Page 124 of Boys Who Hunt
“Spicy,” he repeats before plopping some wasabi in front of me. “Try this.”
“Dad. I’m trying to talk about the girl.”
“Why is she trouble for you, then? You’ve only mentioned positive things.”
“I thought I didn’t like girls. I thought I liked boys. And it makes me so confused.”
He snorts. “Max, you do realize there’s such a thing as bisexuals?”
“What?” I stutter.
“You can like both.”
My entire face turns red. “Oh …”
Why didn’t I consider that option?
“So, I don’t see any issue so far,” he says.
“She stole from my friends, Silas and Heath, and now they want to make her pay for it.”
“The Rivera and Preston boys?” he says, like the surnames make him do a double take. “Okay, that complicates it. But it’s not a deal breaker.”
I narrow my eyes. “A thief? Not a dealbreaker?”
“Yeah. Didn’t I tell you how your mom and I met for the first time?” He puts down his knife. “Me, Nathan, and Kai were trying to rob this guy. He deserved it, trust me. Then your mom came to try to murder him, but she found me instead, and we ended up fighting on the pavement in front of his house, and her shoe nearly stabbed me in the heart.” He sighs in a woeful way. “Oh, I was smitten on impact.”
I make a face. “Really?”
“Really,” he responds like it isn’t the most unhinged story I’ve ever been told.
I can’t believe what I’m hearing. My mom and dad are casual murderers, just like Silas and Heath.
Does it run in the family? I mean, my mom is Silas’s aunt. Wouldn’t surprise me if every one of our parents had secret lives during their college days.
“You never told me any of this.”
“I didn’t? Oh.” He proceeds to chop like nothing ever happened. “Maybe your mother told me not to. Oops.”
What the…
“But about your girlfriend, your friends want to hunt her down?”
A blush spreads on my cheeks. “She’s not my girlfriend.”
“Yet.”
“It’s complicated.”
“I don’t see how.”
“My friends made me trick her, okay? They forced me to help them catch her by making her fall for me so she’d tell me the truth about her thievery, and one thing led to another, and now I’m involved, and she just found out.”
“Oh …” He pauses. “Well, she probably didn’t like that.”
“No.” I flatten my face on the surface of the bar again, slamming it so hard it definitely left a dent. “What do I do? How do I fix this?”
“Buy her flowers. Tell her the truth. Apologize.” He pushes another plate of veggie sushi under my nose, drawing me in with those delectable scents. “Eat some sushi and think about it.”