answer her. I’ll play the game again tomorrow. Tonight I don’t feel like being wired. In a few hours the crew will drive back to town. Of course, cameras are installed all over the property but they seem more innocent when they aren’t attached to people.
I invent work for myself by cleaning up the house. It’s mindless and nearly pleasant. Anything to avoid thinking about Oz. Every strange sound makes me recoil though. I’m always afraid it’s him. And in a sick way I hope it is him.
Finally the crew departs. I linger on the front porch with the lights off, listening to the fading sound of the two trucks heading toward Consequences.
Montgomery lumbers up to the house with a cigarette in one hand and a bottle in the other. He pauses and takes a drag on the cigarette while squinting at the fading light in the western sky. It looks like he’s already made some progress on the bottle.
“Where’s your fan club?”
He shrugs. “Gone hours ago. That bitchy photographer had some ideas but I couldn’t get excited about the idea of more of my dick pics floating around the world wide web so I passed on that.”
“Charming,” I mutter.
“You asked,” he yawns.
“I guess I did. Anyway, there’s food in the fridge if you’re hungry.”
Monty doesn’t answer. He doesn’t move either. He just stands there puffing on his cigarette while staring into the distance. After a full minute of silence he tilts his bottle in my direction. At first I shake my head but then I take it and cough back a mouthful of liquid fire. Whiskey.
When I can see straight again I realize Monty is watching me. “I thought he was an asshole then,” he says. “I still think so.”
“Oscar?”
“Oscar. Oz. Whatever.”
“Well, I guess score one for you being right then.”
“I don’t give a shit about being right. But maybe just because he’s an asshole doesn’t mean he’s a dickhead.”
“Monty Savage Reasoning at its finest.”
“Just saying, if he wanted to really fuck up your life he had his chance.”
“Cameras are still around,” I grumble. “He’ll get more chances.”
“No he won’t.”
I’m curious now. “Why?”
“Because he’s leaving, Ren.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
OZ
Fuck it all. I’m done.
The way we are with each other, it’s nothing but toxic.
In the afternoon I take a long hike and it’s while I’m among the lizards and the snakes that I think about every word Ren and I have exchanged since I got here. However hostile she is to me, I manage to one up her every time. I can’t seem to help it.
Every day I’m becoming a worse version of myself.
Did I come here to mess with her head? Or did I come here because despite the pain of the past and the silence of five years I still had some hope? That maybe with one look we would find our way back to those two kids who connected so strongly, loved so hard.
I don’t know the answer. I never did. This has been one massive fool’s errand. The whim is over now. Loren Savage and I are strangers. Oscar Savage never existed. It’s time for me to duck out of this fantasy and return to the world of Oz Acevedo.
Evening is well underway by the time I get back. The minute I see Atlantis again I know what I need to do. Once I’m in my room I’m practically kicking shit around from one side of the floor to the other in my haste to pack. It doesn’t seem important that I’ve left the door open until Monty regards it an invitation to park himself in the frame and blow cigarette smoke into the room.
“Why don’t you take your temper tantrum somewhere that doesn’t share a wall with me?”
“Fuck you, Monty.”
“Fuck me,” he chuckles and inwardly I groan because I can tell where this is headed and at the moment I don’t feel like being locked in mortal combat with this jackass.
I drop a duffel bag on the floor and meet his eye. “You want to do this in here or outside?”
“Don’t look so terrified, Mr. Oz. At the moment I’m not excited about cutting up my knuckles on your face.”
“Lucky me,” I mutter, picking up the duffel bag and zipping it shut.
Monty continues to smoke. He leans against the doorjamb, all puffed up with big ideas about his cocky ass. He’s insane if he thinks he could take me down, especially right now. Right now I feel like I could punch my way through six feet of