Page 78 of Riot Act

“Are you afraid of it?”

“Why the fuck would I be afraid of it?”

Now she looks at me, her expression unimpressed. “I read your chapter, dumbass. You were terrified in it.”

“Are youdrunk?” I laugh coldly.

She pops her bottom lip into her mouth, squinting up at me now. I do not like the way she’s looking at me—like she can see through my bullshit and I should just give up already. “What, you think you’re qualified to psychoanalyze me because you read something that I wrote, and it scared you a little?”

Swish, swish, swish. The ends of her hair brush her back, almost at her waist, as she slowly shakes her head. “The fear leaping out of those pages wasn’t mine,” she says matter-of-factly.

“What does that mean?”

She mulls on her response. And then comes out with something so unsatisfactory and frustrating that I want to shake her. “Nothing. Forget it, Pax. It doesn’t mean anything.”

“Coward.”

She drops her bag to the floor and throws her head back, unleashing a howl of laughter that surprises the shit out of me. “Ohhh, that’s good. I don’t think I’m the coward here, am I,friend?”

“Lord. Not this again.”

“What, you still don’t think we’re friends?” She loops her finger through the colorful bracelet that’s still looping my wrist, giving it a playful little tug. “Just accept it. It’s obvious.”

“You’re delusional.”

“We’ve been hanging out. We’ve had sex—”

“Careful.

She disregards the cold warning in my voice. “If we’re not friends, then we’re something else. Ifyou’renot careful, I’ll start to think that you actually like me.”

“Christ, you really don’t know when to stop talking, do you?”

She pokes her tongue out—a childish, playful gesture designed to provoke. But I see thewetness, thepinknessof her tongue, and the only thing she provokes is a wall of heat. God fucking damn it, why does my body hate me? Why does my mind immediately show me what it would feel like to grab her by the back of her neck and suck that little, delicate pink tongue into my own mouth?

What fucking purpose does that serve?

“We’re a little more than casual acquaintances, Pax,” she says softly.

“What I wouldn’t give to betotal fucking strangers.”

“If you wanted to be strangers, you wouldn’t have fucked me last night. You definitely wouldn’t be diving out of your car and chasing me across two hundred feet of lawn.”

“We had an agreement. Stop talking about the sex. And I did not come down here to have a chat because we’re pals.”

“Then why did you come down here?” She’s genuinely curious.

“I wanna know what the hell you meant by that text message. Divisive? Divisive?? You’re fucking high again.”

“I’m not. But I will be in a minute. Here, hold this a second.” She gives me no choice. I accept her bag, holding onto the base of it for her while she uses both hands to rummage around inside it.

What theFUCK.

She finds and takes out a small tin with a painted Victorian lady on it carrying a parasol, takes her bag back from me like she didn’t just use me as a fucking countertop, and then slumps into the grass at my feet, sitting Indian style. She opens the tin, takes out a small glass pipe, and begins to pack an enormous amount of pre-ground weed into the bowl.

“You realize they’re going to smell that on you when you go back inside. Your eyes are gonna be red as hell.”

Silently, she dives back into her bag, pulling out a bottle of perfume, a tiny bottle of eye drops, and a pair of over-sized black sunglasses. She sets the items down one at a time in the grass, pulling a face at me as she does so.