Summer Sons(17)
“No, honest-to-god accident,” Andrew replied, watching the tank fill.
His thoughts stumbled and tripped over one another while Halse observed him, a looming figure at the corner of his eye. The supposed rough crowd West had directed him to avoid was gathered around him, but, caught flat-footed without a plan for engaging them, Andrew’s strongest urge was to retreat—to regroup after the strain of his awkward dinner.
“Coming with us anyway?” Halse said with a grin and a flick to the brim of Andrew’s hat that unseated it, drawing his attention along with a glare.
Andrew tugged the bill into place again. The fueling stopped with a click and he jiggled the nozzle to shake loose any drips. Halse ran a hand over the hood of the car, watching him out of the corner of his eye.
“Not tonight,” he said.
“Soon, though,” Halse replied with unwelcome surety, clapping a hand on Andrew’s arm for one brief squeeze around his bicep before he strolled back to his own car. Over his shoulder he tossed a parting, “See you later.”
When he revved his engine, someone else laughed, a high, wild sound. The WRX rolled out first and the rest scrambled quick behind him, tussling for a place in the pack.
Andrew watched taillights disappear into the growing dark. If Eddie had gotten himself into trouble, as West suggested, he had a feeling he knew where to find more of the same.
5
The next morning, when Andrew returned from his brief trip to the impound lot to retrieve his Supra, he found a sticky note on the coffee table next to a packed but unsmoked bowl. It read home after 3pm-Riley followed by what Andrew presumed was Riley’s phone number. His roommate had come and gone in the gap of time he’d spent picking up the car, at least for long enough to make him a weird little peace offering—which he did accept, taking the petite green glass pipe in hand. Eddie tended toward more outré paraphernalia, so he assumed it belonged to Riley. The lighter on the table sputtered at the first two flicks before it caught; he burnt himself a lungful or two, smoking with syrup-slow huffs. No reason to rush. After he cashed the bowl, he slipped out his phone and entered the number to fire off a quick hey it’s Andrew text.
Once again, his inbox had a number of missed calls and messages that a person more concerned with participating in his own life might’ve been ashamed of. Several were from unfamiliar numbers. He listened to two voicemails from the executor about the processing of the estate, one explaining the massive plot of land he now owned out in the goddamn country and the other inquiring, would you prefer the taxes to be paid from your accounts directly? Becoming a millionaire something close to overnight had made less of an impression on him than he expected, since it wasn’t much different than when Eddie had given him free reign over his cards.
Most of the texts were contained to Del’s ongoing thread; he wasn’t prepared to explore that. As he dallied in the inbox, a response from Riley came through: cool. text is the best way to reach me, i never check messenger
me neither he responded.
The conversation with West kept popping back into his head. He’d eyeballed the stack of Eddie’s notebooks again before bed, but his whole brain shied away from the thought of digging through the other man’s research on their—supernatural horseshit. Ugly memories and the high likelihood of provoking his erstwhile haunting to pay him another grueling visit lurked down that avenue. And aside from those notes, he still had one more person to track down on campus.
He fired off a message to West that felt stilted but workable: Can you introduce me to Dr Troth this afternoon
With no attempt to delay for propriety’s sake, West responded immediately:
Perfect timing, I was about to ask if you would be free to meet her. Today she mentioned she has something she was going to give to Ed, and thought you’d maybe be interested in it too.
Okay, how about in an hour
I’ll confirm with her.
Meet me in front of the humanities building?
Sure
Meeting the advisor would fill out the main cast from Eddie’s unsupervised months, though he had to assume Vanderbilt and its esteemed faculty had played little role in whatever violence had happened. If Andrew got the chance to leave Eddie’s hideous excavations half-buried, all the better.
He hopped in his Supra for the trip and found a close spot to park, striding purposefully to the assigned meeting spot and settling on a concrete bench to wait for West. Students bustled around him like disorganized cats, yowling and chasing each other. He propped his forearms on his thighs. The sun beat on the nape of his neck. A tingle twitched his fingers, recalling the scorching leather wheel grip and the thud of his heart in his mouth.
“Andrew,” West called out.
His cream button-up reflected a blinding amount of sun, open two buttons over a few inches of russet-brown chest. He strode confident through a crowd of underclassmen, sporting a hassled grin, his silver glasses absent. Andrew shied away from eye contact, drawn by the flash of a cuff earring at the top of his left ear. West offered his hand for a firm shake before leading Andrew into the building.
“Come on, she should still be in her office. I think she’s tried to email you, but you haven’t responded.” The crisply air-conditioned lobby turned Andrew’s prickle of sweat to sticky gum in an instant. West tapped the UP arrow with his thumb. “As your mentor: have you checked your email at all?”