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CHAPTER ELEVEN
I was walking out of the main building when a pair of arms wrapped around me from behind. "Kip," they whispered in my ear. I let out a scream that would embarrass any grown man. Pulling myself out of their hold, I turned and saw that it was Riley. "What's with the scream? I'm hurt."
I tried to laugh, unsuccessfully with my heart about to pound out of my chest. "Oh, Riley, it's you." I had thought it was Ali with another PDA attack.
"How's the ankle?"
"Oh, it's fine now. I'm really sorry for not being about to help prepare for the haunted house because of it."
"No sweat. We got it done."
"I had been looking forward to it, though."
"If you want to help out that much, want to come help on Saturday?"
"Really? That'd be awesome. I'd love to."
"It'll be simple stuff like attracting customers, though."
"Sure. Sounds good. I didn't go to the school's fall festival last year, so I'm looking forward to it."
Riley walked me to where Ali was waiting for me. He had picked me up every day since I hurt my ankle. "Hello Mr. Smoak," Riley smiled broadly. Ali ignored him as I got in the car. "The school festival is this weekend. Kip is going to be helping us out at my club's event. I just wanted to let you know that I'll look out for him for you."
"Not happening." Ali probably would have run Riley over if he weren't standing on the curb.
We fought the whole way home. He kept insisting that I wasn't healed yet, and I insisted that I was. I threw my book bag on the sofa as soon as we were inside. "What the hell is your problem? Are you intent on keeping me from having any kind of college experiences?"
Pouring himself a cup of coffee, he countered, "I had no idea you were still hanging out with him. I thought I told you to stay away from him."
"I've said it before and I'll say it again, but I think it's fucked up how you just judge people without even getting to know them."
"Which of us doesn't know him?"
"You, of course. He's a nice guy."
I was already tired of this conversation. I went into the entryway to put on the shoes that I had just taken off. Ali came after me, stopping me by boxing me in, leaning his elbow on the wall next to me. "Can't you tell that he's after you?"
"Riley? Not everyone is gay, Ali. You're projecting."
"And you're oblivious."
"Shut up!"
"You are too gullible."
"That's not true. I'm not a child, Ali! Stop trying to control me."
"Control?! This is love. I'm protecting you."
"How is this love?"
"You're the grown-up, figure it out. At any rate, stop spending time with him. I don't trust him."
"It's none of your business who I'm friends with." His response to this was to come in for a kiss. Why did he think sex was the solution to everything?! I pushed him back. "Enough already! I told you, he's not even gay. And while we're on this topic, let me make this clear. No matter whom I spend time with or what I do with them, I don't have to tell you a god damned thing about it, and you have no right to have a say in any of it!" I laid into him.
...
Um, why wasn't he saying anything? The silence was absolutely deafening. Ali always had some sort of retort or quip. Why was he just standing there staring at me with that stoic visage?
Feeling totally uncomfortable, and certain that I had done something wrong, but not being able to figure it out, I hedged, "So, anyway, I think I'll go shop for dinner...or something."
When I turned to the door, my back to him, he finally spoke up. "I love you. That's why it's my business." His voice was so quiet, and small even, that it sent shivers over my skin.
How did he always do this? I was just standing up for myself, so why did I feel so rotten? I did the only thing I could think of...I ran. "I know. We'll have spaghetti and meatballs for dinner. Did you know that meatballs are incredible if you sauté them in olive oil instead of baking or deep frying them? Okay, bye." I slammed the door behind me. Oh my god, I was a jackass.
Stamping my feet, I marched down the street to the market. It freaked me out how Ali's mind worked, because it was so completely different than mine. Riley's just a friend. Besides, I have a mind of my own. Ali thinks I'll just do whatever someone wants me to.
The memory of getting into the car with Halston crawled all over me, leaving me feeling like a fool for the hundredth time since it happened.
My phone rang. Distracted, I answered it without really looking at the caller id. "Yeah?"
"It's me, Halston." Speak of the devil. I almost dropped the phone. "How are you? How's your ankle?"
I decided asking him how he knew that I sprained my ankle that day when there had been no mention of it, or how he got my cellphone number wasn't worth it. He had ten seconds to say something worth hearing before I hung up. "It's fine," I didn't bother to hide the impatience in my voice.
He was astute enough to know he had limited time because he got right down to it. "I want you to hear me out one more time. I love you. I want..."
Enough of that. "No fucking way." I hit the call end button. The man was a whack job.
See, I could take care of myself. I told Halston to fuck off in no uncertain terms. I wouldn't even hear him out. I didn't just go along like I didn't know what was happening. Ali was seeing problems where there weren't any. Riley's my friend and classmate. That was all.
The Hall of Hell was the name of the Hot Springs Research Society's haunted house. Riley had told me to dress up in a costume, but nothing scary like a monster or zombie, something normal. I decided to go as Clark Kent. I donned black framed glasses and a black suit, but instead of a tie, I wore a Superman t-shirt under my white dress shirt that I left mostly unbuttoned so that the Superman emblem could be seen. I pulled my hair back in a knot so that I could style it to get that business professional, Clark Kent, sleek look.
I met Riley out front of the Hall of Hell. He was dressed like a ninja, in black from head to toe. "Hey, cool costume. It really suits you."
"Yeah? Thanks man."
"I've never seen your hair pulled back. You should wear it like that more often."
I tried not to turn red, if that was something you could do, as thoughts of Ali's accusations about Riley floated through my head. "Yours is pretty awesome. Make sure and stay in the lights or I won't be able to find you. Why did you not want me to dress as anything scary, anyway? I thought the point of a haunted house was to scare people."
"Well, we actually have a reputation for scaring the piss out of people so badly, that we have to lure people in with something not quite so terrifying." As if on cue, someone screamed like a banshee; I think it was a girl.
"What the hell is in there?"
"I'll take you through later. Or you could go with Alistor. Isn't he coming?"
"Oh, probably not." I shuffled my feet. "He seems to have a lot of work right now." I hadn't had a proper conversation with him since our fight. He's been driving me to and from school as usual the last two days, but we barely spoke. Maybe I went too far this time.
Coaxing people to the Hall of Hell, walking around with Riley eating funnel cakes, and screaming my head off inside the haunted house cheered me up, helping me not to worry about it too much.
"Are you going to make the last bus?" Riley asked me as we left the festival.
I took my phone out for the first time that night, taking it off vibrate. "I didn't realize it was so late." My phone started ringing. It was Ali. "Excuse me for a sec." I walked a few feet away before answering. "H..."
I didn't get a chance to say hey before he was interrogating me. "Did you know that I have been worried sick?"
"No, but like, I made sure to leave you a note." I was not going to let him make me feel guilty for hanging out with my friend.
"It's 3:30 in the morning!"
"I know that." I was determined to stay calm.
"I'm coming to pick you up. Where are you?"
"You don't have to come. I'm fine. And I'm hanging up." I felt a little bit sick. I can't believe I just hung up on Ali. But I just didn't see what was so wrong with me wanting a night out with Riley.
"Was that Alistor?"
"Yep." I couldn't hide the annoyance from my voice. "I told him what I was doing tonight. Look at this!" I held up my phone so he could see my call log. "Eighteen missed calls! Jesus Christ!"
He laughed good naturedly at me. "I think it's nice that he worries about you."
"Well, I wish he'd worry a little less." I sullenly tucked my phone away.
"Talk about ungrateful." Normally I could tell when he was kidding, but this time I couldn't. "Well, then, what do you want to do? Wanna stay over at my place tonight?"
"Could I? That would save me a lot of hassle."
"Sure. My parents aren't home anyway, so it's no big deal."
"What do your parents do?"
"Huh? Oh, they're writers."
"Seems we're surrounded by writers, huh?"
"Hey, it'll be annoying if your phone rings eighteen more times; you should put it on vibrate." * * *
When Kip wasn't home an hour later I was past worried. He wasn't answering his phone, but I kept calling anyway, because what else could I do? The fifth time I called it was picked up. "Yes?"
It wasn't Kip. "Who is this?"
"It's Riley, Mr. Smoak. Kip's fallen fast asleep, so he can't come to the phone right now." Fuck this kid was disturbing. If I were writing a suspense, these would be the lines I'd write for the kidnapper...or serial killer. A chill went down my spine.
"Where are you?"
"My place. He put all his energy into helping us today, so he seems to have gotten tired. You should've come. Kip was so handsome in his costume."
My insides were churning. "I'll come and get him now. Give me the address."
"I see. Well then, you should be able to find out where the author Ryan Baher lives, right? If you don't come for him soon, I won't be held responsible."
"If you lay one finger on him, so help you god..." He hung up the phone.
So, this is what it's like to die from fright. I tried to get myself to calm down. I told myself that it was all in my head. He wasn't going to hurt Kip. If anything, he might make a move on him. Either way, I had to get to him.
I called Mira and Donnan both and threatened them with death, or worse, changing publishers if they didn't get me Ryan Baher's address. I was proud of them, they got it in record time, even for the middle of the night. I had to convince myself not to call the police when I did have the address, there was still a good chance I was letting my imagination run away with me. I would have to get new tires for all the tread I lost speeding there.
Preparing to bang down the door, Riley had it open before I got there. "Welcome Alistor." He didn't seem so scary now that I was in the same room with him, but I still didn't like him.
"Where's Kip?"
"Why don't you come in? Fortunately, my parents aren't here today." He started walking towards the back of the house. I followed him thinking he was taking me to Kip.
"I had no idea you were that Mr. Baher's son."
"The world's a smaller place than you think."
He went into a game room with a poker table, billiards, a pinball machine, and a bar. It was empty. "Where's Kip?" I asked again.
"Would you like some coffee? Or perhaps a drink?" He went over to the bar and started making a cup of coffee in a Keurig.
"No, I'll decline both. We'll be leaving right away."
Just before I started to leave to search the house for Kip, he started talking again. An oration, really. "Partly because my father was on the nominating committee of the new author award for your debut novel, I've heard all about you for years. Thanks to that, I've read all your books. But it didn't stop at books. Your interviews, columns, transcribed conversations... All of it. I found every bit of them disagreeable, though." It's official, this kid was certifiable. "I hate novels to begin with. They're fabricated tales people come up with in their heads, and then they force them on others. I think it's rubbish." He set a cup of coffee on the bar with the handle facing towards me. This kid was dreaming if he thought I'd drink anything he made. "But when I read your debut novel, I ended up crying in spite of myself. If it was just that novel it would've been one thing, but every book you've published...somehow or another, they keep wrecking my sense of values. Doesn't it piss you off when stuff like that happens? What right do you have to do such a thing? To change me with your words?"
"If you don't like them, then you don't have to read them."
"Don't like them?"
"I get it. I understand it very well... you hate me." This is why he was trying to steal Kip from me. He was truly pathological.
"Hate you? Who said anything of the sort? Actually..." He crossed the few feet over to me. Taking me completely by surprise, he grabbed one of the lapels of my coat, roughly pulling me to him, he confessed, "I'm in love with you." A cold, steady hand crawled up my chest to my face.
Taking a step back to get away from his advances, my shoulder hit the corner of a cabinet. With him hanging onto my jacket, I lost my balance. I most likely would have found my footing, but Riley leaned against me and we went down to the floor with him on top of me. I backed away from him and hit the wall. "So, this is why you got close to Kip?"
"Yes, that's right."
"Enough of this! Move aside so I can get up." He was straddling my legs.
"I know full well that you love Kip, but why not have sex with me? You can get around to falling in love with me later. You're good at that sort of thing, right? I bet that's how it went with Kip, too, right?"
I was so stunned I couldn't move. How had I not realized this before? I thought that Kip was struggling with being gay, but maybe fighting against giving into me was because he didn't love me. Had I manipulated him into being with me? Had I used sex as a weapon against him? He was inexperienced with sex period, man or woman. There was a chance he was with me because of the orgasms I brought him. Sweet innocent Kip could mistake it for love. Had I fucked him until he fell in love with me?
I don't know how long I had been sitting there in stunned silence when Riley taunted, "Wow, so it really did happen like that? Well, I could kind of tell from seeing how Kip reacts to you. It's pretty one sided." Did he just stab me in the heart? His words did. Kip doesn't love me, and I was too single minded to notice. "If you just think of this as the same thing..." His hand was on my face, and for some reason I didn't push it away. His other hand pushed up my sweater, grazing the skin on my stomach as he moved his face closer to mine; I was frozen. Did heartbreak cause a body to become paralyzed?
"You're wrong!" It was Kip. Standing there in his wrinkled Superman t-shirt, his teal hair partially falling out of its knot. "That's not how it happened." He faltered seeing us on the floor like this.
Riley, collected as ever and emboldened by our near kiss, he implored, "Say, Kip, won't you give Ali to me?"
"What?"
"You're always complaining about him, and trying to avoid him." Another stab wound. "And to be honest, I think I know more about him than you do. There's no need for you to stay with a guy you don't actually like." Forget love, he doesn't even like me.
Riley paused for a few seconds to let Kip reply, and he said nothing. I felt my heart shatter. "I'll take responsibility for him, so you can just go back to your brother or something." He lifted my chin up to him as I stared at him blankly. Perhaps this was for the best so that Kip could find real love and escape my ruthless manipulation.
Riley was a fraction from my lips when I heard Kip's scream, full of pain. "Nooo!" He raced over, kicking Riley in the shoulder, knocking him off me. "I'm not letting you or anyone else have him!" He grabbed my elbow and yanked me up off the floor with strength I didn't know he had. "Ali is mine!" He was breathing heavily as he stared down at Riley with wild eyes that dared him to challenge him.
Did he mean it? Was it true? The pieces of my heart flew back together. I was his. And he was mine. Sweet solicitous Kip fought for me. He could have easily yielded, but he wanted me all to himself. "There you have it," I scorned Riley. "The one I love is Kip. Not you." I could inflect some wounds myself. Taking Kip by the hand, we left.
Ali didn't say a word the whole way home. And I waited. I waited for him to explain himself. I wanted to throw up just thinking about the sight of them on the floor, Riley touching him where only I should, and Ali letting it happen, his eyes glazed with sadness.
Some sort of crash had woken me up and it took me a few moments to remember where I was. And then I heard Ali's voice. At first, I didn't understand what they were talking about. Ali asked him something about why Riley had become friends with me. And then my world twisted upside down when Riley asked Ali to have sex with him. I couldn't believe my ears. I had to still be dreaming.
And then Riley had accused Ali of sleeping with me until I fell in love. It disgusted me because it was unequivocally untrue. But even more stunning is when Ali didn't deny it. Why wasn't he denying it? That's not how it happened at all. Tumbling off the couch, I ran to the next room.
Hearing Riley's assessment of my feelings for Ali, that I was always complaining about him, that I didn't really like him, I couldn't believe it. And for Ali to sit there believing it made me feel like a wretch. How gigantic of an asshole was I? So busy convincing myself that I didn't love a man, that Ali and I weren't really lovers, I had convinced everyone around me; including Ali. I was despicable.
I couldn't lose him. I wouldn't.
So, I lay my claim to him. He was mine, and no one, especially Riley, was going to take him from me.
It was my fault that Ali so easily believed Riley's lies. If he had had any faith in my ardor for him, this wouldn't have happened. But despite it being my fault, I was still angry with him for being so easily duped. "You're the one constantly lecturing me about being easily led...gullible. Look at yourself! You're more vulnerable than I am. 'Who's the one who doesn't know him?' you asked me. Both of us, that's who. You think you know everything, but you don't." I slammed the front door of the apartment and stormed into the living room.
He had yet to say anything. "Are you listening to me?" He walked up to me and enveloped me in a meek embrace. Ali had never been meek. "I'm still mad at you." I wasn't. I was mad at me, but as usual I took it out on him.
His hand loosened my knot and sank into my hair. "I love you, Kip." His voice was shaking. "I'll never let you go. If you ran away, I would probably capture and lock you away."
Now he was shaking. What do I do? "I'm not a bird, Ali. That's crazy."
"I know it is. I know it is. Kip?"
"Yes, Ali?" I could feel his heartbeat against my cheek. "Kiss me." I looked up at him. He had never asked me that before. Usually he took what he wanted and I either relented or I didn't. His eyes, those desolate lavender eyes did me in. This wasn't like in bed when he ordered me around, I knew he did that for my pleasure, and for his. This was something else. He needed reassurance that Riley's poisonous words weren't true, and only I could do that for him.
Placing my hands on his neck, I brought him down to me. Our kiss was tentative, almost as though it was our first. Perhaps it's what our first kiss should have been if I hadn't been busy hurling accusations at him, and him wanting to teach me a lesson.
His legs buckled beneath him and we sank to the floor on our knees together. Burying his face in my shoulder I knew he was crying. The last time he cried it had been because Tavis had broken his heart. This time it was because I had. "Ali..." I wanted to say it. I wanted to say it so badly, but I too scared. Instead I wept with him.
I just wanted to say thank you to anyone who has stuck with this story and is still reading. I'm afraid that I may have published too early because I have been finding some typos in previously submitted chapters. I do my own editing (because I have no one I know to share my stories with) and, as a writer, when you know what is supposed to be said, your eye can skip over mistakes. So, I apologize for the typos, especially the giant one in chapter two. I'll do better from now on.
willowlemon@outlook.com