Page 12 of Guarded Knight

The club is underway, and the scent of cheap red wine wafts by me in waves as readers pass with red plastic cups. I discreetly throw my tasteless gum into a trash can beside the refreshmentstable among five other discarded pieces and unwrap another to pop in my mouth.

My therapist said mint was calming. In what situation she meant, I don’t know.

Lara should have been here by now…

I check my watch. She’s been in Echo Valley for thirty-seven minutes. I can’t go in all guns blazing and knock on their door this soon. I know how to keep an eye on someone without ever making contact.

But if she’s not here in five, I’m going up.

Ava laughs beside me at something I didn’t hear.

Not even talk of seven alien dicks can distract me as I camp out here for a few minutes before my life implodes.

I’m about to exchange words with Lara for the first time in years, and simply thinking about it has me losing focus over anything but her voice, finally, after so much aching silence, directed at me.

Lara hasn’t been rude or mean when I’ve bumped into her at Young family functions. She’d lift her chin at my casually me like a buddy. Or offer a curt wave with a millisecond of eye contact. Just enough to not make her parents, or worse, Xander, ask why things are now weird.

And it fucking hurt that she put walls up.

But I kissed her boundaries and prayed that one day, we could be close again.

Never did I want it to be under such a fucked-up circumstance.

Or forced…

My dad’s voice is all distorted and distant in my head, and whatever he says is followed by another uproar of laughter.

I should’ve gone up. She must be exhausted, and I know tiredness can bring on symptoms…

Suddenly, my dad’s voice is clear again, because he’s calling my name.

“G,” my dad beckons. “You’re up.”

I blink. “What?”

He gestures to a fishbowl in Penelope’s hands.

“Pick the next question of the night.”

The last thing I want is to be the center of attention, but refusing would just make more of a scene, and I am, at least on the surface, here to support my dad. I push off the back wall and head up front.

I walk with confidence like I’ve been trained to, but inside, I’m halfway to bolting. I don’t like being on stage.

I snatch out a piece of paper and unfold it.

And then, the bell above the door jingles.

I look up.

And Lara walks in.

The room doesn’t fall silent, but it feels like it does. My pulse jumps before my brain catches up to control it. Her eyes find mine, and even from this distance, the hazel gold in her gaze shocks through my system.

Penelope nudges me. “Come on, G. Don’t leave us hanging.”

I glance down at the slip. My throat tightens.

“It’s the end of the world,” I read, “and you’re stranded on a desert island. Which character would you want with you, and why?”