I groaned and sat up, the morning sunlight like murder straight to my eyeballs. I hate drinking. I knew it was a bad idea, but I did it anyway. My stomach wouldn’t stop dancing with nerves, so the brilliant muscle that was my brain decided booze would be the correct solution to make me calm. All it did was make me hot and woozy and – The image of Bee’s face flashes through my mind, so close and so flushed, so pretty – Pretty. I force myself out of bed, like I can leave that thought there and move on with my life like it never happened.
I had to apologize to Fitz, I knew that much. I staggered to his door and knocked on it. He answered, all smiles.
“Well well, if it isn’t the star of the night,” Fitz drawls, his hand on his hip. He looks as fresh and dewy as a blade of grass, minus the faint purple bruise in his eye socket.
“How do you not have a hangover?’ I croak.
“Not all of us slam three bottles of wine in two hours, my darling brother.”
“You’re not….mad?”
“Why would I be?” Fitz smiles. “I tried to set the mood for you two lovebirds without your permission. Of course you’d want to hit me. I’d want to hit me.”
I lean against his doorway, my body too heavy for me to support on my own.
“Why in God’s name were you trying to set a mood? I don’t like her like that.”
Fitz puts on a simpering smile and pats my head. “Wolf, you are the dearest thing to my heart, but you’re also a giant idiot. Now if you could please move, I’ve got a Hot Pocket downstairs with my name on it.”
“I seriously don’t like her.”
“Uh-huh.” He tries to dart under my elbow, but I put my leg there.
“Fitz, look at me. I’m not lying.”
“Sure.”
I narrow my eyes. “You don’t believe me.”
“I’m sorry, I’ve just got a lot of evidence to the contrary, and I’m a man of science at my core.”
“What evidence?” I snort.
“You mean other than the endless film reels of you staring at her like a doe-eyed milkmaid?”
“I don’t –”
“Oh yes you do. Constantly. Literally any time she and you are together within a hundred yards. Now, please, my pepperonis need me.”
I’m too stunned to stop him this time, and he ducks under my elbow and escapes downstairs. Do I stare? I don’t stare. Do I? When I regain my composure, I follow him into the kitchen.
“I don’t stare.”
“Saying something out loud doesn’t make it true,” Fitz singsongs as he puts his Hot Pocket on a plate and pours himself a glass of milk.
“I don’t stare!” I insist, and follow Fitz back up to his room. Fitz peeks into Burn’s room, balancing his food precariously.
“Burn, please tell me whether or not Wolf stares at Beatrix a lot.”
Burn, pressing nearly four hundred pounds on his weight machine, looks up, sweat dripping into his eyes.
“He stares at Bee a lot,” He says, without a single sign of exertion in his voice. Fitz turns to me and smiles.
“See?”
He skips back to his room as best he can while carrying a plate, and I skulk after him.
“This is a conspiracy,” I decide. “Between you two.”
“I can assure you, Wolf, love is no conspiracy. It’s just hormones.” Fitz crams half the pocket into his mouth. He eats like a vacuum in a fifty-year-old attic. He swallows with much difficulty and sighs. “Oh, c’mon, don’t give me that look. It’s been years since Mark, okay? Me and Burn just want to see you happy.”
“Being with some girl won’t make me happy,” I cross my arms over my chest.
“She isn’t just ‘some girl’! She’s Beatrix Cruz! Our scholarshipper! She wrote that essay you obsess over constantly!”
“I don’t…obsess.” I hiss.
“Wolf, please. You’re acting like you don’t know I hack your webcam to spy on you four days out of the week.”
“You –” My skin starts crawling. “You what?”
“Don’t worry,” He throws his hands up. “I have my algorithms check first before I peek, so your jerk-off privacy is safe.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I knead the space between my eyebrows, trying desperately to stop the irritated headache that’s forming. The sound of heavy metal dropping resounds, and then Burn comes out, wiping his face with a towel.
“She ran away,” He says. “After the fight.”
“Poor thing,” Fitz pouts. “I’d run away too, if I saw Wolf lose it like that.”
I point at him. “Look – keep your nose out of my business. I don’t need you making my life harder than you do already.”
Fitz salutes, and as I stomp off I can hear him chirp ‘sir yes sir!’. I grab the webcam from the top of my computer and chuck it straight into the garbage can. I hear Burn – well, feel his presence, really, like a heavy cloud behind me in the doorway.
“What is it?” I snap.
“You’re losing it,” He says quietly. “That’s two people you’ve punched.”
“So what?”
“So,” He leads. “Maybe you do like her.”
“Or maybe I just feel like punching people.”
“We both know that’s not true.”
I’m quiet. Finally, I open my mouth.
“If it is her –”
“If it is her,” Burn interrupts. “You need to quit taking those frustrations out on other people, and just tell her.”
“I can’t.” I grit my teeth. “I promised myself it would never happen again.”
“That isn’t how it works, Wolf. You don’t get to choose. It just happens.”
“She hates me.” I snarl.
“I’d hate you too,” He says. “If you kept acting weird and aloof around me.”
I scoff, my body reluctant to acknowledge what he’s saying, but my mind lapping up every word. I know I’ve been acting weird around her. I know I don’t get to choose when it happens. But the thought of someone like me – broken and fearful and scarred – admitting his feelings to someone like her, who needs someone reliable and trusting and normal, is absurd.
“She needs to leave,” I say. “I need to kick her out of Lakecrest before she can ruin her life. It’s for her own good.”
“Or is it for yours?”
I’m quiet. Is it for mine? Life would be so much easier if she was gone. I wouldn’t feel this way all the time – tortured and torn between getting rid of her so she can stop living for her Dad’s sake, or keeping her close to me for my own selfish reasons.
“The first thing to do,” Burn says, like he can hear my thoughts. “Is get rid of that essay. And talk to her. Like a normal human being would.”