All Your Fates (Currently editing/updating)

Chapter 4: You Gotta Know when to Hold them

MUSIC TRACK LIST:

Lena -- Satellite

The Gambler -- Kenny Rogers

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David's POV

When I arrived at Bru's Wiffle, Atticus was nowhere to be found. Typical. He was going to make me wait just to prove a point. If my eyes hadn't set sight on all the delicious food before me, I would have bolted right there and then. But Atticus had me exactly where he wanted me: caught in the middle between my hunger and my pride. And today both hunger and Atticus would win. Pavlov's dog, I cursed myself while quickly catching the drool falling from my mouth as a waitress floated by me with a scrumptious waffle smothered with chili and cheese, driving me faint with desire.

I sat at a table, and glanced down at the glorious descriptions of food on the menu. This was pure torture. Meatball Marinara Waffle and Chicken Curry Salad Waffle and ugh... For a moment I thought about ordering now to try to stick Atticus into paying for two meals, but thought better on it. What if he suddenly decided not to show up and then I was stuck with a bill I couldn't pay? It was either food or booze, and I already had a plan to hit up the liquor store on the corner after I was out of here. I set the menu aside and tried not to look at or smell any of the food around me, which was hard considering Bru's Wiffle was packed as usual.

Instead I closed my eyes and tried to go over in my mind the ground rules:

1) Do not eat like this is your first real meal in weeks. Yes, he will see how skinny you are and he can easily guess your situation, but that's no reason to belabor the point.

2) Make him stew. Tell him you need a night or so to think whatever he needs from you over. And then don't call him for three days.

3) Don't let Atticus talk you into doing his dirty work for him. No matter how persuasive he is. No matter how alluring the opportunity sounds.

4) Remember to put on your poker face!

5) For god's sake, put your nice guy morals aside and revert to blackmail if you must. Or at least remind him exactly who holds the ace card in this situation.

6) Negotiate, negotiate, and negotiate.

7) Never forget: Atticus is not your friend; he is nobody's friend but his own. He would as soon sell you out for a price of an OK Cupid membership than feel any sense of common human decency for a poor kid down on his luck and miles from home. A kid whose life and future he callously trampled on in order to save his own skin.

8) And whatever you do: don't suck wind through your teeth – he knows your tell.

When I opened my eyes again, Atticus was sitting quietly in front of me, sipping coffee and studying my face. I blinked and stared right back at him. It had only been a few months since I had last seen him but he was a little worse for wear. I studied the topographical map of his face: the terrain of his swarthy skin was a little more graveled than before, the wrinkles a little more etched in stone. The folds of his ruddy skin sunk heavily into the crevices where the tectonic plates of his face met. The tufts of his hair that spiked up on his skull like mountain peaks donned a few more inches of snow. And the hulking boulder of his body was a little more eroded at the sloping shoulders. But it had none of the Grand Canyon's deep red and yellow-blotched earth tones from that time he was screaming after me when I had last spun on my heels and walked away from him for good.

It was a face set in stone that revealed little fellow feeling because Atticus simply had none.

"Hello, Atticus," I sighed. How an old codger with a cane could sneak up like a ninja was beyond me.