Chapter 4
FOUR
CAL
“So…” Lane starts as we wait for our meal to arrive. Though Copper is with us, the pig had to stay in the car, much to Felix’s displeasure. He claims Brigs is “horrifically lonely,” but I’m not sure the pig even woke up when we left the vehicle.
“I’m really sorry to waste all of your time like this,” I say. “I can drive you back, and then Grayson can just… figure out this nonsense himself.”
“It’s fine,” Felix assures me. “It’s Saturday and we had nothing else to do. Maybe there’s something to do in the area while we wait?” He pulls out his phone to look. “Let’s see, let’s see… there’s bowling. Lane, how well do you bowl?”
“I bet I’ll be as good at bowling without my eyesight as I was with it.”
“We went bowling together once, didn’t we?” I ask, the long-forgotten memory flooding my mind. “Back in school there was a big group of us who went, and everyone thought it was hilarious how awful you were at it because you were always the best at everything you did.”
“I bet it’s his surplus of muscles,” Felix says. “I bet it doesn’t allow him to gently bowl.”
“You think he looked like that in high school?” I ask as I eye Lane’s figure. I mean, Lane wasn’t a small guy in high school, and he enjoyed weight training, but he didn’t turn into this… beast until after he hit twenty.
Felix grins. “In my mind, he came out of the womb looking like this.”
“I don’t think his mother would be alive if he had,” Antonio comments.
“His mother has claimed I’m her new favorite child.
She’s actually replaced her current children with me.
The other day she was like, ‘You are just… magnificent, Felix.’ And then she smooshed her boobs against my face and told me she loved me.
My eyes were locked on to Lane’s father’s eyes the whole time. It made it minorly awkward.”
“Just minorly?” I ask.
“A smidge, really.”
I glance at Lane, who seems to be part of some different world.
By the looks of it, he’s not even listening in.
It’s honestly a wonder that he chooses to stay with Felix.
It’s almost as if Felix has this magical ability to say the strangest shit, to make people ridiculously uncomfortable, yet still win us over.
Maybe it’s not that there’s something wrong with him, but that there’s something wrong with us that we continue to hang around.
“Tell me more about Lane’s high school life. Was he at least… the hottest guy alive?”
“He was pretty popular,” I admit. “He was in football and wrestling?—”
Felix’s head snaps to face Lane. “You wrestled?”
“I did for a little bit. I honestly wasn’t the fondest of it, but I thought I’d try it.”
“I want to see you in one of those outfits!”
“Oh hell no,” Lane says.
“He only wrestled because the guy he liked was in it. It never actually came out that Lane was gay, but I sure could tell by the way he stared at the guy he liked,” I say with a grin.
“You are completely right. I very much joined because he was in it. He was the only openly gay guy in my grade and instead of being like, hey, I’m also gay, I just laughed too hard at his jokes and did whatever he did.
Somewhere in my adolescent brain, I thought it’d be fun to roll around on the floor with the guy, and instead, it was like…
he pummeled me to the ground without a care in the world, none of which was pleasant. ”
“Did you ever tell him?” Felix asks.
“Sure didn’t. When we graduated, I remember him rushing over to say something and I fist-bumped his shoulder with a ‘You’re the best, bro!’”
That has me laughing. “You bro’d him?”
“I did.”
“He was into you.”
“Was he? Maybe he was going to confess but I tossed him into the bro zone so hard that he was at a loss for words,” Lane says.
Antonio laughs. “Poor guy. When I was in high school, I was really good friends with this girl and we did everything together—family get-togethers, dances, you name it. After a month, my mom told me that this girl was obviously under the impression that we were dating. I don’t even know how it happened or when I agreed to it. ”
“How’d you break up with her?” I ask.
“I just didn’t. Don’t even ask me why. I thought maybe she’d break up with me, but no, we dated for around two years, and then she was all, ‘I just don’t know how we’re going to do a long-distance relationship, but let’s try,’ so instead of using that as a perfect excuse, I was like, ‘Of course.’ And then about five years ago I got an invite to her wedding.
She was marrying another woman… I think we both realized that we really were just friends and were using each other as an excuse back in high school. ”
“Did you two ever kiss or anything?” Felix asks.
“Once. We did the eyes squeezed shut, fish lips going in to meet thing. And we were so proud of ourselves that we kissed someone yet never did it again. It was so ridiculous. What about you, Cal? Any high school romances you’d like to embarrass yourself about?”
“No, my life was pretty boring. No mystery girlfriends, no wrestling with the guy I liked instead of just telling him. I went out with guys a couple of times but never dated. Felix?”
“I wish I had a secret girlfriend,” Felix teases. “And I bet I would have been amazing at wrestling.”
“You would’ve definitely had to wrestle girls,” Lane tells him.
“NO! I was huge in school. They called me Behemoth because I was taller than all the other kids,” Felix says.
I grin. “Oh wow, I really need to see pictures of this.”
“Enough of that nonsense about me being fantastic. Soooo, are we going to that address, then?” Felix asks.
“What address?” I question.
His scrutinizing eyes latch on to mine. “Don’t ‘what address’ me.”
Lane’s interest is immediately piqued. “Explain.”
I point my fork at Felix. “Don’t explain.”
Felix is far too eager and not at all threatened by my fork.
“So… there I was… in a face-off with an unlocked drawer. Deep in my mind, the good part of me was all, ‘Felix, no, don’t break into someone’s private information without their permission,’ but another part of me was like, ‘You know you have to.’ It’s a disease, Lane. You have to understand.”
“Of course,” Lane says, agreeing with this statement for absolutely no reason at all.
“So then… I was innocently leafing through things when along came Cal, snatching up a photograph with an address on it. He was so suspicious of the address he immediately searched its location.”
I wave the threatening fork around a little. “I was just being nosy. It was nothing of interest.”
“Do you have the address?” Lane asks.
“Of course not,” I say.
“Of course I do,” Felix says as he whips the Post-it note out.
“When the fuck did you grab that? I put everything back and closed the drawer!”
“Magic.” Felix wiggles his fingers to show them off.
“So what’s at that location?” Antonio asks as he takes the note from Felix.
“It’s probably nothing, but even if it is something… I don’t want to get involved,” I say, my mind drifting back to that photograph. I’m glad Felix didn’t grab that too. I really don’t want to see that face again.
“I’m just saying that if we happened to drive by the place… it’s not far from here.”
“Not far? An hour is not far?” I ask as I pull my glasses off and rub my eyes.
“Not… far… ish .”
“We’re not driving by.”
“It’s on our way home… ish,” Felix says. “If we hit it on the way home, it’s only twenty minutes out of the way. That’s like… nothing for a chance to be nosy.”
“I’m with Felix,” Lane says.
“Why are you with Felix?” I ask, unsure why I’m even surprised by this. “You literally have no idea what you’re getting into.”
But if there’s more happening that I don’t know about…
The waiter comes with our food and sets it down, leaving me to stare at my pancakes.
I know the man in the photograph can’t still be alive… right? But if it didn’t end with him… what does that mean for them… what does it mean for me ?
And why would Grayson even be involved? He was only minorly involved before, so why would he concern himself with it now… he wouldn’t be doing it to keep them away from me, right? Of course not. He…
Why would he get involved? Why would he become embroiled in any of that?
I stare at the pancakes for a long while before I realize Felix is staring at me.
“Your breakfast is going to get cold,” he says.
“Yeah.” I finally begin to eat.
“Let’s let Cal make the decision,” Lane suggests. “Cal, it’s whatever you want to do.”
“It’s probably just some random field.”
“Might be,” Antonio says. “But if Felix wants to go, it makes me worried it’s some hard-core drug factory.”
“If Felix gets involved, he’ll suddenly find himself running the place,” I mutter.
“All of you are evil. That’s all there is to it,” Felix declares, as though any of us could possibly be mistaken.
“Evil or truthful?” Lane asks.
I give the man a look, and even though he can’t see it, I’m positive the look is strong enough he can feel it. “Lane, don’t even pretend like you’re not right there with him.”
“I would never,” he says.
“Did you bring more than one weapon?” I ask.
I mean… we all know he brought at least one gun after the ammunition fiasco in the back of Antonio’s car.
The poor guy probably wants nothing to do with guns and all that nonsense when he’s just a normal citizen, but it’d be best if more than just Lane and I had a weapon.
Lane seems to debate the question, as if he wasn’t involved in the ammunition fiasco. “Not on purpose.”
“What does that even mean?” I ask.
“It means two accidentally came with me.”
“Holster and all? I saw it on your lap.”
“I saw nothing,” he says, as if that proves it wasn’t there. It makes me snort and the others laugh.
“Can you give your spare to Felix or Antonio, then? Just in case? We will drive by and wave at the empty field,” I decide. “Lane, when we’re done eating, try calling Grayson again. I don’t really understand why he’d want me to pick up the dog if the dog is nowhere to be seen.”