by Emma Scott
Another silence fell, this one completely fucking uncomfortable since I had no idea what I should say. But that feeling came over me again—the voiceless knowing that had bonded me to Ronan in the first place. He didn’t need or want me to say anything, so I didn’t. Pretty soon, the silence felt good again.
The sun began to sink into the ocean, setting it on fire, while the sky turned as deep a blue as Violet’s eyes. When Ronan went foraging for more wood, I got out my guitar and plucked a few chords.
Ronan came back with his arms full of kindling. “It’s about time.”
Self-consciously, I messed with the frets, tuning it. “I don’t play much for people.”
“Why not?”
I shrugged. “Don’t know. Besides, you don’t want to hear the shit I’ve been writing.”
“How the fuck do you know that?”
“What kind of music do you listen to?”
“Heavy stuff. Melvins. Tool.”
“Yeah, what I play is not that. Mostly, I’ve been writing songs for a girl.”
“A girl.” Ronan popped another beer and handed it to me. “Now I really feel bad that you can’t get drunk.”
“Amen.”
We clinked beer bottles.
“What’s the story?”
I peered suspiciously at him. “You’ll just call me a pussy, tell me to fuck someone else and get over it.”
“Yeah, maybe I will,” he said with a faint grin.
I laughed, then shook my head. “It’s hopeless, is what it is. She’s perfect and rich, and I’m a poor bastard without a working pancreas.”
I gave Ronan a brief rundown of my relationship with Violet. After a time, he nodded. “Yep. You need to fuck someone else and get over it.”
We shared a laugh, watching the flames, then Ronan’s voice grew low.
“Nah, that’s bullshit,” he said. “You need to tell her.”
“She’s hellbent on us being friends. She thinks it’d ruin us if we tried to be more.”
“So? Tell her anyway.”
“I can’t. She’d shoot me down, and things would never be the same. Though, I guess they’re pretty fucked already.”
Ronan nodded. “So don’t talk to her. Just…I don’t know. Kiss her.”
“No way.”
“Why the hell not?”
“Uh, fucking boundaries, for one thing. She’s told me how she feels, explicitly. Friends. I have to honor that.”
Ronan snorted and drained his beer.
I leaned forward over my knees. “What can I do? I told you, we swore a blood oath.”
“When you were kids. Does she suspect you like her?”
I don’t like her. I love her with every goddamn piece of my soul.
Ronan’s thick eyebrows went up, waiting.
“Not exactly,” I admitted.
“Where is she now?”
“I don’t know.” I gave the sand at my feet a little kick. “There’s a party tonight. She’ll be there.”
“So, go to the party and tell her.”
“I just said—”
“You gotta fight, man,” Ronan said, his deep voice rising, his eyes flared in anger. “You fight because if you don’t, it’ll be too late. And too late is fucking death.”
He looked away quickly, his hands balling into fists, memories that had nothing to do with me coursing through him like blood.
I waited until they let him go, then said into the twilight, “She needs me to be her friend. She needs…me.”
“So you’re her pack mule. You carry all her shit and try to make life easier on her because you care about her. What about you?”
Ronan swung his head my way, his eyes asking the question beneath the question: Do you want to be needed or do you want to be loved?
Maybe the beer was making me tipsy, or maybe it was just the plain simple truth of it all. Violet’s home life might be crumbling beneath her, but mine was fucking on fire. If I didn’t salvage something good, there’d be nothing left.
I stood up, brushed the sand from my ass, and took up my guitar case.
“You want to come?” I asked. “I mean, it’s probably going to be a bunch of drunk jocks playing beer pong to shitty house music.”
Ronan got to his feet too and kicked sand over the fire. “I’m coming. I told you. I got your back.”
I started to smile as something like happiness tried to fill in my cracks. Suspicion got there first. “Why?”
“You don’t annoy the living shit out of me. Good enough?” His tone was harsh, but I saw a tinge of warmth in his slate gray eyes.
The happiness came back. “Good enough.”
Chapter Seven
Chance Blaylock’s huge two-story on Ocean Avenue was blaring Eminem’s “Godzilla” over a hundred laughing conversations. I felt the base even out on the street as Evelyn and I headed up the walk, muttering a curse. I was at war with my tight minidress; a constant push and pull between tugging it down and hauling it up to better cover my boobs.
“Will you relax?” Evelyn said, looking stunning in black leggings and a black bustier-style top. “You are fire. River is going to lose his shit when he sees you.”
“I feel half-naked.”
She smirked. “Exactly.”
In my past life, I’d never worn more than jeans and sweatshirts to social events. This was my first house party, and I felt like an imposter. Or a spy from the “other side” come to see how the cool kids do it.
They’re going to see right through me.
Then I chastised myself for being silly and remembered what David Foster Wallace once said: You’ll worry less about what people think about you when you realize how seldom they do.
Inside, the house was dark with only small lamps lit here and there and a string of lights over a sound system. Bodies filled the rooms, talking, dancing, making out. Most with a red solo cup in hand. The music and people filled every corner of the house, upstairs and down.
Evelyn took hold of my hand. “Kitchen. We need to get our drank on.”
We squeezed through the crowd and arrived in a spacious, brightly lit kitchen that seemed blinding after the dark of the rest of the house. The kitchen overlooked the expansive backyard where the party had spilled out onto the patio around the pool. More colored lights were strung in garlands, and people huddled in groups on lounge chairs, the glowing ember of joints passing from hand to hand.
A bunch of football players had set up camp around the keg next to a huge island of gray marble that was covered in bottles, empty solos, and a salad bowl filled with cherry red punch. River was among them.
“Hey, boys. This is Violet’s first house party.” Evelyn pressed a solo cup of beer in my hand and looked meaningfully at River. “Be gentle.”
I rolled my eyes as my face flushed red. “Thanks for that.”
“Shh, here he comes.”
Evelyn side-stepped away as River came around the island in jeans, a white T-shirt, and a plaid button down, open and rolled up at the sleeves. The shirt revealed every cut line of his chest, but his forearms were downright mesmerizing.
“Hey,” he said.
My gaze shot up to a chiseled face that looked cut from granite, a light shadow over his square jaw. “Hi.”
River’s faint smile had just the right amount of casual amusement and confidence I expected from the captain of the football team—a guy who was probably going to end up winning the Heisman and being drafted to the NFL in a few short years. But his eyes darted here and there, as if he was aware we had an audience. Or nervous to be talking to me.
Hello, ego. That’s impossible.
“So…this really your first party?”
“Is it that obvious?”
“Nah, you’re doing all right.”
“Any pointers?”
He laughed. “Yeah. If Chance offers you a cup of his ‘world famous’ party punch, say no. That shit is like gasoline.”
I laughed too and felt a loosening in my ches
t. River Whitmore, who I’d built up into this mythical figure—an Olympian god who wouldn’t dare talk to mere mortals like me—was just a guy who needed a conversation icebreaker like anyone else.
River moved a tiny bit closer; I could smell his cologne—woodsy and clean, mixed with a faint scent of motor oil. His voice grew low. Private. “So listen…”
I swallowed. “Yes?
“My mom said it was awesome meeting you.”
“Oh. Right.”
“You made her happy and that’s a big deal to me. So, thanks for that.”
“Of course. She’s wonderful.”
“Yeah, she is.” His eyes shone, and he quickly took a pull from his solo cup. Chance and a couple of guys called to him from the next room, pulling their king to the beer pong table. “So…maybe we can talk more later?” he asked. Almost shyly.
“Sure. Yes. I’d like that.”
He gave me a final smile. “Don’t drink the punch.”
My heart ached for him; he seemed a little bit like an imposter too. The most popular guy having to pretend to have a good time at a party while there was fear and pain waiting for him at home.
The party ebbed and flowed around me. I finished my beer, and someone gave me another. I finished that too, and the ground tipped under my feet a little as Evelyn took me by the hand to make the rounds. She was effortlessly popular, confident, perfectly flirty—everything I was not.
Outside, by the pool, I pulled her aside. “I have to ask. How come you and River…?”
“Never hooked up?” She shrugged. “It makes sense, doesn’t it? But I don’t know. There’s something about him I can’t figure out. We’re not on the same wavelength.”
I wondered if that was code for, I tried but he shot me down. But I’d grown close to Evelyn; she bullshitted so much, she was easier to read when she wasn’t.
“But hey, my loss is your gain,” she said. “You guys looked pretty cozy in the kitchen earlier.”
“He’s sweet.”
“Sweet. Uh huh. Did he ask you to Homecoming yet?”
“No. But he’s going through some heavy stuff.”
“Truth. The poor boy needs a distraction, don’t you think? And a little nudge?”
“What’s that mean?”
“Leave it to me.” Her mischievous smile collapsed as she spied something over my shoulder. “God. Your lost boy is here.”
I swung around to see Miller sitting on a lounger, his guitar case at his feet, talking with a big, dark-haired guy who sat on a deck chair beside him.
“Ooh, it looks like he brought his bodyguard,” Evelyn said. “That’s Ronan, I’ll bet. The guy who broke Frankie’s nose.” She took in the new guy appreciatively. “God, look at those arms. Yummy. Loving the ink, too, but…not my scene. He looks like he just broke out of jail.”
Miller met my eye, and I waved. He didn’t wave back but said something to Ronan, who nodded. Then Miller left his guitar and approached.
“Uh oh,” Evelyn said. “Now is not the time to let River see you with another guy.”
“That’s silly. It’s just Miller.”
The words tasted funny in my mouth. It’s just Miller. Like saying it’s just air; always there but essential to live.
“Hey,” he said, giving Evelyn a nod.
“I’m so glad you came,” I said, hugging him.
His scent was so different from River’s—cigarette smoke he carried from home mixed with the cleaner scents of bonfire smoke and the salt of the ocean. Tension hummed in him, vibrating in his body like a current.
I stepped back. “Are you okay?”
“I…yeah, fine. Would you like something to drink?” He took in my skimpy dress for the first time and scowled. “Or a coat, maybe?”
I scoffed. “Yes to a drink. You can keep the lecture.”
“No lecture. I just didn’t realize this was a costume party.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?
“It means you never needed to dress like this before.”
“I don’t need to dress like this now,” I shot back. “I choose to. And why do you care what I wear, anyway?”
“I don’t, that’s the point.” He carved a hand through his longish hair, frustrated. “Shit, sorry, never mind. Can we go somewhere quiet? I need to talk to you.”
“I could use that drink first. Just water. I’m a bit wobbly.”
We pushed our way back through the crowds to the kitchen. Curious stares followed us, but no one gave Miller a hard time. He poured me a cup of water from a Britta on the counter, then got himself a beer from the keg.
He downed the whole thing, then sucked in a steadying breath.
“Is everything okay?” I asked. “Did Shiloh come with you?”
“Just Ronan. Listen—”
At that moment, the beer pong game broke up and the guys flooded back into the kitchen, a gaggle of girls following after, Evelyn, Julia and Caitlin among them. More curious glances landed on Miller, but River’s eyes—and smile—were only for me. I smiled back, then looked away, acutely conscious of Miller standing beside me.
Evelyn smiled like the Cheshire Cat. “Oh goody, everyone’s here…” The snap of a Zippo lighter caught her attention. “I take it back,” she purred. “Now everyone is here.”
The scent of clove cigarettes suddenly permeated the kitchen, and we all turned to see Holden Parish leaning in the corner between the hooded stove and the stainless-steel dishwasher. His sudden appearance was so startling, it was as if he’d been conjured in a puff of his own smoke.
He was dressed all in black—a silk buttondown shirt, dark jeans and sleek black Oxfords. Despite the late summer night, he wore a black pea coat—unbuttoned—the collar turned up. A blood red scarf was slung around his neck and dripped down either side of his torso. Tall, slender, elegant, with his striking eyes and silver hair, Holden reminded me a little of Spike from Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
“Vampires have to be invited in,” I whispered to Miller with a beer-induced giggle. “If he starts feeding on us, blame Evelyn.”
She sidled up to Holden, linked her arm in his. Taking possession. “Everyone, you remember Holden Parish.”
Chance, his face flushed with beer, frowned. “Smoking’s outside, dude.”
A lazy smile spread over Holden’s lips. “You sure about that? Your living room smells like a Snoop Dog concert.” He tucked the clove cigarette into the corner of his mouth, squinting against the smoke, and handed Chance a small paper bag. “A token of gratitude for having me at your little shindig.”
Chance pulled out a bottle of Patrón Silver and a grin split his face. “Dude. Thanks.”
“Perfect,” Evelyn said, still attached to Holden as if he were her own personal party favor. “Line up the shots, boys, because it’s time to play Seven Minutes in Heaven.”
Cheers and woots went around and the shitty, cheap vodka punch was replaced with the expensive tequila. Holden poured the first two shots.
“To our host,” he said and handed one to Chance.
The guys clinked glasses and tossed the liquor back. Chance shook his head, blowing air out his cheeks, eyes watering. Holden took his smoothly, as if it were water. But the booze seemed to animate him, instantly warming up his cold front. He took command of the kitchen like a circus ringmaster.
“Step right up, ladies and gents, and let’s make some beautiful memories.”
“I need to talk to you,” Miller said in my ear, under another round of cheers.
“She’s busy,” Evelyn said. She’d detached herself from Holden long enough to press a solo cup with an inch of tequila into my hand. “And it’s a party. Drink now, talk later. After we play.”
“She doesn’t need to drink that,” Miller said.
“And she can speak for herself,” I said, glaring at him. “What has gotten into you, tonight?”
“You just said you needed water.”
“Maybe I changed my mind.”
“Maybe I don’
t want you to get date raped by a jock in a closet.”
My eyes flared.
Evelyn gaped. “The hell…? Are you for real?”
But Miller ignored her, his blue topaz eyes boring into mine. I’d never seen this side of him. He’d always been intense but never toward me. Not like this. Protective. Possessive, even.
“I-I can take care of myself,” I stammered.
Miller said nothing but took the cup out of my hand. His gaze never leaving mine, he tossed back the shot, chucked the empty on the floor, then turned and walked out of the kitchen.
I started after him. “Miller, wait—”
“Let him go,” Evelyn said, pulling me back. “He’s totally out of line. River is a good guy.”
“I know, but Miller can’t be drinking like that.”
She rolled her eyes. “He can take care of himself. River’s going to play my game. Do you see where I’m going with this? You. Him. A dark closet for seven minutes?”
I looked after where Miller had returned to the backyard, and then Evelyn’s words sank in to my beer-dampened thoughts.
My first kiss. It might happen. Tonight.
My heart stuttered, and my cheeks felt warm. Evelyn watched my face.
“Ah, now she gets it.” She offered me her tequila. “Drink.”
I pushed the shot away. “That’ll make me sick. And if I’m going to kiss River tonight, I don’t want to be drunk for it. I want to be present in the moment. To remember it and savor it.”
“Oh my God, you’re like Snow White. Pure as the driven snow or some shit. It’ll happen. Trust me.”
I nodded. Because Miller was wrong about River.
Just because he mistrusts everyone doesn’t mean I have to.
“How are you going to make sure that River and I end up in the closet together?”
Evelyn smiled. “Because I make stuff happen.”
A bunch of us, five guys and five girls, cleared space in the living room. Music still blared over the sound system, but the dancing had subsided, and we had a small audience. I sat in a circle between Evelyn and Caitlin. River, Chance, Holden—who was everyone’s new favorite person—sat across from us. Two other football players, Donte Weatherly and Isaiah Martin, rounded out the guys, while Julia and another girl I barely knew made up the rest.