Free Search Terms: Alpha by Travis Hill Page B

she could ever want. We were coming up on two months of dating, and only about a week of exclusive commitment, which made my brain turn another corner and begin wondering if I would be satisfied with her if I was as wealthy and powerful as I couldn’t stop fantasizing about being.
    “Stop it,” I growled to myself. It was too cold to go back outside for another ten or fifteen minutes to get my head under control. I began to wish I had a little weed to smoke to smooth me out, but even that was filled with worry. What if I got too stoned and did some crazy stuff?
    “Computer. Hibernate.”
    I needed a break. I needed to get away from it. The scenarios were coming into my head too fast to focus on any one of them. I waited for the blue light to fade out, then left my room and went downstairs. Mom and Dad were sitting on the couch, arms around each other, watching a television show about restaurants.
    “What’s up?” my father asked as I sat down in the recliner next to them.
    “Nothing much,” I said, hoping my voice didn’t sound as shaky as it did to my own ears.
    “Tyler?” Mom asked. “Are you sure you’re okay?”
    “Yeah, Mom. I’m fine.”
    “You’ve been acting funny ever since your girlfriend—”
    “—Kassandra,” my father added.
    “—was here. Did we embarrass you that much?”
    “Did she break up with you?” Dad asked.
    “I swear to God, I’ll murder my brother if he said anything to her and she dumped Tyler,” Mom growled.
    “I’m fine,” I said, a little more gruffly than I meant to. “Kassandra and I are fine. In fact, we’re exclusive now.”
    My parents both looked at me funny. They weren’t old and out of touch by any means, and both had gone to college and had some “crazy times” according to them, but they still weren’t able to grasp the modern dating scene. Men and women weren’t always “going steady” these days, and some of the older folks seemed to get bent out of shape about it. Especially with the girls, which made them whores, or tramps, or sluts. I’d tried to explain it to my parents before, and I’m sure that their brains understood, but their emotions just couldn’t quite grasp it.
    “How’s the new computer?” my father asked, changing to subject to something more comfortable with all of us.
    “It’s fine.”
    “I thought they sent you the wrong parts and you were going to send them back?” Mom asked.
    “I was, but it turns out, the parts they sent were better than what I ordered.”
    “They might be wanting those ‘better’ parts back,” my father said, raising an eyebrow at me.
    I understood his words well enough to know he was asking me if this was a moral test I was passing or failing. My parents never sat me down and taught me morality lessons, nor did they ever attend church so some dude could stand before us and tell us how moral we were supposed to be. They’d taught me what I considered mini-lessons about right and wrong my whole life. After I graduated high school, they stopped for the most part, satisfied that I would make it through life making good decisions that benefited me without hurting anyone else.
    “Yeah, I know. I wrote them an email, alerting them to it, but I also mentioned I’m a tech blogger, and asked if I could evaluate the stuff and then write about it. It’s stuff that hasn’t been released to the public yet.”
    I felt like shit for lying to my father, but I had enough problems already without trying to explain, maybe even demonstrate, the objects sitting on my desk. My father nodded as if it was a decision he approved of, and turned his attention back to the television. My mother looked like she wanted to say something else, but she didn’t, and we sat watching the show in silence for a while.
    By the time the show was over and Dad was flipping through guide to see what else was on, we were back to our normal selves. My father would see a stupid commercial and do his “exaggerated rage” bit at it,