Drowning in You (25 page)

“
I don’t wanna
screw around with anyone else, in case you’re wondering. I never
even think about touching another girl, Charz,” I say, slowly
forcing my eyelids apart.

She’s been looking at my face
the whole time; I just sense it. “But?”

“
But I can’t
stop thinking of doing things to you.”

“
That makes no
sense.”

“
Charz, you’ve
seen it. My ‘buddies’ would have cornered and pummeled me if
there’d been no witnesses at KFC. That’s just some of what I get
from people, including randoms. Then you come along and fucking
blow my mind and I don’t know what to do. You won’t let me feel
guilty and though I’m getting over it, I still am hesitant about us
because of what I’ve done. It’s a huge boulder that’s blocking my
path. I’m the only one who can come to terms with my issues and
move that boulder out of the way, but I don’t know how.
Yet.”

“
We ain’t
nothing but a wreck?” Charz says.

She
did
read my paperboard
earlier. Shifty little girl. She steps in, instead of her usual
step-back-and-fade-away thing.

“
You’ve
changed…” I say, trailing off.

“
In case you
didn’t notice…” she says, waving her hand in the air to signify
everything that has happened. “Anyway, I haven’t. I’m just sticking
up for what I believe in. And that’s
you
. You are a decent person,
Dex.”

I cover her ears with my
fingertips, cupping her jaw with the heel of my hand so her face is
in my hands. It never fails to surprise me every time just how soft
her skin is.

“
In that case,
Dad is back from a vacation and we seriously need to get our
investigator caps on, Ms. Sherlock Holmes.”

I think about smacking my
forehead with my hand, because that’s what I deserve. That joke was
lower than low. How could she possible find a joke like that about
her dad funny?

And the silence is killing
me.

“
We are a
wreck, Dex. If you keep fighting it, fine, but you’ll just bring
everything down because I won’t let you go.”

The lyrics, again. I fucked up
putting them up somewhere so accessible. Because she’s right. Charz
admitting it aloud sounds absolutely true.

Right now, I know how to start
solving this, at least. Elliot builds programs. He built the game
we play on the console, he built the website for his family’s
business. He hacked into some bully’s account at school and shut
everything down for a few days to teach him to stop picking on fat
kids.

“
I know
someone who can sort out this mess.”

“
A counselor?”
Charz suggests playfully.

“
No, your
dad’s accounts. Your boyfriend, Elliot, will definitely be able to
help us. My dad could be doing something any day.”

“
Dex,” she
says, inspecting my expressions with her face on an angle, “you
know very well he isn’t my boyfriend.”

I give her a little nod. Charz
and I need help to figure this out before anything can happen so we
can hand Dad in to the cops if something is going on.

“
Your top has
been inside out the whole time. Your tag,” She says, pulling me to
her by the tag sticking under my chin.

Back to front and inside out.
Meet Dexter Hollingworth, dorkiest guy alive.

“
Tell me where
and when, and no offense, but I’m going to make your dad
pay.”

I grunt impulsively,
embarrassed that she’s turning me on at possibly the most
inappropriate time ever.

That’s my girl.

23. Wishing for Walter

Charlee

Friday night
doesn’t come quick enough, although it was only the day before Dex
and I were
on top of each other
on his bed.

It’s weird—how you can spend
only a few hours with someone yet know them without knowing them.
It’s something about Dex that contradicts what he physically says
to me. I’ve seen him with Raych straddling his hips, and other
girls at parties who feign drunkenness so they have an excuse to
stumble into him. He talks to their lips and boobs and carries on
conversations about the weather while always pinning his shoulder
to a doorjamb or holding on to something in a way that is so
carefree that the girls lose their minds.

But with me he looks past my
eyes. Sure, we share a look, but there’s something vulnerable about
the way he probes inside me, as if he isn’t looking at the surface
at all, but deep within.

I’m sitting on
the balcony looking over the hills at the back of the pool house.
With the slide-out doors pushed all the way open, the whoosh of the
water slapping the sides of the pool is like a calming ocean wave,
and reminds me of the years Dad would wake up at five
am
to drag me out of my
bed for training when I complained about never, ever wanting to get
up. These memories are how I live with my dad now. I live by
memories—stuck in the past for eternity. I suppose there’s
something terrible and joyous in the fact that for the rest of my
life, the time I spend with my parents will be through my memories.
Because I’d be selfish to hold on to him, keep him in agony and
away from my mom.

Silently, I’m selfish.

Asshole. That’s what Dad is. I
don’t care about what’s right. He wasn’t allowed to leave us.

Quickly, I pick up my cell,
dial and say, “Elliot?”

“
You sound
surprised,” he says.

I shake my head, and the
memories of swimming and Dad and Mom cheering from the stands
disappears. My cell in my hand, plastered to my ear, shocks me back
to the present.

“
Yeah, I was
daydreaming, I think. I’m…sorry.”

“
I’m sorry
too, Charlee. I heard. I wanted to bring you a milkshake to cheer
you up so badly but I didn’t know what was appropriate and then I
might seem insensitive but all I—”

“
Elliot,” I
say in between his rambles.

“
Charlee.”

“
I don’t feel
like going out, but there’s a milk bar around the corner from my
place we can meet at. They have seats around the back where it’s
quiet.”

“
Are you
asking me on a date?” Elliot says. I can hear in his voice that
he’s smiling.

“
I hate to
disappoint you, but I need to use you.”

“
Best. Date.
Ever.”

Before I say something I
usually wouldn’t say, I think of Dex and how he made me angry
because I’d apparently acted out of character with him. Well, I’m
fed up trying to please. Losing your daddy does this to you, I’ve
found. If he’s not here, then nothing really matters.

“
Elliot this
is not a date. I’m seriously using you for some skills Dexter
Hollingworth told me about.”

“
Oh,” he
mumbles. “I can meet you there now?”

“
I’ll be there
in ten minutes.”

* * *

Elliot wears
this V-neck T-shirt that’s straight from a model in
GQ
. I bet the jeans he’s
wearing still have the tag they’re that stiff. Seriously?
This
still
isn’t a
date. Although he is sweet.

His thighs are an inch from
mine when he falls back onto the bench.

Thankfully, today is the type
of day I was able to throw on a thin long-sleeve shirt, but it’s
somehow a size too big for me since the last time I wore it was
before Mom and Dad died. I pick up the neck of it, which has fallen
off my bare shoulder, and hide as much skin as I can because the
wind is soft but cool and Elliot might get the wrong idea.

“
So what do
you want to use me for?” Elliot says, nudging my arm.

“
How much has
Dex told you about what’s going on with my father?”

Elliot notices
it; he notices the way “Dex” rolls from my tongue the same
way
boyfriend
might.

“
That he
died?”

I didn’t mean
to confuse him. My dad is…God, no…okay.
Breathe, Charlee.
He’s up here, I
think, mentally tapping my forehead.

“
That’s, um,
correct.” I force down a surge of bile. “But I meant about the
hacking and his money.”

Elliot still doesn’t get it.
I’m surprised that Dex hasn’t said anything. They are best friends,
aren’t they? So in the end, I’m the one who has to tell him the
bits and pieces about what Dex has overheard from his father, and
the evidence he found about my dad’s accounts and money.

“
My bet is
they’ll be using Walter’s company accounts to do it.”

The company? “Why?”

“
Because it’s
the easiest way to steal the money and the best way not to get
caught.”

I fight the
urge to shout
how
and
tell me about this
and all the naïve questions fighting to get past
my lips. It’s now, as Elliot tells me everything I should have
figured out myself, that I realize I had no idea what I was getting
myself into.
This
is why I don’t like anger.
This
is why I hate what anger does to
me as a person. Like anyone, I’m not immune. Anger is the hacker
inside a person who explodes into another personality and suddenly
you aren’t there at all behind the body that’s destroying
everything around you in a way you’d never do otherwise.

Elliot’s hand touches my back,
drawing me towards him. Sitting like this, I feel like the type of
nasty person I’ve never been. I’m snarky and annoyed.

Asshole.

“
Sorry,
Elliot,” I say, leaning my head on his shoulder.

He murmurs that it’s okay and
lays his head on mine.

“
I like you,”
he whispers.

“
I know. I
did—I do,” I correct quickly. “I’m not myself lately, so I don’t
know what I think.”

We both shudder as the wind
picks up. I gather the neckline of my shirt closer, trapping as
much warm air against my chest as possible. Elliot feels me
shivering and wraps me tightly into his side. I bite my lip to stop
myself from crying for the hundredth time in recent days, but this
protective feeling is too much—these are my dad’s arms and this is
my dad never wanting to see me hurt.

I squeeze out of his arms and
touch the side of his lips with mine softly, lingering near his
face, remembering how Mom would do this after she tucked my bed
sheets under my body to cocoon the heat around me. Mom returns with
a soft kiss, pressed fully over my lips. Surprised, I pull back
because Mom never did that.

I didn’t mean to…

“
Sorry for
that.”

Elliot looks into my eyes and
says, “You don’t have to be sorry for grieving.” He gets it. At
least I didn’t hurt him. I’m that much of a mess he noticed that
hallucination thing.

“
Right, well,
my dad’s Roycroft Engines accounts?”

Elliot’s expression freezes.
Whatever he had expected me to say is lost. Everything is lost as
he processes this fact.

“
Your dad…your
dad is?” He blinks a few times, shakes his head. “Um, shit. Your
dad owns, owned…” He trips at this point, like a skipping track on
a CD, between the shock and his embarrassment over which tense to
use when referring to my dad.

“
Dad
established Roycroft Engines back in the eighties. Yes,
the
Roycroft
Engines.”

“
You’re Walter
May’s daughter?”

I can’t help but grin like a
child given a stick of cotton candy while my eyes heat up with the
tears brewing there. I’ll always be Walter May’s daughter and
neither life nor death can change that.

“
Yup.”

After that, Elliot takes a few
minutes of asking the usual “are you being serious” and “omg”
questions, since the media held back our identities for privacy
reasons.

“
So explain
again why he’ll go for the Roycroft bank accounts and not my
dad’s.”

“
Because execs
have a high turnover of money in their accounts compared to their
personal accounts. Company accounts have high traffic with numerous
debits and credits, meaning money can easily ‘slip through the
cracks’, if you will.”

“
As
in?”

“
As in picture
a house party. You invite fifty friends. The fifty friends bring
girlfriends or boyfriends or other friends. You have 100-plus
guests now. Tell me, how likely are you to notice one extra person
who comes in and takes a six-pack from your fridge?”

“
I don’t think
I’d notice,” I say, instantly associating his example with what he
meant about stealing from the company account.

“
What if you
invited your closest circle of five friends over? Would you notice
a stranger walking in to take a six-pack then?”

I don’t answer. It’s
rhetorical, naturally, but the insinuation is clear.

“
These hackers
work by playing on the large amounts of cash traveling out of
company accounts in tons of different streams. It can start from an
email for a job with an attached resume. Only, the resume is a bug.
Once you open it, it’s installed on the computer. The hacker can
see through all processes on that computer from an identical screen
on theirs, having gotten access from the installed program. Goodbye
any security or protection. They get all the passwords and codes
and access they need.”