Black And White

Hundred Forty Five

Alex waited until Avi had gone to the office for his consequence, before speaking to him. 

Avi headed toward the parking lot, deciding he was just gonna ditch the rest of his classes.

As soon as Alex caught up to him, he was shut down. He grabbed Avi's arm. "Avi, my God are you okay?"

Avi pushed his hand off. "Go to class, Kirk."

"Not until I know you're okay."

"Why do you care, Alex? Just go run to Jake or something."

Alex grabbed him again, with a firmer grip on his wrist. "Avi, stop. Jake has nothing to do with this."

"Yes he does."

"How? How on earth does Jake relate to this argument right now?"

"Well for starters, he's the reason you pissed me off enough to pick a stupid fight."

"You can't blame that on anyone but yourself, Avi."

"Can't I?" Avi shook his head quickly, walking a little faster.

"Where are you even going? You and Scott drove together I thought."

"Yeah but he texted me at lunch saying he and Mitch were staying after for your practice, so I'm taking his car. He and Mitch are sharing, I guess."

"But--"

"Alex, will you please just get off my dick for a second? Go the fuck to class, before you have a truancy to blame on me with everything else."

"You're kind of being an asshole, Kaplan. And I don't know why."

Avi finally flipped around, which is unfortunate because he was less than four spots away from the truck he needed to get home. "Are you serious? Maybe it's because I confessed my love for someone, only to have them fuck somebody else less than two days afterwards?"

"But that wasn't related--"

"I don't give shit, Alex. It still hurts, alright? Now get the fuck out of my face."

"Don't you talk to me like that. If you want to work through our issues then we need to communicate."

"I never said I wanted to work through anything! You're the one following me around."

"I was just making sure you were okay. Need I remind you that you were just in a fist fight a few minutes ago?"

"You don't gotta remind me of shit. I get in fights all the time." Avi turned again, only to have Alex grab his arm again. Avi shook him off quickly. "Alex, if you don't stop fucking grabbing me, you're going to regret it."

"Then speak to me like a human being, please!"

Avi flipped around again, this time more angry than before even if it hadn't seemed possible before. "You fucking piece of shit, I'm not talking to a human being. I'm talking to an asshole who completely disregarded everything I had to say that night, not only leaving me to sleep alone, but also telling Mitch to beat me up as well as fucking somebody else afterwards. All because I..." Avi squinted a little. "Well maybe not anymore."

Alex stared at him, eyes stupidly full of hope as they always were. "I didn't mean for you to interpret things that way. It wasn't because you said that to me, I was just scared."

"Okay, well. That's how I interpreted it, so." Avi turned on his heel to march over to Scott's car. 

He was convinced that Alex wasn't going to follow him, until he'd settled in to the truck with his backpack on the seat beside him, only to glance in the rear view mirror and see Alex standing behind the car.