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“Yeah. I’m good.”
I wasn’t really. I had no idea what to do. About anything.
25
Maddox
I pushed hard to wrap up our contest entry early. We wouldn’t be handing anything in at the last minute, the way we had with our qualifier. Though the deadline wasn’t until Friday night, I made sure we had it turned in Monday afternoon, and we were back at Onyx’s by the time the sun set.
What we’d done looked incredible. Yeah, I’d taken some good photos, but Alys and Onyx and their ideas added to that. All our friends did as well.
Which meant the little voice in the back of my head asking if I was only doing this to spite my dad could go fuck itself. This was an amazing effort, and the old man had nothing to do with it. Not out of spite or otherwise.
Onyx, Alys, and I were sitting in his living room, riding the high of being done, and feeling silly. I summoned my best Pinky voice. “Hey, Brain, what do you wanna do tonight?” I settled into the couch and stretched my arms across the back.
“Depends on which one of us is Brain.” Onyx apparently didn’t know how this exchange was supposed to go. He took the recliner across from me.
“Not it.” Alys sat next to me, her leg pressing into mine.
Really? They were ruining the gag. I could change gears though. I focused on Alys. “You definitely have brains. Sexy. Fuckable…”
Alys raised her eyebrows.
“No?” I didn’t understand her response.
“Mind fucking isn’t typically considered sexy,” Onyx said.
Alys shook her head. “Definitely not.”
Spoil sports. I wasn’t disappointed, though. This was fun. “First of all, I said fuckable brain, and nothing about mindfucking. Second, if I ever start to act like Don, you have permission to kick me in the nuts. Repeatedly. As hard as you can.”
“Nope.” Like that, Alys’s tone went flat. “You don’t get to bring him up. You shut us out for days about whatever happened with your dad, and you don’t get to toss around his name now.”
Ah. I saw her point. On the other hand, “First of all, there’s nothing to say about my dad. I’m not hiding anything new. He didn’t understand why I was visiting him, he was less than polite about the question, so I left.” Repeating the scene, even in terse, brief terms, left a lump in my throat. I swallowed it down.
“I’m sorry.” Alys sounded sincere.
Not that I expected anything else from her, and not that it made a difference.
Actually, it kind of did. Knowing she would offer sympathy wasn’t the same as hearing it. Which was another reason I wouldn’t avoid the other topic. “We’re talking about Don, whose name we can say because he’s not Voldemort.”
Alys cringed.
Onyx looked more thoughtful. “In a way he is. Massive ego. Invisible… nose.”
“Dick. Invisible dick.” I refused to use any innuendo in this case. “Ignoring who he is and what he does only gives him pow— Wow, he really is Voldemort.”
“He wishes.” Was that a hint of a smile on Alys’s face?
She was probably right, too. “That does seem like a thing he would wish for,” I said. “He probably thought Voldemort was the hero and the series was a tragedy.”
“I still hate the way Don treated you.” Leave it to Onyx to make things serious again. He leaned forward, forearms resting on his knees, and clasped his hands. “You never should’ve gone through that, Alys. And you deserve so much better.”
Alys leaned more weight against me, as if it were the most natural thing in the world. True, we’d always been close. Touchy-feely. But the last few days of breaking down those little barriers, of being able to brush against her and kiss her and be close without question, were wonderful.
“I have better now,” she said. “There are times when I have to force myself to accept that it’s real, but this is so much better.”
I was so glad I’d stopped holding out, and yanked Alys deeper into my life. If only I could do the same with Onyx. I dropped my arm to wrap it around her and pull her into me.
