Page 30 of Hold

He felt as though he could straighten his spine for the first time since he’d found Avery in bed with that slick bastard. “Right,” he said. “Thanks, David. I’ll look into it.”

“Cool,” Seth said. “I’m out of beer. And what was it you brought to eat?”

Back inside Thea’s house, Benji was dancing to the punk part of theSilver Linings Playbookdance while the women clapped along. The men went into the kitchen and brought out the food, and although Liam noticed real hard that Thea was sitting nowhere near him, he was buoyant enough about his own future now that he almost didn’t care. They fell into easy conversation, and time passed. Benji went reluctantly to bed but rallied when Chloe offered to read him a story.

A short while after she’d come back downstairs, the front door slammed back into the wall, and Jake burst through it as if an entire squad of cops were after him.

He stopped short when he saw them all, his eyes wide. He was sweating and breathing hard; he’d obviously been running for a while, and Liam could decode the guilty look on his face from a hundred paces.

“Oh,” Jake said.

“What the hell, Jake?” Thea asked. “Who’s after you?”

“No one,” he said—lied, Liam could tell, although the street beyond seemed quiet. “I just—we had a race.”

“Well, I hope you won,” Seth said.

“Uh, yeah, I did.”

“So if it’s a race, where are the rest of your friends?” Thea said, her voice chilly.

“Umm…” Jake looked around him frantically, as if the answer would appear in front of him. At last he settled on, “They gave up.”

Thea folded her arms and glared at him. “You trying to kid a kidder, Jacob? Where the hell have you been?”

“Nowhere. I mean, in town, and we raced. Like I said. I need a shower.” Jake got this out in staccato bursts and walked past Liam and Seth into the kitchen. The smell of cigarettes that followed him filled the room.

Time to dust off his teacher voice. Liam got up and followed him. “Jacob,” he said.

Jake paused; Liam was banking on the teacher voice acting as an automatic stop, at least until Jake remembered he wasn’t his teacher anymore.

Jake came back down the step, not meeting his eyes. “Yeah?”

“How did the job hunt go?”

“Huh?”

Liam knew he’d been expecting to be given a hard time for the cigarettes. The job hunt question threw him off guard, which was what Liam wanted.

“You know, the job hunt? That thing you’ve been out with your friends doing for the last week?”

Jake’s eyes stayed lowered, and he put his hand to his neck to hide his face more. “Oh, well, you know…”

“So what are you going to do with your summer?” This had been bothering Liam for a while, and tonight he felt strong enough to bring it up. “Mooch off your mother?”

Now Jake glared at him. His words were as icy as his eyes. “I don’t mooch off my mother.”

Good. At least the boy had some pride. “I’m glad to hear it. So you have another plan for where you’re going to look?”

“Why are you riding me about this? You’re not my coach anymore.”

Okay, he’d remembered. “Because a healthy fifteen-year-old should be working his summers.”

Jake rolled his eyes. “Oh, like you did, and look at you now.”

“Yes, Jacob.” Liam didn’t let him get away with that. He came closer so that Jake couldn’t ignore him. “I have a vocation I love. I found it by going to school, but I also found it by doing jobs I didn’t like as much.”

“But you’ve quit teaching.” Jake seemed way more angry about that than Liam thought he should, but then again, who knew what the rumor mill at his old school had been churning out about his breakup with Avery?

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