by R. T. Lowe
“Oh.”
“I think you want to invite me into your room now.” She said it like she knew he wasn’t going to object. She was right.
“Okay,” he said vaguely, unlocking the door and nudging it open.
She stepped in front of him, rubbing against him as she entered the room. She sauntered over to the window, placed her hands on the glass, and arched her back. She looked over her shoulder and smiled saucily, staring at him with lusty eyes as she rocked her ass back and forth. “Which bed’s yours?” she purred.
He pointed absently while she slinked over to him.
Still pointing, she threw her arms around his neck and pulled his lips against hers, plunging her tongue into his mouth. She tasted like bubble gum, cigarettes and Southern Comfort. She bit down hard on his tongue and grabbed him by his shirt with both hands, bunching it in her fists so that the fabric tightened across his throat. “You can do whatever you want to me! All those nasty things your little girlfriends won’t let you do to them.”
Her taste was still in his mouth, lingering like motor oil that wouldn’t come off in the shower. It was overpowering, disgusting and amazing—all at the same time. She was hot—hot in a slutty way, but still hot. He wanted her in the worst way imaginable. But something wasn’t right. His insides were twisting and knotted. But why? What was the problem? Maybe it was guilt. But he had no reason to feel guilt. He didn’t have a girlfriend for the first time in three years; he was completely unattached. But as he looked at her face, all he could see in his mind’s eye was Harper. Harper was perfect and beautiful—and she smelled like vanilla and spring. This trash bag grinding up on him looked like a porn star and smelled like a road weary stripper. This wasn’t right.
He gently pushed her away. “Sorry. I can’t do this.”
“Of course you can do this.” She tried to pull him against her, but he easily kept her away with his long arms.
“No, I really can’t. Sorry. I just… I just need to get my head screwed on straight.”
She glanced down at his crotch, her eyes filled with raw sexual energy. “It looks perfectly straight to me.”
C’mon. Sorry, but you gotta go.” He brushed by her and opened the door, holding it for her.
She crossed the room reluctantly, without urgency, as though she was unwilling to pull up stakes and cede control of the room (and the situation) back to Felix. But Felix was done. He was over this. Over her. Amber. Or whatever the hell her name was.
“You sure?” she said doubtfully. “We could do it on your roommate’s bed. Does that turn you on? You like pulling hair?” With a piercing moan she clutched a fistful of hair and yanked her head back.
“You’re a freak.” He nodded at the doorway.
“Me? A freak?” She gasped, wide-eyed, as if it was the most shocking and salacious accusation she had ever heard. “You have no idea.” She stepped into the hallway and turned to look at him. She smiled coyly, running the tip of her finger along her bottom lip. “See you around, Felix August. You won’t say no next time. They never do.”
“Whatever.” He pushed the door closed. Then he locked it.
He felt dirty. He changed out of his clothes and lay down on his bed, forcing himself to relax. That was spectacularly weird. A scene from a movie; a movie his parents would never let him watch. He closed his eyes and pictured Harper, trying to block out the images of Amber sizing him up like a sixty-dollar fillet. It wasn’t long before he passed out.
A noise in the hallway woke him up. He checked his clock. It was 3:45. His head felt inflated, throbbing, the mezzanine level of what was sure to be a memorable hangover. He gazed blearily across the room at Lucas’s empty bed. He wondered for a second in a cloudy half-conscious kind of way if Lucas was all right, then he rolled over and went back to sleep. But not for long.
Chapter 22
The Introduction
In the gray light of dawn, Felix trudged across a desolate campus to the Caffeine Hut. Aside from two workers—unfortunate students who must have drawn the short straws to get stuck with the Sunday morning shift—no one was there. The air was thick with the sweet scent of baking goods drifting out from the ovens in back behind the bar with its milk frothers, bean grinders, coffee makers, espresso machines, stainless steel carafes, rows of heavy mugs and tall stacks of little pastry plates.
He ordered a coffee and waited, idly glancing at the old photos on the wall. The early morning light, hazy and subdued, filtered in through the high arched windows, casting a gray pall on the faces of the students in the photos staring back at him. He tried not to look, but their eyes drew him in. He wondered what they would have thought if they’d known that one day, when they were long dead, future generations would be gazing at their faces and thinking about who they were, and how they’d lived. Maybe they did. Maybe they sensed their own mortality. And that was why their faces were smiling, but their eyes were sad and hollow and… suddenly he realized what had been bothering him all this time. Looking at the pictures was like looking at his own reflection in a mirror; in the depths of his own eyes he revealed his pain, his sadness and his guilt, just like in the eyes of the dead people staring back at him, their youth captured in little five by seven images which now hung on the wall of a coffee house.
“Here you go.”
Felix shuddered, which made his head hurt more than it already did. He’d had a few too many rums last night. The barista, a cute brunette with a sparkly nose ring, had placed his titanic mug on the counter.
“Thanks.” He brought his coffee over to a two-chair table across from the bar. Someone had left a Halloween party flyer behind; it was orange and black with lots of cartoonish drawings of bats, and a skeleton embroiled in a death match with a mummy and a caped Count Dracula—the widow-peaked vampire seemed to have the upper hand in the battle royale.
Just a few weeks until Halloween. This was about the time his mom would start nagging his dad to get the decorations down from the attic. She was practical like that; she knew it usually took him a while to muster up the energy to get the boxes. Halloween wasn’t her favorite holiday, but she still decorated the front porch with skeletons, witches, monsters and loads of cobwebs. She didn’t want the neighbors to think the Augusts were anti-holiday weirdos. His dad gave her a hard time about it. He said the same thing every year: “We’ve lived in this neighborhood for forty years, Patricia. The neighbors already know we’re weirdos.”
Felix pushed the piece of paper aside. He really wished he could sleep. He was exhausted. And now here he was—the Caffeine Hut’s first customer of the day—drinking coffee and wondering why he hadn’t followed Harper into her room last night. Unless he’d misread the signals, she’d wanted him to. But he’d stood there like a fool, afraid to make a move. There wasn’t a guy on the PC campus who wouldn’t have accepted the tacit invitation—or at least taken a step to find out if it was an invitation. But Felix’s fear controlled him. He wanted her so badly it blurred his vision and screwed with his pulse in ways that made him wonder if he might need medical attention. But he was afraid. Afraid of what would happen if they did hook up. What would the next day look like? Would they start dating? Would they be a couple? Boyfriend and girlfriend? How could he be with Harper—or anyone for that matter—when he was living in constant fear of being exposed? All it would take is a single question about his parents and he would shut down. She would want him to open up, to share his feelings with her. But he couldn’t. His unwillingness to trust her (which is how she would interpret it) would hurt her deeply. She would question his feelings for her. The accusations would follow. Then the excuses. They would argue. Bitter, creeping resentment would grow between them and divide them. Their relationship would end. Badly. There was no hope for them. Not following her into her room had been the right decision. Why pursue something predestined to fail?
He drank down his coffee without really tasting it.
He hated himself sometimes. Why was his mind always racing in circles? At
the crack of dawn on a Sunday morning he shouldn’t be at the Caffeine Hut obsessing about Harper. And he shouldn’t be torturing himself with his stupid what-would-my-parents-be-doing-if-they-were-still-alive fantasies. It just made him crazy. And sad. If only his brain had an off switch he could—
“Felix?” a voice said. “Excuse me. Felix.”
Felix’s eyes darted around for the source of it. He found it—found him—standing next to his table holding a coffee mug. He was middle-aged, but on the younger side of the spectrum, and tall—maybe even slightly taller than Felix—with dark hair and a nose that looked like it had been broken a few times. Dark stubble covered his face (which held the remnants of a tan) and crept down his neck past the collar of his T-shirt. He was wearing a yellow rain jacket and stained jeans with a rip above one knee. Felix didn’t recognize him.
“It’s Felix, right?” The man was smiling. “Do you mind if I join you?” He pointed at the empty chair.
“Huh?” Felix was more than just a little out of it, submerged in a deep pool of mental muck. And he wasn’t sure where this guy had come from; he hadn’t seen anyone come in. Of course, he hadn’t been paying attention either.
“Okay,” Felix mumbled after a long while, still adrift in his own thoughts. “Do… I… um… do I know…”
“We’ve never met. I’m Bill Stout. The assistant groundskeeper. I make sure everything on campus looks nice so parents don’t feel so bad about paying the ridiculously high tuition.” He smiled and settled into the seat across from Felix.
Felix stared down at the table.
“Is that the kona blend you’re drinking?” The man nodded at Felix’s mug.
Oh God, Felix thought with dismay. He wasn’t in the mood to discuss coffee (or anything else). “Uh-huh.”
“I’m more of a tea man myself. But I indulge in a cup of coffee every now and again. Good game yesterday. What was the final score?”
“The game?” The guy—did he say his name was Bill?—had a slight accent, but he couldn’t place it. He definitely wasn’t from around here. “Thirty-five to twenty-one.”
“And that was against Watsforde?”
“Uh-huh.” Felix glanced around, wondering why Bill was sitting at his table when every table, couch and chair in the place was unoccupied.
“So what’s this Rain Cup thing I keep hearing about?” Bill asked casually, like they’d known each other forever.
Felix groaned inwardly. He just wanted to have a cup of coffee in peace. He had a lot on his mind. He wasn’t in the mood to talk. Hell—just the thought of having a conversation exhausted him. And chatting with the assistant groundskeeper definitely didn’t interest him.
“I’m new here,” Bill explained. “I’m not very familiar with PC’s traditions.”
“Oh.” Felix swirled the coffee in his mug, trying to come up with a way to get out of this without appearing like a complete asshole. “If we win our next game we’ll win the South Division. And then we’ll play the winner of the North for the Rain Cup. It’s a trophy.”
“I see.” Bill smiled. “So the Rain Cup’s the PNFL’s version of the Lombardi trophy?”
Felix drank from his mug and set it down on the table a little harder than was necessary. If he kept his answers short, he thought, maybe Bill would get the hint and go away. “I guess,” he said finally.
“Hmmmm.” Bill leaned forward in his chair, regarding him thoughtfully. Felix moved back to maintain the distance between them. It was like they were dancing, with Bill doing the lead.
“You look like you’re worried about something,” Bill told him.
“Sorry?”
“I bet it’s midterms. Am I right?”
Felix stared back at him, wondering why on earth the groundskeeper would be talking to him about midterms. He couldn’t catch a break. This was awful. Felix had been planning to kick back and have two cups of coffee. Maybe three. Not anymore. Now he just wanted to go somewhere else. Somewhere far away from Bill the groundskeeper.
“Look around.” Bill flapped a hand at the empty bistro. “On the entire campus, there might be three other students who are conscious. Two haven’t gone to bed yet, and the third’s got his head in the toilet. You’re worrying about midterms.”
Felix thought about getting up and leaving. But that would be rude. “Not really,” he said tersely. He’d been studying harder than he’d ever studied in his life. He went to the library with Lucas and the girls almost every night, and they stayed for hours. The girls were stone-cold serious about their grades. After all this time, he still couldn’t get over how focused they were. He just had to follow their lead: if he studied when they studied, he should be golden—at least in theory.
“Can I offer you some advice?” Bill didn’t pause or wait for an answer. “When it comes to taking college exams there are a few tricks you can apply. Never be critical of your professor’s opinions. I know you and the other students view your professors as these great fountains of knowledge, but most of them are insecure cowards without an original idea in their heads. They’ve spent their entire lives hiding behind the work of others in their tenured towers. They’re too afraid and too weak to have experienced anything in the real world.
“If they were forced to work a regular nine-to-five job, they’d curl up like babies and cry their eyes out. Don’t challenge them. Flatter the egomaniacs whenever you can. Remember you can always appeal to the vanity of the weak-minded. And these people are as fragile as they come. Don’t make the mistake of thinking too much. If you regurgitate what they’ve been telling you in class, you should be fine. It couldn’t be any easier.”
Felix felt his eyes go wide. Bill didn’t talk like a groundskeeper, and Felix had nothing against the profession. From the time he was eleven, he’d been his neighborhood’s unofficial lawnmower, mulcher, weed puller and general provider of cheap manual labor. But the way Bill spoke reminded him of his professors; the same people he’d just thoroughly trashed. Finally, against his better judgment, he said, “You got a thing against profs?”
“Something like that.”
Felix swirled the dregs, then took long, rushed gulps. Bill was staring at him, watching him closely. He needed to get out of here. Now.
“This wasn’t an accident,” Bill said to him.
“Huh?” Felix gaped in surprise.
“My being here. It wasn’t by chance. And I didn’t come here to talk about football. Or midterms.”
Felix looked around and wondered if he might need some help. He wasn’t the paranoid type, but if this guy had a gun or a knife, he could be in trouble.
“And I’m not a stalker,” Bill said with a subtle edge to his voice, taking note of Felix’s reaction. “So stop acting like you’re on the verge of dialing nine-one-one. I came here to tell you something.” He paused. “I came here to tell you that I… knew your mother.”
“You what?”
“I met your mom a very long time ago.”
“My mom?” Bill’s words struck Felix like a blow to the chin.
“Yes. Patricia August. She was your mom, right?”
Felix nodded, more out of habit than anything else. Patricia August. That was his mom’s name. Just hearing it made his insides contract with pain. His chest tightened and he felt himself slipping into a dark well of depression.
“By the way,” Bill said softly. “I’m really sorry about what happened to your mother. And your father—of course. Such a terrible thing.”
Bill’s condolences turned Felix’s pain to hot anger. He looked Bill in the face and said bitterly, “I’m not talking about it.” He pushed his chair back from the table and stood up.
“That’s not why I’m here,” Bill said quickly, holding out his hands for Felix to stay. “Just wait a minute. Your mom gave me something. She wanted me to give it to you when the time was right. I promised her I would.”
“She… she what?” Felix stammered out, remaining at the table.
There was a clatter b
ehind them.
Bill glanced over at the counter where a kid wearing a green apron was filling the display case with muffins.
“She what?” Felix said again, gritting his teeth, resisting the impulse to snap his fingers in Bill’s face. “Why would she do that?”
“It’s a long story.”
“Go ahead.” Felix sat back down.
Bill stood up from the table. It was like they were on a teeter totter. “I wish I could, but I really have to be on my way. I have a pressing appointment.”
“What?” Felix’s anger was surging. “What is it? What’d she give you?”
“It’s hard to explain.” Bill’s eyes narrowed as he ran a hand over his face. “Let’s just say it’s a small personal object you should really experience for yourself. I think you’ll find it fascinating.”
Felix hesitated. Was this guy bullshitting him? If he was bluffing, now was the time to find out. “Then give it to me.”
“I’m afraid I don’t have it with me,” Bill said sympathetically. “It’s in storage out of state, but I expect to have it in a few weeks. I’ll contact you when I do.”
“You’ve gotta be kidding! Seriously? Then why would you…” he started to say, then let himself trail off.
“Sorry. I’ll be in touch soon.” Bill took his nearly-full mug over to the bar and set it down on the counter.
“Hey wait!” Felix called after him. “I’ll give you my number.”
“I’ve got it,” Bill said as the door shut behind him.
Chapter 23
The Unveiling
The Gold Digger had recently been voted one of the worst restaurants in Orange County. Dirk Rathman sat in a back booth of the diner staring bemusedly at a ladybug doing laps around the rim of his water glass. The broad-shouldered waitress that brought him his coffee hadn’t recognized him. The baseball hat, aviator sunglasses and thick beard seemed an impenetrable disguise.