Page 72 of Under the Influence

I slip myself through the roof, knocking a bag of weed and a lighter off the center console. “Jesus,” I mutter.

I unlock the doors for Carson, holding up an entire bottle of whiskey that’s drained, “Yeah, I think he’s a little drunk.”

Carson yanks the keys out of the ignition, killing the Jeep’s engine. Nash’s eye is bruised, his hair a little messed up, but he’s dressed to the nines. Not his usual IDGAF outfit from his bedroom floor. He’s actually tried to look nice, and a simple rose is crumpled on the floorboard—that isn’t filled with trash. He cleaned his Jeep out, and he dressed up.

“Looks like he was coming to get you, well before everything happened.”

I look at Carson as worry floods his eyes. “He’s breathing, but he’s messed up, Cori. We need to get him home and in the shower or something.”

I nod, understanding. I lift my hand to his cheek, hoping that my touch will stir something up, but I decide to use my voice instead, leaning into Nash’s ear. “Hey, hey. It’s me. I’m here, and we’re going to take you somewhere safe.”

I feel him move beneath me, his eyes barely opening. “It’s okay,” I remind him, “You’re going to be okay.”

Carson helps move him into his truck, and I lock the Jeep, joining him. Nash doesn’t move in the back, and honestly, he doesn’t even look alive.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t drive his Jeep back. I just… I can’t do it.”

Carson’s beautiful dark brown eyes turn to me, “It’s alright. Whatever it is, one day it’s gonna be alright.”

I suck in a ragged breath, trusting him more than I trust anyone else, “My best friend died. One minute we were walking down the halls at school together, and the next, she was bleeding to death in my car.”

He’s silent, and I don’t know whether to keep talking or sink into the floorboard and hide. So I determine that I’ve said enough until he reaches across the center console, his huge hand falling over mine. “What happened?”

“I wish I knew exactly,” I whisper. “We fought the night before. We never did that. I came to find her after she sent me a couple cryptic text messages and found her lying at her parents’ house alone,” I sniff, not even realizing that reliving it for the first time in months was causing me to get emotional. “I tried to get her to my car. I thought it would be faster, but I wasn’t fast enough. I couldn’t save her.”

“You drove her to the hospital?” he croaks.

“I panicked. I don’t even remember getting her there.”

“That’s why you left Chicago?”

I exhale, “I left because it was my fault.”

Carson squeezes my hand, “You didn’t kill her, Cori.”

“I did, Carson. I betrayed our friendship, I lied to her, and she killed herself because of it.”

He doesn’t push after that, and I’m thankful for it because the less he knows, the better. I don’t want him to hate me for what I did. We pull into Nash’s house, and his dad must still be finalizing the move because it’s empty.

I help Carson get him up the stairs to his room and into the shower, fully dressed. Nash finally opens his eyes, muttering a few curse words under his breath at Carson. We leave him under the stream of water, and I rummage through his drawers, searching for something to change him into.

Carson looks around, fascinated.

“What’s wrong?” I ask.

“It’s never this clean,” he walks around the room, opening the sliding glass doors to the balcony. A perfectly set bistro table and lights strung along the railing. Carson’s stare drops to me, something behind his eyes that I know all too well. Guilt.

Nash was going to bring me back here?

Carson lifts him from the shower, pushing the door closed as he tries to strip the wet clothes from his body. I leave them be and take in my surroundings. The impersonal room doesn’t give me anything, no inside view into what he might be like. It’s nothing at all like Carson’s room that I’ve spent almost every night this week in. I know it’s wrong, but I sleep better next to him.

Nash is almost totally unresponsive as Carson deposits him on his bed. Taking a seat next to me at the foot of Nash’s bed, his hand slides up my arm, the back of his knuckles rubbing where my stitches lie beneath my shirt sleeve.

“Is he going to be okay?”

Carson moves his hand up to my chin, holding it steady, “He’ll be okay. Will you?”

I sigh, leaning my forehead into his, “Yeah.”