus if she was still there, but she probably wouldn’t even get in my truck.
“No. Lucas is going to drive her home after her class.”
Wonderful. They could spend the trip talking about what a complete piece of shit I was. That was something they could both agree on.
“What happened at the meeting?” Jayden asked. I guessed no one had filled him in yet.
“It was bad.”
He shrugged. “I figured since you look like you want to murder someone. Want to play some pool?”
“What?” That wasn’t what I’d expected him to say.
“Well, I could help you with your next paper, but I take it there’s no point in that?”
“No. No point at all.” I walked over to the rack we’d mounted on the wall and selected a cue. I wanted to break it over my knee, but I resisted. The pool table wasn’t to blame for how fucked up everything had gotten—I was.
Jayden was plucking the balls out of the pockets, and I grabbed the triangle rack and started fitting each stripe and solid ball into place. Once I lifted the rack away, I chalked the tip of my cue and motioned for Jayden to break, but he told me to go ahead. I wiped my mind of all the foul thoughts running through it as I bent over the table and lined up the shot. The cue ball smashed the pack just to the right of dead center, sending the balls scattering. A couple of solids sank into opposite corners and Jayden whistled.
Lining up my next shot, I took aim at a six-ball near the side pocket. It dropped in clean, and I felt the total focus I got when I was up to bat come over me. All other thoughts disappeared, which was exactly what I needed.
One by one, the solids disappeared as Jayden watched from the side. Yeah, it wasn’t fair that he hadn’t gotten to play yet, but nothing was going to stop me from running the table.
From the look on his face, he knew that.
Finally, only his striped balls and the eight-ball remained on the table.
“Back right pocket,” I muttered.
Jayden was leaning against his unused cue, watching intently.
I hit the eight-ball cleanly, and it sank into the pocket I’d called.
“Jesus, remind me not to bet against you when you’re pissed off.” Jayden stared at the table again and shook his head. “Or ever.”
“Good game,” I told him.
He laughed as I gathered the balls from the pockets and rolled them to the end of the table where he lined them into the rack.
This time, I let him break, and he sank the ten-ball, making him stripes again. He got another one before scratching. “It’s been a while since I’ve played.”
He said it without any shame or defensiveness. Was he always as easy-going as he seemed? That was a lifestyle I couldn’t comprehend, but sometimes I envied it. He was good with Tori. Good at keeping the peace between me and Lucas. And nothing ever seemed to bother him.
When it was my turn, I nailed a bank shot and then missed a difficult combo. But at least that gave Jayden another shot.
It felt good to take turns now that I’d blown through the top layer of my anger. There were many left, though.
I resisted the urge to be a dick and block one of his stripes, and we took turns until I had just one solid left. I made that shot, called the pocket, and sank the eight-ball as well.
Jayden finally asked the question again when I was racking the balls for the third time. “So what happened?”
“They think I cheated.” I motioned for him to break again, and he lined up the cue ball.
“So? You know you didn’t. And Tori knows that, too.”
His well-intentioned words hit me like a punch to the nuts. Tori had known that—until they played that fucking recording.
The look on her face after hearing that… I’d never forget it.
“I can talk to them if you’d like. I saw you working on your paper on Friday. I know you wrote it, not AI.”
“Thanks, but they had evidence.” My voice was stiff though I did appreciate it.
“Evidence?” He wrinkled his nose as he took another shot. Was it supposed to be my turn? Suddenly, I didn’t care.
His mention of AI got me thinking. “AI can do other stuff besides write papers and make art and shit, right?”
Jayden sat on the edge of the table, spinning his pool cue. “Like what?”
“Like it can fake things—like when people get scammed. It can fake voices, right?”
“Sure. I already told my grandma that if she gets a call in the middle of the night from someone who sounds like me saying I need bail money or something, that she shouldn’t believe it.”
I jumped on his words. “But how could you prove it?”
“I told her just to call me directly on my phone to check.” He shrugged. “Who knows, maybe I could end up in jail.”
“No, not that. Just in general. How can you prove that an audio recording is fake?”
His eyebrows raised as he stared at me. “They have a recording of you?”
“No, they don’t.” I sighed. “But they think they do—and so does Tori.”
Sympathy filled his face—sympathy I didn’t want. Because I didn’t want to be fucking dealing with this. Maybe it would just be easier to let it go and fail the damn class. As long as she wouldn’t. Surely, they wouldn’t hold her to that fucked up rule if they thought I cheated?
“Have you talked to her about it?”
“I didn’t get the chance to.”
“Then do it when she gets home. She’s on your side.”
“She was. But the recording—it was bad.”
“Shit,” he muttered. “That’s fucked up. You know who else you should talk to.”
I frowned for a moment and then it came to me. “Coach. Yeah, he’d probably believe me. Or he’d check my batting average and pretend to believe me.”
“Not him,” Jayden said, then corrected himself. “Or not only him. You need to talk to Lucas.”
“Yeah, sure. That conversation will go well.”
“I’m serious. He’ll know how to find out if the recording is a fake.”
“It is a fake. But why the fuck would he help me?”
“I don’t know. He might—he might not. But you know he’d do it for her.”
Shit. I didn’t want to ask him for anything on my behalf or Tori’s. “She’s never going to believe me.”
“Why do you say that? She knows you, better than you think.”
“Yeah, she also thought she knew that guy she was living with, that prick who stole her necklace and planted a camera in her room.”
That shut Jayden up, since he knew I was right. Finally, he sighed. “Just talk to her when she gets home. I’ll keep Lucas out of your way.”
I didn’t answer, even though it was decent of him to offer. But maybe the best thing for all of us was if I just got in my truck and started driving. And never stopped.
And that’s basically what I did after easily winning the third game. Just drove around aimlessly before tori could get back and look at me with hurt in her eyes.
I finally ended up in a bar in some town in the middle of nowhere. They had pool tables there, too, and I won enough to pay for my drinks and make a small profit.
The house was dark and silent when I got back. Tori was probably nestled next to Jayden or Lucas—or both, as I’d seen one time. Probably after crying herself to sleep and telling them what a horrible person I was.
At least one of them, maybe both, would believe her on that account.
I smelled like cigarettes and stale beer, so I took a shower, pulling on a pair of board shorts after toweling off.
Flipping on the lights in my room, I stopped dead, my instincts telling me that something was different faster than my mind did.
Tori was in my bed.
She was on the far side, curled up under the covers. She blinked and shielded her eyes against the light—but I could see they were red.
What the fuck was she doing here? She did know this was my bedroom, right? She hadn’t slept here since before I moved in.
I turned the light back off and stood there for a long moment.
None of this made any sense—unless she’d talked to Jayden maybe?
Eventually, I stopped trying to figure it out. I climbed into the bed next to her. When she turned toward me, I took her in my arms and pulled her close.
I stroked her hair and held her while she cried. I didn’t ask her if she really thought I said those things about her.
Suspecting she thought the worst of me was bad enough. Knowing it would break me.