by Brooke Moss
“I can think of better times.” He snorted, his slow smile returning. “Hand me the keys, Snow White.”
I held them behind my back. “I am not about to let you drive Liza’s car. You’ve been drinking. I’ll just call my mom. She’ll be off work in a couple hours.”
He rolled his Cinnabon eyes. “I’ve been drinking water, Officer Snow.”
“You’re a college kid. Doesn’t remaining sober go against everything you stand for?”
He gave me a hard look. “Not when you don’t drink at all.”
“Oh.” Wincing, I fidgeted with Liza’s keys. “Sorry.”
We both looked at Liza for a beat. She burped, then giggled to herself.
He held out his spare hand. “Just give me the keys. I’ll take you guys home.”
“Ugh. Fine.” Shoving them at him, I yanked open the back door. Putting my hands underneath Liza’s arms, we maneuvered her closer to the car. Her body was now limp, and I would’ve thought she might be dead, if it weren’t for the fact that she’d started to snore. “Get her legs, would ya? And don’t look up her skirt.”
His eyes narrowed. “Give me some credit.”
Together we struggled to maneuver Liza across the back seat. Once she was settled, Preston reached in and buckled her seatbelt. “The curvy roads will make her sick. Keep a finger on the window button in case she hurls.”
I slid into the passenger’s seat. “Sounds like you’ve got plenty of experience with drunk girls.”
He glared at me. “You need to—”
“Pres?” Liza suddenly sat up facing the open car door, and tried to focus her watery eyes at him. “I’m s-sorry our date…” She stopped to burp. “Didn’t work out… will you call me tomorrow?”
Preston’s apologetic expression clearly said he would do no such thing, but he didn’t get the chance.
A wet gurgle sounded in the back of Liza’s throat, and before we could react, she’d vomited the contents of her stomach down his bare legs. Preston closed his eyes and groaned, a sound that made everyone in the yard stop what they were doing to stare. Liza’s dripping mouth tugged into a smile as she curled onto the seat to continue her catnap. The smell hit about half a second after…and holy crap, it was awful.
I covered my nose. “Oh, man.”
Preston shook droplets of partially digested food off of his legs. “Mother f—”
“Watch it, chief. It’s your fault she’s wasted.” A burst of hysterical laughter bubbled up in the back of my throat, and I slapped my hand over my mouth. “You’re gonna need a shower.”
Preston tugged his phone from his pocket, he punched out a quick text, pressed send, and then shook the muck from his legs.
“Becker knows I’m leaving,” he informed me striding over to the side of the house where there was a hose. “And you owe me now.”
“I what?”
He didn’t answer. Instead, he climbed into the car, waved goodbye to all of his fans, and fired up Liza’s car. For no explicable reason, I found myself smiling as we drove off.
CHAPTER FIVE
“So where am I headed?” Preston asked, pulling onto the road.
I buckled my seatbelt. “My apartment. Looks like I’m on duty tonight.”
“Yeah.” He looked at my hammered friend in the rearview mirror. “Might want to keep a bucket handy.”
“You’re probably right.” I remembered the time Liza barfed Top Ramen noodles all over the dashboard of my mother’s car in eleventh grade. I’d gotten grounded for a month just for going to a drinking party, and I’d been banished from ever bringing a drunken Liza home with me again. “Unfortunately, I’m going to have to keep this hidden from my mom tonight. That’ll be the real trick.”
He slowed the car as we went around a bend in the road. “Is she not cool with these kinds of things?”
“She’s uh…” My stomach rolled. I wasn’t the personal details type. Especially with cocky Richie-Rich types. If high school had taught me nothing else, it was that the cool kids could never be trusted. “She’s actually three and a half years recovered. In AA, and all that, so she’s just really sensitive. Says it’s a trigger for her.”
“Oh.” His warm brown eyes shifted back to the road. A truck full of kids passed us, honking. “My dad is eight years sober. Christmas is a trigger for him.”
My mouth dropped. It never occurred to me anything unsavory happened in the McMansions surrounding the lake. “Really? I… I didn’t think—”
“Didn’t think rich people had problems?” Preston’s face was overtaken by his all-to-familiar smirk. “Common misconception.”
“Sorry.” I looked away. “It’s cool, though. Your dad, I mean. Eight years. That’s awesome.”
“I think so.” He gestured to the road ahead of us. “So where do you live?”
I gulped, nervously. “Butterfield. Edge of town.”
“Okay.” Preston sped up as the road unwound in front of us. “The apartments?”
“Yup.” Sweat prickled the skin underneath my arms, and I reached for the AC controls. “It’s stifling in here.”
“Wait.” His hand covered my fingers, stopping me. “Don’t.”
His skin touching mine made my heart skip. I jerked my hand away. “It’s hot out.”
“Yeah, but it’s also gorgeous.” He powered down all of the windows. Warm wind filtered into the car, ruffling Preston’s sun-streaked locks. “Before we know it, there’ll be a foot of snow on the ground and we’ll be putting chains on the tires.”
“Don’t talk like that.” I turned my face to the welcomed breeze. “Blasphemous.”
He glanced over his shoulder. “She okay back there?”
I reached in the back and jostled Liza’s shoulder. “Feeling sick? Need us to pull over?”
She opened one eye and smiled lazily. “Feel fine. Need to shhhleep. Turn down the music.”
Preston and I exchanged a glance. The radio wasn’t on.
“She’ll be fine. But if history serves, she’s out for the night,” I told him, glancing at my phone. “I need to find a way to keep her out of my apartment until my mom leaves for her night job.”
“Good. You can be my excuse to stay gone longer.”
“Longer?” I snorted to myself. “Isn’t a kegger at the lake like a frat boy’s Super Bowl?”
He shook his head. “You really don’t like me, do you?”
“I don’t even know you.” We sped along the road, the forest gave way to houses closer and closer together as we approached town. “So… why flowers?”
He narrowed his eyes as he watched the road carefully. “What do you mean?”
Drawing a deep breath of air that tasted like freshly cut grass and late evening sunshine, I hung my arm out the window. “Why do you always get the girls flowers? They’re expensive. Cliché. Why not chocolate, or, I don’t know, Starbucks or something?”
“My mom said women love fresh flowers.” He turned into the parking lot of The Tiny Yellow Coffee Shack. “And I thought that would make—”
“Girls want to sleep with you?” I flat lined.
“No.” When Preston caught me glaring at him, he added, “I mean, it’s an added bonus, but not the primary goal.”
I shook my head. “Right.”
He parked and cut the engine. “I just want to stand out. So many of the guys at my school are slobs. They party, cheat in their classes, hook up with random girls. I just like being different.”
I gave him side eye. “So you’re not looking to hook up, right?”
“Right.” When my head snapped in his direction, he laughed. “Well, not all the time.”
“Right,” I repeated, looking around. “Why did we stop?”
“Have you never been here before?”
“No.” I examined the brightly painted shack, and shook my head. It was fairly new, and well, it was the Pacific Northwest. There was a coffee stand on every corner, and when one went under, another replaced it within weeks. “Sorry
.”
“It’s time I did something I’ve wanted to do for a while. And like I said, you owe me.” He unbuckled his seatbelt and grabbed the door handle. “Come on.”
“Something you’ve wanted to do for a while?” I craned my neck to inspect the place. “This doesn’t look like a smart place to leave a body. Too close to downtown.”
His lips twitched and before I could prepare myself, that cocky smile returned. “I came to your flower shop today to ask you out.”
“What does this place have to do with it?”
He climbed out of Liza’s car. “This was going to be part of the date.”
I looked over my shoulder to see if Liza was listening, but she was curled on her side, snoring as she drooled delicately onto the backseat. “Why?”
“Don’t like coffee?” He winked. A brilliant flash of brown as his longer-than-should-be-legal-on-a-guy lashes dropped, then rose again. “We can get tea, if you want. Or hot chocolate. I mean, it’s sort of a girly drink. But I’m comfortable enough with my sexuality to—”
“Wait.” I climbed out. “I don’t want to hear anything about your sexuality.”
His grin widened. “Oh, I bet you do.”
“GAH!” I banged my fist on the hood of Liza’s car. “You’re infuriating.”
He shrugged. “So you’ve said.”
“Well, I can’t have coffee with you,” I said, throwing up my hands. “Your date—my best friend—is passed out. And… you’re a douche bag.”
Preston’s hands went to his heart. “Man, you know how to gut a guy, Snow White.”
I drew a deep breath, then released it slowly. “You’re just mad because your date got hammered in like an hour, and now you’re girl-less for the night.”
“False,” he said. “I’m mad because the girl I’ve been checking out at the flower shop for, oh, I don’t know, two months, is always rude to me.”
I gawked at him. “Yeah, when you go in for flowers for other girls.”
“False again!” He yelled, throwing his hands up. “Like two-thirds of those bouquets were for fake dates.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Fake?”
He shrugged. “I was trying to get your attention.”
“No, you weren’t.”
“Pricilla, Mary Ann, Janet, Gwen, Betsy, Lucy, and Stacy.”
“Whatever.”
He held up both hands, counting off fingers. “Presley, Gilligan’s Island, Jackson, Stefani, Ross, I Love Lucy, and Stacy Ferguson, a.k.a. Fergie.”
I looked at him through narrowed eyes. “You named one of them after Fergie?”
“Duh. She’s hot.” Preston jerked his chin in the direction of the coffee stand. “Come on, Mo closes soon.”
After peeking into the window to make sure Liza was okay, I crossed around to his side of the car. “Mo?”
“Monica,” he clarified, walking with me over to the order window. “She makes the best frozen hot chocolate this side of the country.”
“Frozen hot chocolate?”
“Is there an echo?” He laughed at his own joke. “Yes. It’s awesome. And she’ll make it with a shot of coffee, if you need the boost.”
“No, thanks. I have to get up early for work tomorrow.” I watched as Preston approached the window to order our drinks.
There was no way this was real. Guys like Preston played Frisbee on the campus green and collected a monthly allowance from mom and dad to reload his Nintendo Switch with new games. Girls like me clip coupons and pay our electric bill in installments. Guys like Preston listened to Post Malone to make himself feel cool. Girls like me buy knock-off purses online to feel posh. Guys like Preston paid girls to do their homework for them. Girls like me didn’t have homework anymore because going away to college was never an option.
“Do you do your own homework?” I wondered out loud.
“What?” He turned to look at me quizzically. “Why?”
“Never mind.”
He placed our order, and I waited patiently. If Preston Wallingford, Junior, had come into Petal Pushers to see me, then why was he always so arrogant? I remembered being told by my grandmother when I was little if a boy was mean to me, it meant he liked me. That always made me mad. If he liked me, then why wouldn’t it make him want to be nicer to me? Was it possible Preston actually thought being snide and cocky was the way into an unsuspecting girl’s heart? What a load of crap.
He turned away from the window and grinned. “She’s making it now. How’s Liza?”
I peered back at the car just in time to see her sit up. The hair on one side of her head was sticking out. “Where are we?” she called, wiping the drool off her chin.
I trotted back over. “We’re heading to my place, but made a pit stop. I don’t want my mom to see you like this and stage an intervention.”
“Good idea.” She made guns out of her fingers, pretended to shoot me a couple times, then laid back down.
“Is Lisa awake?”
When I heard Preston’s voice, I whirled around. “Liza. Seriously, how can you not know that?”
“I do.” He laughed and handed me a plastic cup filled with blended, frozen chocolaty goodness. “I say it to annoy you. And you make it so easy.”
I took a lick off of the whipped cream on top. “Whatever.”
“Here.” Preston handed me a steaming cup of black coffee. “This is for her.”
I took it from him and grimaced. “It’s still like eighty-five degrees out. Who wants hot coffee?”
“People who need to sober up.”
“Thank you, sensei.” I leaned in the open window. “Hey, Li. You awake? Preston brought you some coffee.”
“Preshton?” she asked, not opening her eyes. “I have a date with him tomorrow.”
I looked at Preston over my shoulder. “Did you know you have a date with her again tomorrow?”
“Just put it in the cup holder. She can drink it if she wakes up.” He tugged my door open. “But for now, we have frozen drinks melting, and somewhere to be.”
“Somewhere to be?” I climbed in, taking a sip of the chocolate mixture. “I… wow, this is good. Like, really good. What’s it again?”
“Frozen hot chocolate.” Preston started the engine and pulled out of the parking lot. “I discovered it a couple summers ago when my family went to New York City. I saw it on the menu here a few weeks ago. Now I have to order it on the sly, because it’s such a girly drink.”
“This is amazing.” I slurped up another drink. “It actually tastes like milk that’s been slightly scorched on the stove, then mixed with chocolate, then frozen. This is fantastic. It’s… wait. This is a girly drink?” When he nodded, I rolled my eyes. “You’re not going to let gender norms keep you from getting your favorite frozen treat, are you?”
“Fine. No.” He turned onto the highway, bypassing the main drag. “I will order my frozen hot chocolate proudly.”
“Good.” I smiled to myself. “So where do we have to be?”
He glanced at me. “You said you needed to keep Liza gone for a while.”
“Yeah, so… why are you taking me out to the middle of nowhere?” Buildings became more and more sparse, and trees began to whiz past my open window. The sun was setting, and the lazy sound of crickets floated into the car. “Is it where you leave the bodies?”
He polished off his drink. “I’m taking you to the best swimming hole on the lake.”
“Okay, that legit sounds like a place where you’re going to murder me.”
“Nope.”
“Well, I’ll be hard to surprise. I grew up here. I know every inch of this lake.”
He sighed happily. “I’ll take my chances.”
I finished the last of my drink. “Are you taking me where you were going to take Liza?”
“I told you.” He shook his head and we got off the highway. “I’ve been wanting to ask you out for a while. I came into the shop today to do it, and when you acted so damn annoyed with me, I wrote the card to your
friend to get your attention.”
I squinted at him. “How did you know Liza was my friend?”
He shrugged. “When I met Liza at the beach, she mentioned she was waiting for her friend to get off work at the flower shop.”
Snorting, I said, “She could’ve meant my boss, Louise.”
“I took my chances.” We crested over a hill, and the forest grew thicker around us. “I thought maybe it’d make you jealous by putting Liza’s name on the bouquet. And when you didn’t bite, I texted her and asked if I could stop by. I asked her if she wanted to go to Becker’s party with me, and told her it was okay to bring a friend. I was just playing the game.”
I gawked at Preston. “Playing the what?”
He didn’t answer. Instead, we wound our way along the road that led down an incline back toward the lake. The pine trees were fragrant and the last drops of light from the sun sinking behind the trees to the west created a halo effect on the water. My stomach whirled with excitement. This section of lake was mostly comprised of preserved land, and the occasional unofficial campground. Wherever Preston Wallingford was taking me, it was gorgeous.
After turning onto a dirt drive, we maneuvered through a thicket of trees, the quiet between us strangely amicable. After a minute or two, we passed under a low hanging willow tree, exposing a swimming hole that’d been partially blocked off by stacked rocks, but was out of sight from the road a few yards back. The lake was still as glass, reflecting the light of the freshly risen moon.
Preston turned off the car and sang, “Ta da.”
I tried to stifle my grin, not wanting to show him just how impressed I was. “Ta da, indeed.”
“Well, what do you think?”
“I hate to admit it, but I’ve never been here.”
He grinned proudly. “Game, set, match, Snow White.”
Glancing in the back to make sure Liza was still snoring away, I replied, “You need a lesson on what girls like. Lesson one: girls do not like guys who play the game. So stop it. And lesson two: girls will love your secret swimming hole.”
CHAPTER SIX
“Okay. I admit my method is flawed.”
I scoffed, climbing out of the car. “Your method is archaic and offensive, Preston. Making a girl think you’ve got fifty dates with fifty girls—most of which are made up—just to make her jealous is not the way to get a girl to go out with you.”