“You do not!”
“Took you months to introduce me to your family—”
“Because they’re freaks.”
“—and now you want to make sure it never happens again.”
“Because I hate how he treated you.” I leaned against him, hoping the pressure of my body on his would snap him out of this.
“You can’t hate it that much,” he said. “You’re going back.”
“That’s different.”
“I don’t care what he thinks of me,” Riley said. “But he treats you like crap.”
“He’s trying.”
“You keep making excuses. Why are you so scared of him?”
“I’m not!”
“Right. You do whatever he says because you want to.” Riley looked disgusted. I imagined how much deeper the disgust would run if he realized that it was true. If he knew how much I still cared what my father thought of me, he’d think I was pathetic. Maybe he already did.
“Come on, he’s my father.”
“So what?”
“So—” So what did that mean to Riley, who’d never had one and, according to him, had never noticed the difference? Who couldn’t go back home because home was a cement tower with broken windows and puddles of urine and old allies who’d found it to their advantage to ally with someone else? “So can we not talk about this anymore?”
I should have told him what I’d said to my father before we left, that I’d stood up for Riley, that we were on the same team. But I couldn’t get the words out. Defending Riley to my father, defending my father to Riley, always the wrong words to the wrong person—always defending someone and still somehow always looking like a traitor.
I wasn’t going to let myself get sucked into this fight when I knew what Riley was really angry about. And who. It would be easy to pretend this was about my father, because then we could both pretend he was the problem and I’d done nothing wrong. The easy way out, my favorite exit.
Not anymore.
“Are we going to talk about it?” I said.
“You just said you don’t want to anymore.”
“Not my father. The vidlife. Jude.”
“What does Jude have to do with the vidlife?” Riley said, too eager. “Did he message you?”
He didn’t know.
“What did you think of it?” I asked cautiously. “The vidlife.”
Riley shrugged. “I didn’t watch.”
“None of it?”
“You told me I wouldn’t like it,” he reminded me. “The stuff they’d make you do.”
“Oh.” I should have been relieved. “So you didn’t watch at all? Any of it?”
“Did you want me to? You said—”
“I know what I said.”
“So now you’re pissed?” He sounded half bemused, half annoyed. “What, you want me to dig an archive, watch it right now? Because I will.” He reached for his ViM, and—even though it was likely a bluff—I grabbed his arm.
“No, you’re right. It’s not like I’m some kind of famewhore trolling for fans. I just figured you’d be… curious.”
And maybe a little jealous.
Not that I wanted him to be jealous.
I definitely wouldn’t have wanted him to see me kissing Caleb or tearing out Pria’s hair. And I wouldn’t have wanted him to see me with Jude.
But I couldn’t believe he hadn’t even looked, not once.
“It would’ve felt like spying on you,” he said quietly. “I wasn’t going to do that.”
I hated myself for questioning him. “I wouldn’t have been able to resist,” I said. “If it was you.”
“I know.”
Sometimes I loved that he knew me so well.
Sometimes I didn’t.
Something crackled in the bushes. I jerked around, but there was nothing there. No eyes peering out of the darkness. Just the patter of the rain.
“Can we go back to your apartment?” I said, suddenly feeling exposed. If we were going to talk about Jude, we were going to do it where no one could overhear us.
He’s not following me, I thought. But that was the thing about Jude—I had no idea what he was doing, or why.
“I told you; it’s a mess.”
“And I told you I don’t care.”
“I don’t know why you’d want to go back to that shit-hole.”
“Because I want to go somewhere, and you’ve made it pretty clear we can’t go to my place.”
I shouldn’t have said it, scratching the wound before it had a chance to scab over.
“I should go,” he said. “You’re tired; I get it.” I could feel him shifting his weight, getting ready to stand.
“No.” I took his hand. We had to get used to each other again. That was all. It had been a long and strange two weeks. We needed to find our rhythm. “Please. Let’s… talk. Tell me what you did while I was away.”
“Same old stuff. You know.”
“I don’t, actually.” Trying to sound playful, not annoyed.
He shrugged. “Doesn’t matter.”
I felt like we were slipping back to the beginning, before we’d known anything about each other, when there’d been nothing to say. I brushed my fingers along his forearm, then traced them up his arm, along his collarbone, resting them on his chest, over the spot where his heart would have been. “Please,” I said again. “I just want to pretend the last two weeks didn’t happen, that I was here. With you. So tell me what we would have been doing, so I can picture it.”
He choked out a bitter laugh. “You wouldn’t have wanted to be here, not for that.”
“For what?” I could hear it in his voice: gathering clouds.
“I wasn’t going to tell you this—” He stopped himself. “I mean, I wasn’t going to not tell you. I didn’t think it mattered.”
It wasn’t like Riley to circle the point like this. He was nervous. That couldn’t be good.
“Sounds like it matters,” I pointed out.
He stood up, crossing his arms over his chest. “I went back to the city.”
“What?” Now I was on my feet. “Why would you go back to that place?”
“That place is home.”
“Not anymore.”
“I just wanted to go.” He uncrossed his arms and curled one hand into a fist, closing it inside the other. “I knew you wouldn’t get it.”
Someone had to stop; someone had to give. I drew close to him, though he kept his eyes fixed on the trees. “Riley.” I touched his shoulder, but he didn’t turn. “That place isn’t safe for you anymore. Things are different now.”
“Yeah.” He didn’t sound angry anymore, only tired. “And you’re just looking out for me, right?”
“That’s my job,” I said lightly, as if none of this mattered. I turned him around, forcing him to face me.
He smiled. “Maybe you should ask for a raise.”
“I’m pretty satisfied with my current compensation level,” I said, touching his lips. “Especially the perks.” I leaned forward, I closed my arms around him, I kissed him. But he let me. Then we were on the ground again, limbs tangled, bodies sinking into the damp earth, finally in sync. It was how we ended all of our arguments, and so far it was effective. I tried not to think about what we would do when it wasn’t.
3. UNFORGIVEN
I told Riley the next day, on neutral territory. The park was technically called a “free expression zone,” but everyone knew it as Anarchy. The brainstorm of some aging trenders and sellout free spirits who’d outfitted their mansions, garages, and shoe closets and still had credit to spare, Anarchy was designed to be a space where no behavior or appearance, no matter how odd, could be punished. The odder the better, in fact—in Anarchy only banality was forbidden, and the only consequence was invisibility. Little wonder it was always full.