The memory of his stupid special snowflake speech sobers me right up. I sit up straighter and stare ahead. “Just take me home. Then we can go back to never speaking to each other since that’s how you prefer it.”
Emory’s phone beeps and he reaches into his pocket to retrieve it. It’s probably a message from some girl, a prettier, nicer girl than me. One he’d rather be hanging out with instead of dealing with the drunk idiot he used to consider a friend. I draw in a deep breath and let it out slowly, willing the buzz to go away.
I wish he didn’t look so sexy from the glow of his phone screen. I wish this whole stupid car didn’t smell like leather and his fresh laundry scent and I’d give away all of the scarred pieces of my heart if I could lose the memory of the last time I was in this car, holding hands with him, teetering on the edge of falling dangerously in love when it was all just a lie.
“Do you need me to get out?” I say, fumbling for the door handle. “Give you some time alone so you can call whoever just texted you?”
“I didn’t get a text,” he says, pressing the home button at the bottom of his phone. “It was my weather app.”
I scoff, shaking my head as I gaze out into the nearly empty parking lot. “You and your dorky weather app. What did it say? ‘Warning: it’s cold as shit outside?’”
“Something like that,” Emory says, flashing me a look that transports me right back to the good days when we hung out during gym and sat next to each other during the support group. I wish I could look away but I can’t. “Give me a second, okay?”
I nod. I watch him as he slides his thumb across the phone screen and then holds it to his ear. A woman’s voice answers, from the sound of it. “Hi, Mrs. Rush? It’s Emory. I was your daughter’s date to homecoming.”
My heart stops and despite the efforts of the Camaro’s heater, my entire chest freezes into a block of ice. He called my mother? She’s going to kill me.
“Emory, hi,” Mom says, her voice trilly and distant through the other end of the phone. I struggle to make out what she says. “Is everything okay?”
“Yes, ma’am.” His eyes lock with mine. “Well, there’s been a complication but things are fine. Isla had a date, and it didn’t go too well. Turns out some douche took her to Dallas.”
“He did what? Oh my God,” Mom says, loud enough for me to hear clearly. I’m so freaking confused all I can do is sit here and listen to Emory’s lies unfold. I guess it’s better than him telling her I’m drunk.
“No worries, Mrs. Rush. She needed me to get her, so I’m on my way. I should have her back home in two and a half hours.”
“You are such a sweetheart.” The rest of her sentence is too quiet for me to make out.
Emory nods. “I’ll take care of her … of course, Mrs. Rush … You, too. Bye.”
I throw him a glare. “How do you have my mom’s phone number?”
“She gave it to me before homecoming. For emergencies.”
Of course she did. “Why did you say David took me to Dallas? We’re still in Granite Hills.”
“No, I said some douche took you.” He scratches the back of his head. “I didn’t say which douche.”
His words roll around in my addled mind, and I try to make sense of them. “We’re going to Dallas?”
“Weather app,” he says as if that makes all the sense in the world. He puts the phone in my hand, and I stare at a picture of digital snowflakes next to the temperature: fourteen degrees Fahrenheit. “My awesome app just alerted me that it’s snowing up there. It’s only an hour away. I’m taking you to see it.”
Chapter Thirty
The moon hangs over us, a bright crescent peering down, watching Emory and me drive beneath its glow. Emory takes backroads that are unknown to me as we head north, toward the highway. There are no streetlights back here, and I catch an owl, perched regally on a fence post, staring straight at me as we zoom by a field. My breath fogs on the glass of my passenger window, and I wipe it away with my sleeve.
“Why are you doing this?” I ask, more to break the last five minutes of silence than to get a real answer. I’ve given up on trying to figure him out.
“You don’t need to figure me out,” he says, his eyes on the road. “You can just ask me if you have a question.”
Shit. Did I say that out loud?
“I’m just …” I hear myself say as I slouch down into the heated leather seat. The warmth and the feel of the tires on the road are soothing. “I just need to close my eyes a bit.”
The chorus of a Twenty One Pilots song slips into my subconscious, the melody swirling around until I startle, opening my eyes and finding myself back in Emory’s car. I push myself into a sitting position, rubbing my eyes. Emory turns down the radio. “Hello again.”
“How long did I sleep?”
“Half an hour. You feeling okay? Not going to hurl in my car or anything?”
I shake my head and wonder when my skull became the weight of a grand piano. I swallow and blink a few times, pick out a Chevy logo on the dash and try to focus on it without feeling dizzy or drunk or suddenly very amused. A chuckle rises up in my throat, and I try to hold it back, but dammit I’m drunk, and now I’m giggling.
Emory looks at me, a smile tugging at his lips. Our eyes meet for a second, and then he looks back at the road, his head shaking slightly. “How much did you have to drink?”
“I don’t know,” I say in a singsong. I hold up my index finger and then my other one. “One or two or five?” Laughter comes again. “I don’t know, Emory Underwood. I really don’t know. I think five. Maybe it was five.”
“You really like using my last name,” he muses.
“So? Does that bother you?” My hand does that thing again, reaching out on its own accord and touching his face. When he doesn’t shrug me away, I pet his hair. And somewhere deep down, I know this is weird, even for drunken standards, but the alcohol chases away those thoughts. I let my hand slide across his shoulder and down his arm, all the way to his elbow. “I bet most of the girls you hook up with don’t know your first name, much less your last one.”
“I told you a long time ago that I don’t hook up with the girls I date. It never goes past second … or third base.” His voice is calm, even when defending his integrity.
I nod vigorously and put my hands back in my own lap. “Sure. And I totally believe you. Just like I believed you when you said you wanted to be my friend.”
“I am your friend, Isla.”
“Hmph.” I cross my arms and look back out the passenger window.
The car decelerates, and Emory clicks on the blinker. I look up quickly, fear gripping me. “I don’t want to go home right now,” I say, figuring that’s the only reason he’d be stopping.
“We’re just getting something to take all of that drunkenness out of you,” he says. We turn into a McDonald’s parking lot, and I watch as the streetlamps overhead make Emory’s face light then dark then light then dark again. He is really, really, really, attractive. I clamp my teeth together and roll my lips under my teeth. I will not accidently say that one out loud.
He orders two large fries, plain hamburger buns, and two water bottles. The guy in the drive through window smirks when he takes Emory’s credit card. He hands over the receipt, and I see the letters R-E-C-K tattooed across his knuckles. “Hangover food?” he says, leaning down to get a look at me.
“You got it,” Emory says, handing me the fast food bags. “Eat up,” he tells me as we pull back onto the highway. “I want my old Isla back. Not this weirdly giggly version.”
My old Isla.
I swallow and focus all of my attention to the task of opening the paper bag and grabbing a French fry. “Why would you want the old me back?” I ask, biting off the crunchy tip. “You don’t even talk to the old me anymore. Besides the stupid coffee, it’s like we don’t know each other, not anymore.”
“I thought you liked coffee?”
I shove two more fries in my mouth and wat
ch his expression go from confused to concerned. “I do,” I say. “But I don’t know why you do it. We’re not friends anymore.”
“We are.” He draws in a deep breath, and I wait for whatever he’s about to say. Apprehension wraps around me, and I don’t even know why. I should have written him off a long time ago. Damn my stupid heart and all of its useless heartstrings that slithered themselves around him and won’t let go. I need a scalpel. I need to get out of this car and run far away until every single memory of him is gone, gone, gone.
“You have to stop saying that.” I level a glare toward him. “We’re not friends. You’ve made that perfectly clear by your actions.”
“Dammit, Isla.” Emory exhales sharply. His knuckles turn white on the steering wheel. “Do you even pay attention to my actions? I bring you coffee. I keep to myself every single day. There are no more girls in the hallways, Isla. Don’t you see that?”
My jaw quivers but I hold my gaze. “You don’t talk to me. You quit the support group. You texted ‘sorry’ and then I never heard from you again. Those are the actions I care about. So you’re not a man slut anymore, wow. Do you want a prize for that?”
“What about this action?” he says, his eyes daring me to challenge him. “I went to the movies alone just to check out the competition.”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“It means I’m in love with you, and I’m trying to figure out a way to tell you.”
My heart leaps into my throat. We’re going eighty miles an hour, but the whole world just stopped. Emory turns his attention back to the road. His body stays still, but the air around us fills with a tension thicker than the secret he just spilled.
I watch his profile as I search for the words to say. The car slows down, and Emory glances over his shoulder before gliding into the right lane and then pulling over to the side of the road. “We’re here,” he says with a nod toward the right.
The city of Dallas looms ahead, a cluster of brightly lit buildings, a globe of lights, and the green-lined skyscraper that’s so iconic to the Texas town. We’re still on the outskirts of the great city, pulled over on an area of the interstate that’s bordered on both sides by grassy, sloping fields of trees. I only want to look at Emory, to memorize the lines of his face, the vulnerable look in his eyes now that he’s bared his soul. But I follow his gaze and look out of the window to my right.
The grass is white. I watch in awe as tiny flakes fall from the sky, drifting carefree, so unlike the harsh drops of rain I’m used to. “Wow,” I murmur, putting a hand to the glass.
“Want to go see it?” he says. There’s a hint of adventure in his voice.
I grin.
We climb out of the car and venture into the snow-covered grass. My heels sink, but I trudge through, my eyes to the sky as it drops wave after wave of tiny little crystals of snow.
“It’s so beautiful,” I say, marveling in the wonderful sea of white that surrounds us.
“Yeah, it’s something,” Emory says, closing his eyes and throwing his head back. Tiny little dots of snow cover his eyelashes and sprinkle onto his hair. When his eyes open again, I can’t stop smiling. I want to touch him, but I am stuck, and not just by my heels that are becoming buried in the snow.
Emory cups his hands together in front of him, catching snow. “Here,” he says, transferring the fluffy pile into one hand and reaching for me with the other. When he takes my hand, a shiver ripples through my body, warming me to the core. He turns my palm up and drops the snow into it. “Now you’ve seen snow.”
“It’s crunchy,” I say closing my fist and letting the crystals clump together. “And cold.”
Emory steps closer, snow covering his hair and shoulders. His eyes seem to sparkle in the moonlight, and his breath comes out in a puff of white. “Was it worth it?”
I nod, unable to take my eyes off his. His toes inch forward until they are touching the tips of my heels. A shadow falls over his face as he looks down at me, and he is so very close it makes my stomach twist and flutter. The falling snow is a shield from the outside world, a cocoon that protects us from everyone and everything outside of this very moment.
Emory’s hand touches my cheek. It’s cold and warm at the same time. A chill runs down my spine when this thumb slides over my skin. “I was wrong, Isla. You are a special snowflake.”
I take in a shallow breath, scared to move, scared to blink for fear that he will disappear. He holds my gaze, his dark eyes swimming with a kind of adoration I’ve never seen before. “I’ve avoided you lately because I couldn’t handle my feelings for you. I didn’t want to face it—it was terrifying. It is terrifying,” he says, his chest heaving. He shakes his head and his other hand cups the other side of my face, tilting my head closer to him. “I thought I could handle the fake homecoming date. I thought you’d get on with your life and find some new guy, and I could walk away and let you go off with someone who actually deserved you.”
“I don’t want anyone else.” I breathe the words. If my body is cold, I can’t tell. I slide my hands up and inside of his leather jacket. They wrap around his waist, and he leans into my embrace, his breath escaping in a shudder.
Emory’s eyes drift to my mouth. My toes tingle at the instant memory of his lips on mine, at the perfection of having him so close to me. His forehead presses against mine and every wall we’ve ever constructed between us comes tumbling down. His kiss is cold, but it awakens a heat inside of me and evokes all of the feelings I’ve tried so hard to keep buried and hidden away. His hands slide around my neck as he deepens the kiss and I grip him hard, kissing him back with everything I have.
“I don’t know how to be in love,” he whispers, kissing me again and again.
“I do,” I say, my lips just inches away from his. I pull back and look him in the eyes. “I am kind of good at it.”
He grins. “Maybe you could teach me.”
Chapter Thirty-One
We stand there, wrapped in each other’s arms, my hands under his jacket, his chin resting on my head, our feet disappearing under a blanket of snow. The air is dry and cold and makes my lungs thrive as I breathe in the wintery air mixed with Emory’s citrus scent. He smells fresh and clean, a brand new presence in my life, ready to take on the world with me. I’ve never felt more alive, protected in our own bubble, our own real-life snow globe.
Emory’s pocket beeps a high-pitched warning. He frowns, and retrieves his phone. I read the words upside down as he says them out loud. “Extreme weather advisory,” he says, looking at me. “We should get back in the car. The snow is about to get worse.”
“That’s probably a good idea,” I say, noticing the shiver has returned, and my teeth start to chatter. “I can’t exactly feel my feet anymore.”
When we’re back in the Camaro, Emory cranks the heat, and I press my feet against the heat vent on the floorboard, letting the feeling come back into my toes. “Time to take you home like the studious gentleman I am,” Emory says, flashing me that smile of his. The one that somehow makes my knees weak and sparks a flame of irritation at the same time.
I frown as reality slams back into me. “Will everything go back to the way it was?” I ask, my voice breaking despite my best efforts to keep it steady. “Coffee in the mornings and me going alone to the support group?”
“No, Isla,” he says, reaching for my hand.
My phone rings. “It’s my mom,” I say, panic, not cold, making my hand shake. If I answer, will she know? Will she magically realize that I got drunk with a college guy, that Emory saved me and lied to her, that we’re an hour from home in a snowstorm, falling so hard for each other that we might never be the same again?
“You need to answer that,” Emory says by the fourth ring.
When I answer, I try to make my voice seem normal.
“Hey, honey,” Mom says. She sounds a little tired, but not like she’s privy to all of the things I kept secret from her. “Did Emory get to you yet?”
“Yeah, he just got here.” I look over at him, and he winks.
“Great.” I brace myself for an onslaught of questions about how I ended up here and what could have gone wrong to need Emory’s intervention, but Mom just says, “I just saw the weather alerts, and I don’t think it would be safe for you to drive back right now.”
“Oh,” I say. Emory’s eyebrow quirks. “You don’t think we should drive back because of the snow?” I say, just to let him know what we’re talking about, though the explanation makes his eyebrow lift even higher.
“Do you still have your emergency credit card?” Mom asks.
“Yep,” I say, glancing toward my purse in the back seat.
“Great. Go to the nearest hotel and get both of you a room, okay? And tell Emory I’m so sorry and it’s not that I don’t trust him but this weather is scary, and I just want you to be safe.”
I nod even though she can’t see it, and then I mumble something that lets her know I understand, and I’ll follow her directions. All the while, I can’t take my eyes off Emory as he watches me, curiously wondering what’s going on. I had been worried that our little bubble on the side of the road would disappear as soon as we got back home. Well, if that’s true, at least I get to prolong it a little while longer.
“What’d she say?” Emory asks when I hang up the phone.
I check the screen again, just to make sure the call has ended, and then I grin, feeling a little bit drunk again.
“Iz-la,” he says, dragging out the nickname as he leans across the driver’s seat, his head falling to his shoulder. “I am not a fan of being kept in the dark. Especially when you have that look on your face.”
“She wants us to go to a hotel. Get separate rooms. And wait out the snow.”
We’re both quiet as my words hang in the air between us. Emory breaks first, his lips curving upward as he leans over the center console. I close my eyes and let him kiss me again, reveling in the sensation of butterflies bursting awake inside of my stomach.
The Breakup Support Group Page 22