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7
act my age - pale waves
"tell me when did it start falling apart, every time the wind blows"
Nate and I sat together on the suede couch, unsure of what to say next as we sipped our hot drinks. It was all I could do to not think about the muscles in his arms, now prominently on display since he wasn't wearing his signature denim jacket.
"If we make it out of tonight alive, I'm never going to be the same person I was when I came to you in that strip mall." I said quietly, breaking the silence.
"I don't expect you to be. It means that you have a soul, and that you're a good person."
"You're worrying that you'll come out the other end the same?"
Nate looked at me, sadness and pain in his eyes that he was trying to hide. I saw right through it. "I'm not as good as you are, Charis. I've done things I can't take back, and I'll keep doing them because it's what I need to do to survive out here."
I didn't even think as I placed my mug down on the coffee table, reaching for Nate's hand. His palm was smooth and soft, yet his fingertips were calloused. His skin radiated warmth, a comfort I could have used right about then, so wired that if I let go of Nate, I felt I might shake so much that I caught flight.
"What do we do now?"
"Anything we can to stop thinking about it."
I raised my eyebrows. With Nate Macauley, a distraction likely meant the two of us, in a bed, with no clothes on. And in horror movies, that's usually one of the big ways characters get themselves killed. Did nobody teach Nate the horror movie commandments?
"Does Alexia get any sports channels?"
That's not what I expected Nate to say, the mere suggestion catching me off guard as I shrugged.
"Probably. Pastor Staedtler watches golf, why?"
"I think IndyCar is on tonight, I was just gonna watch the highlights in the morning?"
Car racing.
We're being chased by drug dealers, and he wants to watch car racing?
Catching the expression on my face, Nate laughed. "Come on, it's the Indy 500 down in Indianapolis this weekend, it's one of the biggest races on the calendar and it's like, five hours long. That's a lot of time to not think about the people chasing us."
We were going to die, and it was all going to be Nate's fault.
"Fine." I relented, passing him the boxy remote for the Staedtler's cable box. "But at least one of us needs to keep an ear open in case Lords tries to get in here. And if we die, I'm going to go all Beetlejuice on your ass in the afterlife."
"He's not gonna find us, Charis. Stop worrying. We'll be okay."
"Easy for you to say." I grumbled, crossing my arms and sitting back on the couch as Nate queued up the race. It was already halfway through, a hundred laps into a two-hundred lap race. "You know, I prefer F1 myself."
He didn't need to know that I had only started watching races with TJ this year, and that we both had to hide it form our parents, who didn't think that racing was a real sport.
Nate smirked. "A woman of class. F1 is too high society for me. IndyCar is American and nitty-gritty. The good stuff."
I took a sip of the still-steaming hot chocolate before nodding my head towards the TV. "So who's good here, who do you follow?"
"Pato O'Ward." Nate's face lit up as he started talking, and my heart softened. The one good thing that I was getting out of this night was being able to see past the walls and the layers that Nate Macauley had put up, discovering the true him.
And it scared me that I was beginning to fall for him.
____
It was half past seven when the Bayview PD showed up outside the Warsaw Haven Polish restaurant, the entire back alleyway cordoned off by bright yellow tape. Crime scene technicians milled about in white bunny suits, blue and red lights flooding the scene.
Detective Henley Roy stood over the body of Mikhail Lasku, his crimson blood soaking into the pavement.
"Christ, who did this one? That's brutal!"
Henley rolled her eyes, turning to stare at Detective Duncan Lamante, his floppy blonde hair falling into his eyes.
"Do you think it was the Albanians?"
Henley shook her head. She had seen first hand some of the horrors that the Albanian gangs got up to: cut off tongues, missing fingers. Missing heads. "It's too tame to be the Albanians. He still has all of his limbs and appendages."
"Think it was Lords?"
"It's possible."
Henley knelt down, reaching for the bloodstained sweater on the dead man's chest, picking it up and unfolding it with her gloved hands.
Bayview High School Class of 2022.
"Did a kid do this?" Duncan asked, leaning in to look at the sweater.
"Duncan, stop talking." Henley suggested, bagging the sweater before she got up to take a look at the canvas tote bag lying next to the dumpster. She picked it up, rooting around inside.
Wireless headphones, an unmarked bottle of pills. A fake leather wallet with the characters from the Nightmare Before Christmas. The detective opened the coffin shaped wallet, staring at the grinning blonde on the student ID card.
Charis Forrester.
Detective Lamante looked back over the mustard yellow sweater, now permanently stained in blood. His daughter was a sophomore. He couldn't imagine his little girl going through something like this. "If that sweater is any indication, Charis Forrester is a small girl. There's no way she took this guy down on her own. And using her hoodie to staunch the bleeding? She tried to save Lasku."
"If this really was Lords, we need to find this girl as soon as possible." Detective Roy's voice was grim. "She's in grave danger."
