Lost King Piper Lennox (ready player one ebook .TXT) 📖

“Even better than the wild parties and casual sex?”

“I didn’t—” He trips over his words and sighs, until I assure him I was just joking. “Still. I don’t want you thinking I actually liked who I was, back then. I didn’t.”

He hooks his thumbs in the bottom of the wheel a moment, then grips it again to steer around the truck.

“I was an asshole; I know I was. And I hate that. And a bully, if you want the truth.”

I guess this shouldn’t shock me. Anyone who would habitually break girls’ hearts isn’t likely to take much issue with breaking other boys’ spirits.

It’s just hard to picture, because Theo has such a kindhearted presence about him now. If I didn’t know better—if I hadn’t seen the old Theo for myself, seven years ago—I would’ve classified him as the kind of popular kid who ran out of yearbook space for all his charity work.

“What kind of bully?” I ask. As I learned very well growing up, there are multiple subsets: verbal, physical, jealous, insecure, bullied-turned-bully, attention-seeking, and probably dozens more.

“I don’t know. Not actively picking on anyone in particular. Just, you know, being a dick to those kids that didn’t deserve it, and being friends with the assholes who did.”

We hit a pothole, hard. It rocks me down to the bone, but Theo seems unaffected. He’s somewhere else, right now. Deep in his past.

“Actually, what I did was worse, because I knew those kids. Every musical, when I’d play piano, we’d hang out and have fun together. Then the show would end, and I’d spend the next three months ignoring them. Or giving them hell again.”

It’s too dark to see the shame on his face. But I can hear it, louder than the rush of trucks on either side of us.

“Took me a few years to realize those guys were my friends. They welcomed me back every single time, picking up right where we’d left off during the last musical. Ignoring everything I did in the in-between.”

“And I’m guessing your friends—the popular crowd, I mean—weren’t really your friends?”

“Exactly. And I was a huge fucking idiot to not see that sooner.” He pauses, swigging from the Coke I bought at a gas station. “I was sixteen before it all clicked. Overheard all these people talking shit about me at a party.”

That old corkscrew of horror runs through my stomach. “Yeah…I know how that feels.” Even with all the distance between who I used to be and who I am now, I remember that high school agony all too well: the stone that drops in your gut when you hear people whispering about you, or the electric hum of silence when you enter a room.

“Yeah?”

I feel him glance at me, but I don’t look back. “Yeah,” I answer, swallowing the dryness of the heater from my throat. I reach for the Coke can; he passes it to me, and I drain about half before it helps. “Kids talked shit about me all the time. It hurts.”

“Especially when they’re supposed to be your friends.”

Especially, I think, when they tell you’re beautiful. Especially when they say you’re not like anyone they’ve ever met...and you believe them, heart and soul.

Now would be as good a time as any to tell Theo the truth about who I am. It’s a car confessional, sins and heartaches on full display, and we’d have at least fifteen minutes stuck in this small space to work out any issues that might come up.

But when I try to line up the words in my head, crafting an explanation that makes any kind of sense without making me sound awful...I can’t. Not unless I lie.

And I know that’s one thing I’m absolutely done with.

His phone’s GPS blasts a new direction through the speakers, startling me out of my thoughts. I realize he’s been talking this whole time, while I was lost in my stupid moral dilemma. “Sorry, what’d you say?”

“Oh. Nothing important.”

“No, I want to know. I just zoned out for a second.”

“Venting,” he shrugs, a pensive look crossing his face as he takes our final exit. “Those kids saying shit behind my back? It happened at one of my parties, which made the whole thing worse.”

“What’d they say?”

“Nothing I shouldn’t have already known.” Theo’s bitter laugh seems to drip down the sides of the Jeep, sealing us in like cement. “How none of them really liked me; they just liked my money. The parties.”

The dryness in my throat rushes back. Too bad the Coke’s empty. “You said you were sixteen?” I cough.

“Yeah. It was summer.” He thinks. “The very first day, actually.”

I swallow the razorblades now in my windpipe. “The solstice.”

“It’s not my party. It’s theirs.”

I knew I didn’t imagine the hurt on his face. I knew at least some of our connection, that magic that happens when two outsiders meet, was real.

I want to ask him more. Maybe I just hope, with enough digging, I’ll find some perfect explanation for why he did what he did to me.

But I don’t, because I know no reason exists. The only explanation is what he himself has admitted: he used to be an asshole, and a bully. He isn’t anymore.

My shoulder aches as I lean against the door and sigh to myself, leaving a streak of steam on the window. I drag my finger through it and write my initials, then swipe the glass clean.

It’s not the resolution I’d like. But it’ll have to be enough if I’m going to keep him.

And that’s when I realize...I want to. Explanations be damned, past heartaches buried and betrayals forgotten: I want Theo Durham, just