all to fucking hate me.”
Kyle chuckled. “I am so here for Cherri dropping ‘fuck’ at seven in the morning.”
After that, breakfast wasn’t as uncomfortable as I expected it to be. We exchanged stories about how things were for all of us during the second semester of school, and heard the other side of the stories of my nasty fights with Colette and Nikita. Even though I easily could have come off looking like the shit-head I was, they told the stories in sympathetic ways that made me feel better, and it really changed the way I saw both women.
I didn’t get much of an apology out before they stopped me. Everyone was desperate to put the last semester of our senior year behind us, which I was more than happy to do.
“So… how long before we can go talk to Brayden?” I asked. “I don’t want to rush us or anything, but Deon’s still out there and he could be in trouble.”
“Whenever we’re ready,” Kyle said. “I told him I want to see him today, and he agreed, so we just need to decide where and when.”
“Is… um…” I had a specific question I wanted to ask, but I wasn’t sure how to ask it. “Will it be okay?” That wasn’t quite what I was going for, but Kyle’s lips flattened into a line as if he understood what I was trying to ask.
He nodded at me. “It’ll be fine.”
“Then, can we go soon? Within the next hour maybe?” I asked.
Instead of responding, Kyle simply pulled out his cell phone. He only needed to hit a couple of buttons, and then he brought the phone up to his ear. After a few minutes, he said, “Hey.” There was a strain in his voice, but a warmth that was almost unfamiliar from the typically resolved, even-toned man. “How’d you sleep?” It almost felt awkward to just be listening to the conversation, but everyone sat there without saying anything, so I did the same. “Well, it’ll get better, I promise. Hey, can we meet up soon? Maybe in like an hour?” He looked over at me and nodded then said, “Okay. Let’s meet at the park by school. Okay. See you soon. Bye.”
“Just a few of you are going, right?” Colette asked.
“That’s best. It’ll be good if Nathan’s there, and then Cherri obviously, and me,” Kyle replied.
Colette crossed her arms. “I feel like we’re not helping enough. What should we do?”
Sicily slowly raised his hand. “Uh, I could use some help.”
“Really?” Avery asked. “How?”
“Well, it’s like I said yesterday, I have to manually check like a million pings to try and find which phone Deon called from. It’s not hard to learn. If the rest of you were willing, I could show you and you guys could help me check pings.”
“Oh wow! That sounds interesting,” Avery said. “I’m in.”
“Yeah… Interesting. Sure.” Sicily let out a chuckle. “If that’s what it takes for your help.”
Jaxon looked over at Colette. “I am not sitting in front of a computer all day.”
Colette giggled and petted the back of his head. “That’s fine. You just keep me from going insane.”
He let out a sigh and a nod. “I can do that.”
“Alright, those are the teams then,” Nathan said. “The three of us will go to Brayden, Nikki, Colette, Alistair, Avery and Jaxon, you all stay and help Sicily.”
“Break!” Colette yelped, but no one moved. She shrugged and popped a grape into her mouth. “Screw you guys. It felt like a ‘break’ moment.”
After finishing up our breakfast, I said goodbye to Sicily, and then Nathan, Kyle and I piled into Kyle’s truck. I relented the front seat to Nathan, because sitting in the front with Kyle seemed a little awkward, but being in the back didn’t help much. The ride was totally silent, and there was a tension between Kyle and Nathan that I couldn’t quite pinpoint. Part of me wanted to ask, but the other part thought that might shatter the stasis, so I didn’t.
Eventually, we got to the park near Postings Proper High School, and Brayden’s car was already parked in the lot. Kyle parked next to it and Nathan and I started to climb out, but Kyle didn’t move. I managed to make it all the way out of the truck, but Nathan noticed me looking back at Kyle and climbed back into the front seat.
“You good?” he asked.
“He’s gonna hate me,” Kyle said. “He’s gonna feel like we’re ambushing him.”
Nathan nodded with a