Torn (Cold Awakening) by Robin Wasserman Read Free Book Online

Jude, we were going to do it where no one could overhear us.
    He’s not following me,
I thought. But that was the thing about Jude—I had no idea what he was doing, or why.
    “I told you; it’s a mess.”
    “And I told
you
I don’t care.”
    “I don’t know why you’d want to go back to that shit-hole.”
    “Because I want to go
somewhere
, and you’ve made it pretty clear we can’t go to
my
place.”
    I shouldn’t have said it, scratching the wound before it had a chance to scab over.
    “I should go,” he said. “You’re tired; I get it.” I could feel him shifting his weight, getting ready to stand.
    “No.” I took his hand. We had to get used to each other again. That was all. It had been a long and strange two weeks. We needed to find our rhythm. “Please. Let’s … talk. Tell me what you did while I was away.”
    “Same old stuff. You know.”
    “I don’t, actually.” Trying to sound playful, not annoyed.
    He shrugged. “Doesn’t matter.”
    I felt like we were slipping back to the beginning, before we’d known anything about each other, when there’d been nothing to say. I brushed my fingers along his forearm, then traced them up his arm, along his collarbone, resting them on his chest, over the spot where his heart would have been. “Please,” I said again. “I just want to pretend the last two weeks didn’t happen, that I was here. With you. So tell me what we would have been doing, so I can picture it.”
    He choked out a bitter laugh. “You wouldn’t have wanted to be here, not for that.”
    “For what?” I could hear it in his voice: gathering clouds.
    “I wasn’t going to tell you this—” He stopped himself. “I mean, I wasn’t going to
not
tell you. I didn’t think it mattered.”
    It wasn’t like Riley to circle the point like this. He was nervous. That couldn’t be good.
    “Sounds like it matters,” I pointed out.
    He stood up, crossing his arms over his chest. “I went back to the city.”
    “What?”
Now I was on my feet. “Why would you go back to that place?”
    “
That place
is home.”
    “Not anymore.”
    “I just wanted to go.” He uncrossed his arms and curled one hand into a fist, closing it inside the other. “I knew you wouldn’t get it.”
    Someone had to stop; someone had to give. I drew close to him, though he kept his eyes fixed on the trees. “Riley.” I touched his shoulder, but he didn’t turn. “That place isn’t safe for you anymore. Things are different now.”
    “Yeah.” He didn’t sound angry anymore, only tired. “And you’re just looking out for me, right?”
    “That’s my job,” I said lightly, as if none of this mattered. I turned him around, forcing him to face me.
    He smiled. “Maybe you should ask for a raise.”
    “I’m pretty satisfied with my current compensation level,”I said, touching his lips. “Especially the perks.” I leaned forward, I closed my arms around him,
I
kissed
him
. But he let me. Then we were on the ground again, limbs tangled, bodies sinking into the damp earth, finally in sync. It was how we ended all of our arguments, and so far it was effective. I tried not to think about what we would do when it wasn’t.

UNFORGIVEN
    “Maybe real was a matter of perspective.”
    I told Riley the next day, on neutral territory. The park was technically called a “free expression zone,” but everyone knew it as Anarchy. The brainstorm of some aging trenders and sellout free spirits who’d outfitted their mansions, garages, and shoe closets and still had credit to spare, Anarchy was designed to be a space where no behavior or appearance, no matter how odd, could be punished. The odder the better, in fact—in Anarchy only banality was forbidden, and the only consequence was invisibility. Little wonder it was always full.
    Unless you were crammed into a corp-town,
crowds
were mostly the kind of thing you read about in a history book or played at with virtual-reality hordes on the network.