CHAPTER NINE:

Matt turned away from Blair with the tips of his ears red. Embarrassed? Shy? Neither made sense. Matt was as unabashed as a cat with a god complex. Normally he wouldn't have given a shit, and he'd just have gone all feral on Blair.

"I'm starving," Matt said, pressing an arm to his stomach. "Anyone got anything to eat?"

Aurelio took the granola bar out of his pocket and gave it to Matt. "Here."

Matt smiled. "You're the best," he said, then he glanced at Leslie with an impish frown. "Learn."

Not two seconds after he'd spoken and he choked; a strained cough ripped his chest, and he bent a degree forward. Blair patted his back. Aurelio could only focus on how rough his cough sounded.

"You good?" Aurelio asked when Matt recovered. Matt nodded. "That's one hell of a cough."

"He just choked," Blair said, fair brow arched with accusation. "Don't worry, he doesn't smoke. Not everyone does."

Um...

Okay?

There was heavy implication in her voice, and it was confusing as shit. Who the hell was she shading? Aurelio's dad?

"Hey, Leslie?" Blair asked. "Where's your boyfriend?"

The word flipped a switch, and a fuzz enveloped Aurelio's brain. He frowned. "Her what?"

"Boyfriend." Leslie gave a Aurelio a weird look, then turned to Blair. "He had to leave."

"You..." Aurelio's voice was low, unsure. "You have a boyfriend?"

Matt snickered. "I know. It's so hard to believe."

Leslie gave Matt an annoyed look, then she faced Aurelio. "Uh, yes, Elio. I do," she said. "He was here just two minutes ago, and he was literally talking to us."

Oh. Oh, shit. Right. That ridiculously tall, ridiculously attractive, insecurity-inducing guy. That was Leslie's boyfriend. How could Aurelio even forget that? It'd been bothering him ever since...wait. How long had they been dating?

Aurelio realized everyone was staring, everyone worried. "I'm running on, like, less than two hours of sleep," he quickly supplied. "Not so focused."

"Two hours!" Matt's blue eyes widened. "How? Eight aren't enough for me."

"Not everyone's like you, sleepyhead," Leslie said, chuckling at Matt's incredulity. Then she took a step towards Aurelio and lowered her voice an octave. "For real, though. You don't usually stay up late. Are you sure everything's under control?"

Girl didn't even bother asking if everything was okay first-she already knew the answer to that. "Yeah," Aurelio said.

"You really think so?"

"Personally. Yes."

"Personally, no."

Aurelio looked at Leslie and smiled the slightest bit. "To each their own."

Leslie opened her mouth, ready to dare him, but then she just shook her head and sighed. "I won't turn your suffering into an argument," she said, smoothening a little wrinkle on Aurelio's shirt. She looked up at him with pleading, sincere eyes. "I just want you to be okay."

She had to play his heartstrings like that. Aurelio didn't say anything, but he walked next to her as they exited the skatepark, and every time her knuckles bumped into his and he got the urge to link their hands, he had to remind himself that they were both in relationships.

Sometimes this really was the hardest thing to believe.

But not in Matt's sense.

When the group decided to split up and head home, and for the second time, Aurelio found himself skipping his house, going straight to his uncle's. He froze midway. Checked his pockets. No key, thankfully, but there was a strange pull to go there, one that shouldn't exist.

• • •

At nine pm., Aurelio was out in his backyard, playing football by himself under a starry sky, mostly because his nerves were messing with him and he needed to move and shed this jitter or else he'd be doing something a little more violent to himself.

Aurelio kicked the ball and it almost flew above the high fence. It hit the very edge, bouncing back in, rolling towards the sliding glass door.

Aurelio's dad stepped outside just in time, stopped the ball, then passed it to Aurelio. There was no acknowledgement to the new presence-he just silently joined his son and they played together, occasionally laughing, nearly making each other trip and tumble.

At one point, Aurelio balanced his foot on the ball, putting the game on pause.

"Dad," he said, dread welling in his chest. "I have a question."

"Yeah?"

"When did you start smoking? What age."

No words for a moment, then a sigh pierced the silence. "I was fourteen."

"Why?"

Aurelio's dad maintained an uncharacteristically straight expression. "I don't know," he said. "Found a pack lying around the house once. It was the only thing my father left before he left. And I tried it, I liked it. That's how it started."

Aurelio stared with an empathetic frown. So he'd taken up the habit as a coping mechanism for his father's abandonment. And this story...it tickled Aurelio's brain, vaguely familiar, like he'd heard it before. But also not quite.

"I understand," Aurelio said. "But..." He let out a breath, words a hurricane in his head. Hard to separate, hard to organize. "You've always been against smoking, you know? You always told me I should never do something that would hurt me, and you were always a role model. And I don't mean to be insensitive; I know quitting isn't easy, but this entire thing...I just...I don't know how to explain it. It's just so...unlike you, to the extent I forgot you smoke altogether last time."

An empty well, his dad's face. No remorse, no guilt, no emotion. Scarily detached from this conversation.

Aurelio's shoulders slumped. "Can you try to quit?" he asked in a low voice. "Just try." Muscles moving on their own, hand reaching for his dad's wrist, fingers latching onto him, terrified of loss. When Aurelio felt himself going in for a hug, he noticed the autopilot mode and stopped himself.

Why was Aurelio acting so childish? So clingy. If anything, he realized, he was the one being unlike himself.

Aurelio's mom stood at the threshold of the door. "Getting a little late, huh?" she said. "Wanna come inside?"

They did, leaving the conversation as it was, unfinished, stuck with an unanswered question, an unsaid promise.

Usually, around this time, Aurelio would go up to his room. But today he sat in the living room with his parents, eyes on the TV yet unable to register anything. When he glanced at his right, he noticed his mom gripping the remote, a finger on the red button, ready to turn the TV off in case anything triggering came on screen.

God.

He'd traumatized her with that panic attack the other day.

It pricked his heart. Slipping off the armchair, Aurelio stood up and said goodnight and went upstairs to his bedroom. There, he planned to practice violin-no matter how late-but he couldn't bring himself to do it: his eyes were burning with the thirst for sleep, and there was a faint twinge in his back, so the idea of standing for a while didn't seem so enticing.

Eventually he lay down on his bed, but he refused to sleep just to avoid the nightmares. The worst part wasn't even the nightmares themselves-it was the wretched feeling right after waking up: the confusion, being wrenched from a dream dimension then shoved back into reality, for a disorienting moment unable to discern which was which.

The exhaustion got to Aurelio an hour later, and the second he closed his eyes, the images of death and blood and bent metal infiltrated the black behind his lids, so he fought them and fought them until he fell asleep.

They followed him relentlessly into his slumber. The usual: flashes of the car accident, only this time, the scene flickered, and then there was a girl straddling a skinny boy's waist, hands in his hair, mouth on his, gently kissing him. It was blurry and unrecognizable at first, then it settled, and Aurelio woke up.

Matt and Blair.

Aurelio was having nightmares about Matt and Blair kissing.

"For God's sake," Aurelio mumbled, pressing his palms to his face. "It was a joke. A joke, you stupid piece of shit brain."