EVIL QUEEN - Rebel Hart Page 0,30
him. The place was a half-record store, half-coffee bar, and different old-fashioned record players lined the wall, one with a glass frame for seeing the inner workings spinning old 60s music. Everyone in the cafe turned and looked at me as I entered. The attention was not shocking since I was still dressed like Santa Claus, but enough events had embarrassed me and made my life harder in the past six months that their gazes rolled off my skin like oil on water.
“Uh,” I said to Alistair. “I’ll buy your coffee. What do you want?”
Surprisingly, Alistair nodded in agreement. “Just a plain black.”
I wrinkled up my nose. “Are you fifty?”
He raised an eyebrow at me. “What? I don’t get much sleep these days, and I can’t afford to dilute any of the precious caffeine with creamer. Is it a problem?”
“No,” I said and scuttled off as Alistair grabbed a table.
In solidarity, I also got a plain black coffee and joined Alistair at the spot he picked out. It was only a couple of sips for me before I was dumping in as much of the table’s provided sugar as I could, but Alistair drank the mud like it was a soda.
“So, um…” I cleared my throat. “How’s it going?”
“Yeah, we’re not doing that,” Alistair said. “I need your help with Avery.”
“Is she still struggling?” I asked. “Alistair, I’m—”
He held up a hand. “Like I said, we’re not doing that. I don’t want to talk about any of the shit in our past or anything other than if you can help me help Avery.”
So much for finding a moment to try and redeem myself. “I’ll do whatever I can.”
“She’s in trouble with Yale,” he said. “Her grades are significantly slipping, and they’ve started to notice. They haven’t sent her any revocations yet, but she’s getting warning emails. I’m doing everything I can. I’m literally doing her homework and mine to try and keep her in a better spot, but I can’t do it all by myself. Do you have a connection or something?” He groaned. “I hate that I even have to ask.”
“Yeah. My dad’s an alumnus. We vacationed last summer with the dean of students.”
Alistair’s jaw dropped. “Seriously?”
“Yeah. I can absolutely make the call. It won’t be an issue.”
Alistair let out a sigh of relief. “Thanks, Nathan.”
“Yeah.” We were silent for a few minutes, and then I decided to take another stab at something more. “So, listen, I know you said you don’t want to do this…”
“I don’t,” Alistair said. “I have enough going on.”
“I get it, but please just let me say my piece. Just this once. You don’t have to respond. Shit, if you don’t want to listen, you don’t have to, but just let me say the words in your direction.” Alistair didn’t respond one way or the other, so I chose to take the fact that he didn’t just get up and leave as an acceptance and proceeded. “There’s not a person in The Royal Court who I haven’t hurt in some form or fashion. Even Nikki and Kyle. I just… I let this whole idea that this construct means something take me so far outside myself that I didn’t even know who I was looking at when I looked into a mirror.”
“Yeah,” Alistair said.
“You and Monty, you guys were those cool neighborhood kids that I always wanted to hang around with, but I could tell you hated me. I honestly thought that if I could get Monty in The Royal Court, things would be different. I could prove to him that I was an okay guy, and then maybe you’d come along too.”
“Monty wasn’t that kind of guy. He was rich, but he was the kind of guy who would have given up all his money to live inside a fucking bus or something.”
“Yeah,” I replied. “So I learned.” I looked down at what was left of my coffee. “It’s not an excuse, but when I told my dad that Monty turned me down, he lost it. He said that no one turns down an offer from the Loches and that if he wasn’t going to come willingly, I had to make him. My dad terrified me, man. It wasn’t…” I stopped. “No, I’m not going to make an excuse. I could have stopped myself. I didn’t have to fight with him, and if I hadn’t done it, he wouldn’t have hit his head. He’d…he’d still be here.” I looked back up at Alistair. “I