“Fuck off.”
I chuckle under my breath as I mow down a cluster of enemy soldiers with a wild spray of gunfire. “Raf, you want in?” I ask,muscle memory guiding my fingers over the buttons on my controller as I cast him a sideways glance. “I’m almost to the bunker and I need someone to cover me.”
He just grunts, not even looking up from his phone.
“I’ve got it,” Wes sighs, reaching out to swipe the controller off the coffee table. He respawns his player, moving in to cover me, but he’s too late. I’m taken out in a gory spray of blood that’s so realistic it’s almost as satisfying as the real thing.
Wes curses under his breath as he drops his controller and glances over, probably expecting me to go off on him. I just take a lazy drag off the vape pen I stole off some stoner in my Anatomy class, holding the smoke in my lungs as I kick my feet up on the coffee table.
“What, no shit talking?” Wes asks, frowning.
I shrug a shoulder. “I’m trying out a more zen approach to life.”
“Since when?” he snorts.
“Since shit around here has gotten so damn boring,” I mutter, tipping my head back and exhaling the smoke in a thick cloud. “You fuckers keep moping around like you’re at a funeral. It’s depressing as fuck.”
Raf’s jaw flexes, but he doesn’t bite. Though anger is his baseline, this quiet brooding he’s been doing since Ava bailed is different. More dangerous. When he finally erupts, it’s sure to be nuclear– all buildup and no warning siren.
Kinda wanna see it, which is why I keep poking the bear.
Wes rolls his eyes at my comment and restarts the game. I join in, but it’s a half-assed effort. Just another way to waste time while we all avoid talking about how the fuck we’re gonna move on from this Ava thing.
Raf puts his phone down and starts watching, which Wes apparently takes as an invitation to address the elephant in the room.
“I still don’t understand why the fuck we’re not dragging her back here,” he grumbles, mashing the buttons of his controller with more force than necessary. “At the very least, we should teach her a lesson for running.”
Raf stiffens beside me. We’ve been tiptoeing around the subject all week, but I suppose now’s as good a time as any to hash it out.
“Don’t even need to bring her back here to do that,” I casually add in. “We could take a little field trip, kidnap her outta bed for old times’ sake…”
“Not happening,” Raf growls, folding his arms and glaring up at the TV screen like it personally offended him.
The tension in the room’s suddenly sharp enough to draw blood, and I can’t help but smile, welcoming chaos like an old friend.
Wes lets it go far too easily. “Just an idea,” he sighs, feigning indifference.
Pussy.
“We need to do something,” I announce, unwilling to just slide back into monotonous silence. “I can’t sit around here all weekend bored out of my fucking skull.” My fingers move over the controller buttons on autopilot as my mind churns. “Has Trav made it back to campus yet? We still need to make that fucker bleed for what he did.”
The suggestion of violence never fails to get Raf’s attention. His head snaps in Wes’ direction, brow raised.
“Not yet,” Wes mutters. “According to administration, he’s out visiting his sick grandma.”
“Bullshit,” I snort.
“Obviously,” Wes huffs. “But security knows to alert us the minute he shows up at the gate, so we’ll just wait him out.”
I shift the controller to one hand, taking another drag off the vape. “If he doesn’t show in the next week, I’m going hunting.”
“We all will,” Raf growls, picking at a scab on his knuckle.
My phone buzzes on the coffee table, and I glance down to see my brother’s name lighting the screen.
“You gonna get that?” Wes murmurs.
I blow out a cloud of smoke, shaking my head. “Nah.”
