Page 14 of Dead Serious with Benefits
I looked around and nodded. “I suppose this counts as high. And, ignoring that I invaded your solitude,howexactly were you getting any peace? You’re almost directly under my little party.”
Tilting his head back, he peered skyward, and although there was no way to know for sure, I was sure he was looking up at the balcony where the gawking guests still gathered. “I...enjoy being around the sounds of other people.”
“But not being around them.”
“I enjoy being around people. But I was hardly invited to the party, now was I?”
I grinned. “Alright, you’ve got me there. You can consider this a formal invitation, then.”
He snorted. “Just like that?”
“Why not? You’re the most interesting thing that’s happened all night, as far as I’m concerned. The rest of them? Who knows what they do and don’t find interesting.”
“You sound...bitter.”
Did I? I was bored until I started a conversation with him. But perhaps there was something to that; it wasn’t like I’d spent much time figuring out where my mood was during the night. Then again, it might not be the night he was reading in me, but my conversation with my mother. She had always been good at getting under my normally indestructible skin.
Now that I thought about it, there was a low simmer of resentment and bitterness that I associated with any memory or mention of her. It wasn’t as if my mother tried to be anything but a royal pain in the ass. Of course, she would say the same about me, which probably balanced out in some book somewhere.
“I like to think of it as just bored,” I said rather than fess up to all the crap in my head. “From someone like me, that can sound like bitterness, I’m sure.”
“Someone like you,” he repeated slowly, his eyes squinting.
“Still young, absurdly rich, rebellious against at least one parent with high expectations, resulting in all sorts of hedonistic and irresponsible behavior that flies in the face of decency and propriety.”
“Mmm, self-awareness?”
“Not really, I’m a living, breathing cliche. Turn on any show, flip open any contemporary novel, and you’ll find a character who acts just like me.”
“Those characters would also be rather miffed to be considered cliché or predictable.”
“Ah, well, fictional characters can’t be a one-to-one with real-life people, can they? If anything, I almost kind of like it, though I can’t say exactly why.”
“Perhaps you’re just into classics.”
That brought another delighted laugh from me. “Now there’s a thought. I’m not cliché, just classic. I’ll be sure to tell my mother that the next time she throws that little observation my way.”
He said nothing, just staring back at me, and I wondered if he was at a loss for words or if, like his lack of the need to speak more than necessary, this was just him not needing to add to the conversation. That, or perhaps I was overthinking things, caught up in my delight at finding someone weird enough to be interesting.
“Does enjoying the sound of other people and being up high require courting death?” I asked, glancing at the ledge. “I highly doubt the team doing renovations and repairs on this building worried too much about quality.”
“What’s life without some risk?” Arlo asked, reaching over to pat the ledge. “But...I tested the ledge a few times to make sure it would hold. Death might follow me, but I don’t want to invite it in.”
Oh?
“It...follows you? Death?” I asked, raising a brow. “In a Final Destination sort of way? A general curse? Or paranoia because you’ve seen plenty of death and you’re obsessed with thinking death has taken on an intelligence and decided to follow you around?”
His expression shifted almost imperceptibly, and only when he opened his mouth did it occur to me that I might have witnessed him backing off a little, as though I had alarmed or offended him somehow. “I wouldn’t go so far as to say I’mtargeted, or that fate chose me. Even if it did, it would be a cruel choosing...and no, it’s nothing like those movies.”
The last was said with enough disdain that I was surprised he hadn’t wrinkled his nose. “Not a fan of horror movies?”
“Not a fan of the idea that death is a malicious, cruel force that hunts people down simply because they managed to live,” Arlo said with a shrug.
“So you’re haunted by death, but defensive of its reputation?”
“Death is death. It’s not an entity, it’s not a force, it just is what it is.”
That didn’t answer my question, but I let it pass. “So...how does death follow you?”
