Jackson Ford - Eye of the Sh*t Storm

“Might be easier if she was less of an asshole,” I mutter. God, why do I sound so fucking petty ?

“She is not an asshole.”

“She totally is.”

Abruptly, Annie gets up, pushing her tray back.

“You’re done already?” I say.

“Mm.” She winces as she tries to lever her leg out from under the table without kicking the person next to her. “I’ll catch y’all later.”

“Where are you going?”

She looks right at me then. And I swear, there’s the ghost of that look she gave me after the bridge collapse. The one I couldn’t figure out.

“Home,” she says. “Reggie wants me, tell her I’ll be in tomorrow.”

Africa leans across – he’s got the reach for it – and squeezes her shoulder. I want to do something similar, make up for being such an ass before. She doesn’t deserve that. But I’m on the other side of the table, and it’s way too awkward. My teeth itch. Can you even have itchy teeth?

All at once, an image flickers into my mind: an old anti-drug poster, or internet ad, or something. An addict, mouth slightly open to reveal brown, rotting stumps. Meth mouth . It takes everything I have not to retch. No way I’m letting that happen.

“You not need a lift?” Africa says to Annie. “We have the van back now.”

“Nah, I’m good. One of my boys can come pick me up. Or I’ll Uber or something.”

I wince. Ridesharing has come back to LA, which is good, but we aren’t talking dozens of cars on the road. She could be waiting a while.

The whole city is like that at the moment. Superficially OK, but very far from back to normal. Right after the quake, there was a lot of international assistance to help us get back on our feet. The Japanese, especially, helped out with rebuilding some of the freeways – they know a thing or two about how to survive earthquakes. But then some politicians in Congress made a stink about it, and there were federal funding investigations, and lawsuits, and leaked memos, and before long Los Angeles was stuck swimming in place. Whatever rebuilding money there was got rerouted through a dozen different agencies and local government groups, all of which seem to hate each other, and none of which seem to know what to do with the cash. It makes my brain hurt just thinking about it.

Annie nods to us, turning to go, sidestepping around a smiling, overweight man juggling a baby and a tray of food. As she does, I get a look past her to the other side of the food court.

Nic Delacourt is here.

He’s sitting with a group of buddies at one of the green plastic tables, all of them sharing a huge bucket of chicken. They’re all wearing old, mud-spattered clothes and yellow high-vis vests.

Which is strange as hell, because Nic is a lawyer, working for the District Attorney’s office. Last time I checked, judges didn’t permit high-vis vests in courtrooms. He’d been volunteering with quake relief, I know that much… but it’s the middle of the day, on a weekday. Wouldn’t he be at the courthouse in Inglewood?

Nic has his back to me, but I’d recognise him anywhere. He’s big, with broad shoulders and a bald head shining under the court’s bright lights. He’s doing a very Nic thing – gesturing wildly as he eats, making a point with a chicken drumstick, waving it in the air. He must be in the middle of a story, or a joke; everyone else at the table is listening to him intently, good-natured smiles on their faces. They look tired, weary even… but happy.

And I can picture the expression on Nic’s face without even thinking about it.

I shut my eyes, take a deep breath. Of all the things I do not need to think about now, my sort-of-ex-crush is at the top of the list.

Africa frowns, follows my gaze. “Hey – it’s your boyfriend, huh?”

“Uh, no.”

“No, it is. It’s Nic, ya?”

“I mean, he’s not my boyfriend—”

“ Hey! Nic! We over here!”

I have never wanted to stick a fork in someone’s eye so badly. Just fucking jam it in there.

“Dude, it’s fine,” I hiss through my clenched, grinding teeth. Nic still hasn’t responded, so maybe I can shut this down before it starts.

But no, Nic’s heard his name, he’s looking up, and now Africa is waving.

I have to resist the urge to leap across the table and break his arm. Not that I’d be able to. Trying to stop him saying hello to someone we know in a public place would be like trying to restrain a hundred-pound German shepherd from eating a fresh rib-eye.

And now Nic is getting up, a strange expression on his face – the weird look you get when you don’t quite recognise the person shouting your name, and are frantically trying to remember if you’ve met them before.

“I’m Africa.” My dipshit colleague’s voice is a sonic boom over the food court.

“No!” I twist my body around, wishing I had invisibility powers instead of psychokinesis. “No. Shut the fuck up. Africa!”

“I work with Teggan! For the China Shop!”

Nic is halfway over to us when he spots me. It’s at the exact distance where it’s too awkward for him to turn around and pretend he didn’t.

His expression goes from puzzlement, to annoyance, and then to a kind of controlled blankness. He pauses for a second, then slowly makes his way over.

Nic and I were friends for a long time, joined at the hip by a mutual love of food. He knows about my ability – I may or may not have dragged him headfirst into one of our escapades last year. In the past, I’ve wanted to date him. He’s wanted to date me. The problem is, those two things have never happened at the same time.

During the whole quake thing, he wanted me to do more, help people using my ability. When I tried to explain why I couldn’t reveal my ability, he said some… ugly things. Accused me of being selfish, said he was embarrassed for me.

Yes, I know I just threw my ability out in public today. It probably wasn’t the smartest decision, but I was high on meth at the time so shut up.

Nic apologised later. Of course he did. He’s not a bad guy. He wanted to reconnect, sent text after text after text. Problem is, I didn’t know what to say, and it became one of those problems that you just ignore and hope it goes away. I missed him, but I was also mad at him, and in the wake of Paul’s death, I didn’t want to start untangling whatever situation Nic and I had. So I ghosted him. I didn’t plan on it. It’s just that one day, I realised I hadn’t replied to his last text for a while, and I couldn’t think of anything good to say, so I just… left it. Not proud of it, but there you go.

We haven’t spoken in months.

How does Africa know him anyway? I’m sure I’ve mentioned the big guy to Nic once or twice, but they’ve never been introduced. Yeah, we’re gonna have to talk about that .

You want to know the most fucked-up thing? Nic is one of the only people in the world I can date. He knows about my ability, after all – and more importantly, he knows about what happens to it during sex. Back in the day, I managed to convince Tanner that I had the right to be with someone. Not even I can blame her for how fucked-up things got after.

So what have I been doing this whole time, where I don’t want to date and I can’t have sex? Let’s just say I’ve gotten very good at not thinking about shit. Which has been especially hard lately, let me tell you, even before the meth made me ultra-horny – a feeling which has utterly and completely vanished, by the way, swallowed by the hollowness in the pit of my stomach.

Nic isn’t the only person I’ve thought about romantically – there’s a guy called Jonas Schmidt, a German tech bro who happens to be that much-sought-after combo of insanely rich, ridiculously hot and genuine. He helped us out during the quake, and we definitely had something. Or at least, I think we did.