Page 34 of The Jester and His Outlaw: Part One

“The bookstore isn’t a busy place on Tuesdays.” He folds his arms, grasping a bicep in each palm. He doesn’t meet my stare when he talks, but I can tell the darkness that usually surrounds him isn’t in full swing today.

Is that why he is being nice to me? Only a dick when the darkness is around?

I’m reminded of Foxy telling me about how he is going through something. Of course, a nosy part of me wants to ask what it is, but then another part remembers we shouldn’t care about what he is going through. That we should watch our backs.

Ice cream looks good, too, but it’s still bad for you.

“Yeah,” is all I say because aside from asking about what he’s going through, I’m not sure what one says to someone that doesn’t like them.

Do I make small talk?

Do I take now as the opportunity to ask the questions for creative writing, or would that seem like I’m pressing?

Riggs is an invisible timer on a bomb, ticking away, and I never know when it will strike zero. We have no connection on any sort of level, so I shouldn’t be privy to learning anything about him.

Damn, our short, volatile past has already made me jaded towards him.

Not to mention how crazy I was last night, because in all honesty, my screws were a little loose. I had one hell of a day, then I found him at the bookstore.

Not a good mix.

“Did you get to read any?”

I froze, a chill racing down my spine. Is he really trying to get to know me right now? Is crazy in his wheelhouse? Or is it the vulnerability I displayed yesterday? Maybe he realized just how real my tears were and that I’m not this sick person he thinks I am.

Nothing in my life is ever that easy.He must be up to something. There is a motive behind these questions.

“Uh yeah, I read the whole thing.”

He shrugs his lips and I can’t tell if reading the entire book surprises or impresses him. Possibly a little of both. “No shit. You must read fast.”

A bit of a satisfied smile creeps across my lips, and I find him mirroring that smile before it vanishes. Shit, a smile looks good on him. Not that that should surprise me, but what catches me is the flash of heat that settles in my belly after seeing it.

Nope. I snub those thoughts out real quick. There will be none of that. Riggs Sutton has been a complete dick to me. A few pretty sentences and charming smiles will not change that.

“Yeah, I guess I do, but I was up most of the night.”

And why does he need to know that?

One of Chandler’s rules in his many ways of teaching us about the dirty life surrounding money in our world is to never give away too much information. Let your enemy give away what they will, let them do the talking.

One teeny-tiny problem. My brain says Riggs is the enemy, but my body is being a traitor right now.

“Not able to sleep?” He pinches his brows together as if that concerns him. Then he pulls his mechanical pencil out of the spiral of his notebook and clicks a few lengths of led out. He flips through his notebook, landing on the exact page he needs, apparently, because he doodles in the top right corner.

I force myself to avert my sight. We don’t care what he is doodling in his notebook.Doodling is not cute or sexy. He is annoying and an asshole.

“No, not really.”

He lets out a snort. I can’t tell if he snorts because he likes the fact that I didn’t sleep, which I find to be the likely answer, or he’s annoyed that I answered him so late. Which could be a likely answer as well.

Riggs is an odd person who probably asks rhetorical questions often. I can see him asking that, then pinning someone with a stare that tells them he doesn’t care what their answer is. When a person gives you little more than resting bitch face most of the time, it’s hard to see anything but a glower on their face all the time.

I smile to myself and pick up my pencil, digging into the assignment at hand. Riggs doodles away in complete silence, leaving me to wonder if he somehow caught up on all of his school work already. If he has, he’s studious. I’ll give him that much. He keeps his grades up, which is even sexier. Most of the students that go here are struggling to keep their grades in check. Most of them are jocks and have little more going on in their brains other than sports, sex, and money. Maybe cars. Some of them do like cars, but none of them study like Riggs does.

By the end of the silent class, I’ve finished my creative writing questionnaire. We didn’t speak and that was fine by me. Not speaking allowed no chance for him to be a dick again, and I’m okay with comfortable silence, anyway. For once, it didn’t feel like he wanted to shank me in the ribs for existing.

I wouldn’t read too much into it. Riggs Sutton is still Riggs Sutton, and I don’t know him that well.

---