Page 17 of The Refusal

Hewent through this? “You want to do this?”

“Fuck yeah.”

I keep looking at him while he fiddles with his wrist strap, think about our flirting when we first met. That attraction doesn’t feel like it’s fading at all; in fact, if anything, it’s getting stronger. No matter how much I might want to, how gorgeous he is, I know I can’t go there; it’s the only fly in the ointment. I narrow my eyes at him.

“Just business.”

He stiffens like I’ve insulted him. “Of course. Cross my heart.” He makes the movement across his chest. “You’re a supplier anyway.” He looks away, shrugging like this is a dealbreaker for him.

I can’t quite sort out what that statement does to me. There’s a curl of regret in my stomach that I don’t want to examine too closely. I want the thrill of his interest. And that thought shouldn’t even be there, skulking in my subconscious.

10

Janus

Iam never sure why Fabian insists on meeting in odd places. Maybe it is our thing, or possibly his thing: He never goes anywhere with me where I might conceivably be able to pay for him. But the Brooklyn Bridge on a windy day must be one of the worst: I am fucking freezing, the traffic is a thudding assault, and there’s no readily available coffee. I hunch down in my jacket as the early-morning light dances across the white waves of the East River. The ironwork is rough against my back as I lean back watching the people power-walking their way to work. I think Fabian likes messing with my comfort levels. I once arranged to go to a nice restaurant with him without his knowledge, and he turned up, gave me the finger, and left. We have this odd relationship that’s at once competitive and then suddenly supportive—the kind that only guys who have sat sweaty and unwashed coding in front of screens for four years at college can probably have.

Fabian’s hacking activities take him to all sorts of dark depths, and to say he leads an unconventional lifestyle is to undersell his tendency toward oddness. As the tourists and cyclists stream over the wooden walkway, it strikes me again that, even though we’ve known each other since college, he wasn’t the first port of call when we discovered we had a security problem. He’s one of my closest friends, but I’m dubious about the world he inhabits. More than once I’ve thought he has no scruples, no morals, but then he has also been the most loyal friend. Large parts of his life are a mystery to me, but he’s said enough things in passing, when we’re staring at screens or mulling over the meaning of life, that have made me wonder why he’s not in jail. And, despite all this, our friendship still sits deep. There is some part of me that burns with what he burns with and always will; that desire to know and to expose, to bring these people, who think they can get away with fleecing or lying to the rest of us, to light.

But now I’ve been sucked into playing a corporate game, and I’m envious of his alternative lifestyle, that fuck-you attitude, his willingness to walk an unconventional path. When I first started my cloud computing business, I thought I was forging my own rebellion—it all felt so different from my family’s expectations—but I’ve drifted to a more conventional place.

Fabian’s experimentation through college and after taught me more about the tech world we inhabit than any lectures we attended. The problem is his desire to try new things doesn’t end with technology: He does drugs, conducts scientific experiments (usually on his own body), has bizarre relationships with other people, and collects weird people around him. I’ve had to rescue him more times than I’d care to count. That debt goes both ways, though. As I stand on the walkway looking down at the traffic and the metal framework, I’m half-expecting to see Fabian thrown out of a speeding car.

But as my eyes scan along the bridge again, I pick out his hunched figure in the distance and I smile to myself. He’s sheltering behind a pillar, a thin jacket hugged around his equally thin body, trying to hold back the gale. As I stride toward him, his face breaks into a reluctant half grin.

“All right, you fucker,” he shouts as I approach, garnering a look from one or two passersby—the usual Manhattan radar for crazies—but as I get closer, concern starts to wash through me. He has sores on his lips and his skin is a gray wash.

“You look like shit.”

He stares out over the water and shrugs, and I deliberately wait. When I don’t say anything, he turns back to me impatiently.

“What? I always look like this.” He hunches over in on himself as if he’s trying to hide.

My gaze wanders over his gaunt face and too-thin body.

“What are you taking?” I’m starting to sound like my parents, dammit.

He answers my question with one of his own. “Why are you always so suspicious?”

“I went to college with you, remember?” I say, leaning on the railing next to him in a bid to mask the extent of my concern. “I saw all that shit firsthand.”

Fabian almost died from an overdose in college by not being clear about what he’d taken, and some enthusiastic doctor in ER gave him the wrong thing. It nearly killed him. I can still remember the panic of that night: the crash team swarming around his body, getting kicked out and spending nail-biting hours in the waiting room until a consultant walked down the corridor to let me know he was all right.

He laughs and shakes his head, looking to the side with pursed lips as if he’s wondering what to say to me. I’d trust Fabian to always give it to me straight—we made a pact the night of the overdose—but I know sometimes it isn’t easy for him to do this: He wants to protect me from the truth of his life. We’ve argued on and off about this for years. He’s told me he doesn’t want me to worry or to land me in trouble; I’ve told him that I’m one of his best friends and I can handle it.

“I have no idea what I’ve taken,” he says, and I gape at him.

He waves a hand at me. “It came from a friend, okay? He wouldn’t give me shit.”

“You’re kidding me, right?”

He doesn’tknow? But why am I surprised? The thought of losing him makes my breath seize in my chest. If I lost this friendship—this bond we’ve always had from the first time we found each other and coded together—it would rip me apart.

He jiggles his legs and arms like he’s trying to reboot his circulation. “I’m fine,I’m fine. Whatever it is, it’s nearly out my system now. It was just a bit of a bad trip, that’s all.” He gives an unconcerned shrug, pushing his hands in his pockets. The wind whips strands that have escaped from his man bun all over his face.

My throat contracts with everything I want to say, but I can’t keep repeating the same old reproof. We came close to falling out at college when I ranted and raved at him. I wish with all my heart that whatever makes him do all this crazy bullshit would somehow get sorted.

I knock his man bun to one side with my hand. “What is it with this fuckinghairanyway?”

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