Location: Eden's Twilight Date: Friday, January 14 Time: Post-Fight (open)
Sitting in the stands, he's not sure what outcome he was hoping for. Oh, he knows the right answer, knows it's something like: the Foxes will always be my team, and I'm rooting for them to succeed. But that feels like saccharine bullshit, the kind of media-ready soundbite he was never good enough at saying even when the Foxes really were his team.
Now they're not, and watching them win their way into the Championships without him feels like shit, actually. Being closer to Exy than he's been since he gave this all up and ran back to Florida only to end up more fucked than he's ever been in his life feels like shit, actually.
No one invited him to Eden's, technically, after the game, and he's not sure if that means his invite was implied or if he's crashing a party that no one wants him to be at. But it doesn't matter, because Eden's is where he wants to be after watching the game for one very simple reason: they have alcohol, and he wants it.
So he's drunker than he should be by the time the fists start flying and the cops show up, but it doesn't take him long to get with the program. And, when he does, he knows he has to get the fuck out. That there's no way he can let the cops pick him up at a bar brawl in South Carolina when he's only here because Wymack convinced the court in Florida that he'd be on his best fucking behavior while they sort things out, going to school and Exy practice for a team he isn't even fucking on like a good boy that shouldn't go to prison even if he did get caught running away from the scene of a crime with a fucking gun.
So he knows what he has to do which, incidentally, is the thing he tried to do before: he runs. But he doesn't fucking trip anybody, just grabs the sleeve of the Fox closest to him and drags them both down a back hallway and out a side door, keeps fucking moving until they're a few buildings down and it's clear that no one's chasing them.
"Fuck," he says, raking his hands through his shorn-short hair and then bending over double with his hands on his thighs to brace himself, breathing hard less from the exertion of running away and more with something that feels like panic. "That was close."