Cause for Concern ✓

one

FRIDAY. 24. SEPTEMBER. 
(ALL CHAPTERS UNEDITED / BOOK HAS NOT BEEN EDITED)

THIS wasn't a good idea. There was no way around that simple truth. Of course, there was no rule that said that truth had to become a reality, but what's in motion stays in motion (or whatever that rule goes like). Anyway, it was the kind of night where you can't quite let the  impulses take a backseat, you can't let them be stubbornly ignored until they melt under the rise of the sun the morning after. No. The cool, night breeze was whistling, the sharp, dewy blades of grass were murmuring, the obscuring leaves of the trees were rustling that tonight was a night where something must be done. Something must happen. Tonight there must be no answer to reason, no acknowledgement of logic: only action.

Earlier this evening, the seed of the idea had planted itself deep in his brain and was growing, thriving, flourishing right into the early hours of the night; a beautiful, wonderful seed of resentment sowed in a neat little plot of impulse, watered bitterly with a little more vodka than needed.

Maybe if Cole had known the elements of this equation, then he wouldn't have been a willing accomplice, but he didn't even know that he was an accomplice. He didn't know whose house this was or what they were doing here, but he'd more than happily obliged to pick Max up and drive him here before they headed to the party together. At first, he had prodded here and there with a cool curiosity, attempting to garner even the vaguest of hints or explanations, but had given up pretty easily when he realised it wasn't going to get him anywhere. He liked that about Cole. He knew when to quit— an ability Max could only dream of possessing.

His sleek, black jeep was hidden by the trim trees and the spruce shrubbery going up to the house, growing alongside the edge of the sidewalk. Even without this disguise, the car camouflaged nicely into the darkness, successfully avoiding the illumination of white beams from any of the streetlights, though Max was almost certain that this detail was an accident on Cole's part.

Max was sitting in the heated, cushioned passenger seat; his seat belt unfastened, his body shifted upwards and his neck craned so far that he could feel the tight stretch in his skin. He peered around the edge of their concealment and at the yellow drenched room to the left of the second floor— the light was on in the bathroom, and no lights ever stayed on over night.

Whoever was using the bathroom would be finished soon, but soon wasn't coming fast enough. As the waiting went on and on, his legs felt like they had springs in them, eager to be exercised, and the tips of his fingers were tingling with a kind of magic excitement, his hands flexing and active. He knew that when the bathroom light went out he would still have to wait a few more minutes to make sure everything in the house was still before he could do what he came here to do. Right now, any and all of his self-control was so lost it was as though he'd never possessed any, but it seemed as though there was some subconscious desperately fighting to instil in him some practicality. If he was going to be an idiot, then he should at least do it right.

But that yellow light continued to glare out into the street like the eye of an owl, all-seeing, all-knowing, daring him to proceed. His refusal to surrender was almost admirable, especially since the seconds were beginning to feel like minutes and patience had never been a virtue of his.

In those seconds, an inkling of sense might have just been crawling it's way back to him, like a human embodiment of desperation clawing through desert sand towards an invigorating, reviving fountain of fresh, crystal waters, only to arrive and discover that it was nothing more than a mirage; the last fight for survival depleted into nothing, as though it never existed. Maybe, with just a few more seconds, that surviving stroke of logic might clasp its' hands around the stem of the bright, blossoming flower that had grown in his head and rip it from the ground with great strength, an unwavering determination. Maybe, if the light stayed on a little longer then his impetuous ambitions could be crushed, forgotten, even scorned.