Playing With Fire

Chapter 6

Chapter 6

"Okay, what's the deal with you two?" I demand, folding my arms over my chest. "I was gonna stay out of it, but it's obviously the huge woolly mammoth in the room. So, I think I deserve to know."

"Who? Me and Georgia?" He asks, looking stunned.

"No, you and Oliver. What's with all the animosity? You two get within three feet of each other and the tension gets thick enough to drown in."

Reid leans forward, rocking the small cart. We are almost at the top of the wheel, the salty breeze from the nearby beach dances in my hair. I wish I'd put it in a ponytail instead of letting it hang free, but the wind feels good, even as it tumbles my hair into gentle knots.

Finally, Reid turns, looking straight into my eyes as he speaks.

"I wasn't going to say anything because I know you like him, and I didn't want to come off as a jerk or anything. If you really want to know, I'll tell you, but it has to stay between us."

His tone is clipped, but still his expression hesitant, as if he wants to tell me, but also doesn't want to. Must be serious, I realize, giving Reid a brisk nod.

He relaxes back into the seat, turning his eyes to the cloudy sky above us and begins..

"We used to be best friends when we were little. Oliver's dad's a Navy doc stationed here, so they don't move around like the rest of us. We used to make mud pies in his backyard." He smiles sadly at the memory. "I moved away when I was six, and then after my parents' tour in California was over, we got stationed back here again."

With a deep sigh he leans forward, clasping his hands over the railing. "I was fourteen by then, and I thought we'd be friends again, just like we'd been before. It was freshman year and he was the new superjock on the football team. At first, he acted like he didn't even know me. He was always in some kind of trouble, fighting mostly. He used to pick on me mercilessly for anything he could think of. One day I caught up with him in the locker room after gym class. He was taking pills out of a prescription bottle with the label torn off. When he saw me, he shoved them into his locker and slammed it shut. When I asked what he was doing, he freaked out. Said it was none of my business and that if I said anything about it, he'd make my life a living hell."

Wow. "Did you ever find out what the pills were?"

He shakes his head. "I figured he was taking something illegal. Steroids or something. Who knows? The crazy thing was, I didn't even care. I just wanted my friend back." He pauses, his eyes sweeping the crowd below. "I went to his house that night, to...I dunno. Make up or apologize. Something. Georgia was there. She's a year older than us, you know, and she'd always been nice to me. Anyway, I told her about the pills and she called me a liar, slapped me in the face and told me to get out before she called the cops. Oliver showed up right about then, and he wailed on me for a while before literally kicking me out the front door. And that was that."

I try to process his story. It seems so different from the person I know now, but then, how well do I really know Oliver at all?

"Wow." I'm not sure there's anything more I can say.

He shrugs, "Thing is, I swore I'd never say anything. He may be total dick now, but he wasn't always."

I nod, an unspoken vow of silence. Steroids? Pain killers? Something else? Was he still using or had he gotten clean? The ride is going full swing now, which is still painfully slow. My mind races; I want my body to be moving fast, too. Maybe it will help me process what he's just told me. I try to shrug it off, for now. No reason to spoil a perfectly good evening by stressing about things I can't deal with right now anyway.