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him with a bitter aftertaste at the back of his throat, and he didn’t seem able to get rid of it completely. It was still there, spoiled the taste of his breakfast in the morning, and even bothered him when he was having freshly squeezed juice, always looming around the joints of his tense jaw. He didn’t deserve what had happened. Yes, he had fucked up, he was at fault when it came to the accident, and there was no way he’d ever make it up to Ethan, but it had been a lapse of judgment. Rob didn’t want to hurt him, but Ethan himself had no moral objections to force Robert into sex. All of the sympathy he’d felt for the guy had evaporated since.
    His mind stopped drifting when he saw two girls stop by Ethan’s empty table, and even from where he sat he could hear something about karma. Ethan gave them a blank stare and stood up without a word.
    “What a creep. He should be happy any girl wants to actually talk to him.” Pat, Rob’s teammate and friend by association, laughed, shoving the pizza into his mouth as though it was the best thing he’d had in a month. Already balding, thick in the nape and trunk, Pat was the person whose recently-repaired nose one wouldn’t want to see up close in a dark street. And his appalling eating habits were another thing altogether.
    Chris, Robert’s best friend since childhood, yawned, equally unimpressed. “It’s not like he was talking to anyone in the first place. Not even the loser table wants him.”
    “Aren’t those the girls who spilled paint all over Natasha’s fur last year because they were convinced it was real?” asked Kelly, slurping her drink next to Rob.
    “The freaks. I loved how it turned out it was artificial. The principal went mental,” chuckled Chris.
    “Do you think that bird head on his neck is fake?” Pat wondered out loud, slouching his large body over his tray as he wiped his lips with a napkin.
    Kelly shook her head, pulling on the stud in her nose. “Hello, he does taxidermy. At home. In his basement. The sole idea freaks me out.”
    Rob stroked his chin, his thoughts drifting to the chandelier of bird bones over the bed in Ethan’s room, which by the way looked like something that could well have been located in a haunted mansion. Not to mention the framed posters of still life on the walls. Most of them depicted carnivorous feasts, which were interesting as such, but the context of Ethan’s morbid room made the paintings unsettling. He didn’t even want to think what that infamous basement had to look like.
    “Did he even thank you, Robert?” Kelly looked up at him, her wide blue eyes settling on him with a small smile. “It’s amazing that you managed to carry him all the way back to the house. All on your own.”
    The pizza instantly hardened in Robert’s mouth, turning into a piece of chalk that he just couldn’t swallow. Back then, he’d spent God-knew how much time trying to decide whether to break the branch that got stuck in Ethan’s eye or not. He ended up breaking away all the branchlets before he cuddled the immobile body and ran through the forest, with fear curling in his chest. “Sure.”
    “It’s so stupid.” Pat shrugged and pushed away the salad. “Who falls over and impales themselves on a branch? Shit like this only happens to Edward.”
    “Right?” Chris slurped his slushie and leaned back in the chair. “I knew he sparkled, but not that he was made out of Jell-O and bad luck.”
    Robert bit his lip and forced himself to swallow. He wouldn’t feel sorry for the bastard. Ethan was more of a douchebag than anyone imagined.
    “Oh, come on guys, stuff like that happens. People die from the strangest things,” muttered Kelly. “That’s not cool.”
    “I just need to go and check if that bird head is real,” Pat said and got up without further ado. Chris grinned at him and got to his feet within a split second.
    “The guy’s just been in a hospital for a month,” hissed Kelly. “Leave him