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He nodded. “Kind of,” he replied. “Her friend, Delta, is dating Malcolm House. While we’re not the best of friends, we’ve hung out and have played some ball together. I’ve seen him with Delta and Sutton a few times.”
Class forgotten, I told him what was going on. “Sutton and I hooked up at the beginning of the year, and I ghosted her.”
Fox let out a low whistle. “Dude.”
“I know, I know,” I muttered. “But…I really started liking her. Falling in love, actually.” Saying the words out loud made me feel worse than I already did. “Yeah, it was happening too fast, but it felt real, Fox.”
A strange glint shown in his eyes as he said, “I can see that.”
“Well, I hadn’t counted on…falling in love with the girl,” I admitted. “And while I knew enough about the initiation and the organization to know what to expect, I didn’t know the details, you know. I didn’t want to get wrapped up in Sutton without knowing all that was going to be expected of us.”
The problem with being in a relationship while completing our final year of school was explaining the presence of our supporters. If you had a girlfriend, you had to explain to her why this other girl was always around and at your beck and call, and how did you do that without breaking all the millions of NDAs you signed? How many girls would be okay with another girl hanging around their boyfriend all the time with no explanation as to why?
Not to mention all the secret meetings and shit like that. Trust was a motherfucker, and I couldn’t think of any girl who could trust blinding like that, and not think that their boyfriend was screwing other chicks or into some illegal shit.
“So, you ghosted her?”
I shot him a look. “I know it was a shitty thing to do, Fox,” I assured him. “But I couldn’t bring myself to tell her that it wasn’t working out when it was. I couldn’t lie to her face like that. I couldn’t be sure that I wouldn’t have told her everything had she started crying or something.”
“That serious, huh?”
I nodded. “Yeah, it was.”
“So, why are you pissed now?”
“I haven’t spoken to her since I ghosted her, and when I tried to just right now, it didn’t go well,” I admitted.
“Ya think?” he remarked dryly.
“Look, I know I was an asshole,” I reiterated. “But that doesn’t mean she gets to reduce those weeks to just fucking.”
Fox winced. “Damn, that sucks.”
“I can take her being pissed,” I told him. “I can take her being bitter and wanting to draw me up by my balls. However, I can’t take her dismissing what we had so casually.”
Fox slid his hands in his pockets. “Look, Ross, I’m the last person to be giving relationship advice, but ghosting is going to be hard to come back from, dude.” Then he cocked in head in thought. “Plus, how are you going to explain Jennifer? How are you going to explain disappearing at odd times? If you can’t lie to her, then what’s the plan?”
“I haven’t gotten that far,” I confessed. “But…I don’t know, man.” I shook my head. “Seeing Stone and Rylee together, it just…”
“Watching Stone defy everyone is giving you a different perspective?” he finished for me.
“I’d been raised to believe that The Order was infallible,” I said. “I’d been raised to believe that it was absolute, and that there wasn’t any room for mistake. Now, I’m not so sure.”
“I know what you mean,” he agreed. “Between all that stuff with Stone and Rylee, then whatever August is up to, it doesn’t feel…none of this shit should have been allowed.”
“Exactly,” I exhaled deeply. “Stone should have been dealt with, but he wasn’t.”
“True,” Fox murmured. “But he’s also Stone Lexington. The Order knows exactly who it recruited when they chose us. They knew Stone could be a problem when they went after him. It’s August that concerns me more.” Fox’s phone chimed with an incoming notification, but he ignored it, and I thought that was rather decent of him. “His outburst at the initiation should have been the end of him.”
Before I could reply, my phone chimed also. We stared at each other, knowing it probably wasn’t a coincidence that both our phones had gone off. So, as Fox reached for his phone, I reached for mine, and the text message was simple and to the point.
Alexander:Meeting 2nite @ 11pm. Bring ur supporter
We never knew the place until the last minute, but that was okay. It wasn’t like we had the option not to show, no matter where it was. The only odd thing was the request to bring our supporters along. Usually, they attended the initiations only. They weren’t privy to anything beyond that.
I looked over at Fox. “Meeting?”
He nodded. “Yeah.”
