“It’s complicated,” I say.
“No goddamn motherfucking shit it’s complicated, you idiot.” He gestures at the couch. “Ladies, please sit. As for you, you undead piece of shit… start talking. And if you leave out a single fucking detail, Bastian, I swear to God, I’ll send you right back to the underworld with my own two hands.”
Eliana finds her way to the couch with Yasmin’s help. They sit together, thigh pressed against thigh, and look up at us reproachfully. I remain standing because sitting feels too much like this is a normal conversation between normal friends catching up normally.
Nothing about this is normal, though.
Zeke doesn’t offer me a beer like he usually would. He just stands in the kitchen with his arms crossed and glares.
“You gave a eulogy, huh?” I finally say. Someone has to break the standoff.
Zeke’s jaw flexes. “Yeah, I did. Cried like a bitch in front of three hundred people. I told them you were the best man I knew, if you can believe that.” He shakes his head in disgust. “And all that time, you weren’t even dead. Dick move, bro.”
“I know.”
“No,” he laughs scornfully. “You don’t. You really fucking don’t.”
I spread my arms wide. “What do you want me to say, Z? That I’m sorry? I am. That I had reasons? I did. That those reasons make any of this okay?” I shake my head. “They don’t. Nothing makes it okay.”
Zeke’s nostrils flare. “You know what we have to do before the healing can begin.”
I knew this was coming. I nod slowly. “Yeah. I do.”
Eliana’s brow furrows. “What? What do you have to do?”
Yasmin looks back and forth between us, equally confused. “Am I missing something?”
“It’s tradition,” says Zeke.
“No way out of it,” I agree somberly.
“Written in stone.”
“Might as well be.”
“Will one of you two morons,” Yasmin interrupts, “stop bantering like fricking talk show hosts and explain what on earth is happening?”
“He gets to punch me in the face,” I explain. “Once. It’s only fair.”
“What?! That’sbarbaric!” Eliana protests.
“Actually, I’d say he deserves it,” Yasmin counters.
Zeke rolls his shoulders and cracks his neck from side to side. “It wouldn’t be right if we didn’t go through with it. House rules. You fake your death and let your best friend ugly-cry at your funeral, you take the hit.”
I plant my feet and drop my hands to my sides. “Make it count, brother.”
With absolutely zero hesitation, that’s exactly what he does.
Zeke’s fist connects with my jaw like a fucking freight train. It’s as if he’s been waiting his whole life to get to swing on me like this, and he makes the most of his opportunity. My head snaps to the side and I taste copper as hot blood explodes in my mouth. Stars burst across my vision. I stagger but stay upright, albeit barely.
When the ringing in my ears subsides, Zeke is shaking out his hand with a grimace.
“That’s that,” he announces. “We can all move on now.”
He plucks a bag of frozen peas from his freezer and passes it to me. I accept and stumble over to the armchair, dropping down gratefully. It’s strange—in nearly two months of working for Aleksei, I’ve been stabbed and shot and hit and kicked.
But nothing hurt even one percent as bad as a punch in the jaw from my noodle-armed best friend.
