Page 69 of Forbidden Puck
How's this going to end?
Chapter 24
Coming Clean
Radar
Outside the restaurant, the air was chilly and each hot breath gave off a puff of steam. We walked from the front of the restaurant to the back. Two of the restaurant's cooks huddled outside the rear entrance with cigarettes. Their faces looked long and tired, and their white shirts were spattered with red sauce. They watched us with a distant curiosity, blowing out clouds of smoke.
“So what's up? What's the deal?” Lance asked, sensing something wasn't right.
“Look, man, I've gotta tell you something.”
“So what is it? Spit it out already. You're making me nervous as fuck here, man.”
I rubbed my mouth, wondering how to say it.
God damn, am I about to make another mistake? Shea said to take it to the grave …
“It's about Ella.”
“WhataboutElla?” Lance asked, his fists balling with rage.
“Last night, after you left for Lindsay's, I saw Ella on my way out the door.”
“And?” Lance asked, wanting me to getright to the point.
“I felt bad for her, Lance. She hadn't eaten dinner. I told her I was going to meet a girl from MeatMarket, so she might be third wheel or whatever, but she didn't mind. She wanted to get out of the house. We came here, to MacAllister's.”
“So that's why the hostess knew her,” he mumbled under his breath. “But what the fuck? Why would Ella lie about that? Sheneverlies. And why am I only finding out about this right now? What'd you guysdo,Radar?”
I took a deep breath. “She went with me to Regret after we ate.”
“And?”
“And when I met the puck bunny, Ella ran home. But I felt bad, and I was worried she wouldn't know the way home, so I went after her.”
“Tell me what fuckinghappenedalready, Radar,” he growled.
I sighed. “Lance, I don't know what happened. From the moment she showed up, I felt like there was somethingabout her, about us—”
Pop.
A sudden force impacted my face, right below my eye, and a bright flash forked like lightning across my vision.
I staggered backwards from Lance's punch.
“Yep,” I mumbled with a hand pressed over the sudden throbbing pain. “I deserve that.”
“I don't want to hear your whole fucking love story, asshole, I want you tell mewhat the fuck you did with my sister,” Lance snarled at me.
“I kissed her,” I said. “I kissed her, and one thing led to another, and we fooled around, but that'sit,that's all—”
Lance interrupted me with two more punches—the first to the gut, and the second to the jaw. The latter knocked me off my feet, and I landed on my ass in a sludgy puddle of MacAllister's fry grease.
He grabbed me by the collar.
“Did you fuck my sister?!” he yelled, his other fist clenched.
