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“Uh, yeah, it's been a while. How have you been?” I slurred.
She smiled flirtatiously. “Oh, I've been good. But I can't deny I've been missing a certain someone.”
“Oh yeah, is that right?”
“It is.” She ran her fingers along my forearm. “You're looking especially yummy, Emerson. Been hitting the gym more than usual?”
I laughed, probably a little too awkwardly. “No.”
She stared into my eyes, still smiling with her perfect, white teeth and full lips. “Well, like I said, you're looking extremely sexy.” Her fingers were tracing invisible patterns across my skin. She started to move in closer to me. “You know,” she continued, “my roommates are away on a trip tonight. I'm all alone at my place, and I'm feeling so lonely and bored. Why don't you come over and have a few more drinks with me? I've got some tequila just begging to be drunk.”
I almost said yes. Almost. But, as angry as I was at Brooke, part of me still believed she was the person I'd fallen for, and that, somehow, the thing with the cops all had to be some giant mistake. Besides, after being with Brooke, Melissa didn’t get my blood pumping even a little bit.
I gently removed Melissa's fingers from my arm and set her hand down on the bar. “Sorry, Melissa, I've already had too much to drink tonight. I'm actually feeling kinda s-sick. Seriously. If I even smell another beer, I'm gonna throw up.”
“Well, we don't have to drink, Emerson, we can go back and do… other things.”
I stood from my barstool. “Melissa, I'm gonna have to say no. Sorry. I can't, I just can't. See you round.”
With her eyes locked on me and boring holes into the back of my skull every step of the way, I stumbled out of the bar onto the damp, windy street where I held onto a street lamp, waiting in silence for a passing cab to stop.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Brooke
Four days. That’s how long it had been since Emerson and I had been together that night. That’s also how long it had been since I’d heard from him. It was Thursday and still not a word. The longer the silence lasted, the angrier I became—both with him for acting like he was, and with myself for being an idiot and buying his bullshit. How could I have been so stupid and let my feelings override logic? I had been naïve letting my guard down and allowing him to get close enough to do this to me. I should have known better. I really should have known better.
I was sitting on the living room sofa going over some notes for chemistry class—which Emerson had been noticeably absent from again—when Leslie walked in looking a little more on the weary side than usual.
“Hey, Bee,” she said in a tired voice.
“Hey, Les.”
“How's everything?”
“Ah, you know, study, study, study,” I announced. For a moment, I contemplated telling her the whole situation with Emerson, but she didn't look like she was up for a long conversation. Besides, I didn't know if I was up for one. And after four days, I knew she was going to give me hell for not telling her sooner, which only made me dread it more.
“Yeah, me, too,” she replied. “And, I’m exhausted. At least, I've been able to sleep well enough the past two nights.”
I cocked my head to the side. Leslie was usually a sound sleeper. I began to wonder what had previously been causing her to lose sleep. “Umm. Why weren’t you sleeping? What was wrong before?”
“Huh? You didn't notice? Oh, right, you've been at the library until late these past couple of nights.”
“Yeah, I've got those three big essays due. It's just easier to write them where all of the reference books and journals are. Plus, there are no distractions like there are here. I’m just glad the library stays open until eleven a few nights a week.”
“Well, those jerks next door kept me up again on Tuesday night playing DJ and blasting their music at full volume. It was so loud that everything in my room was vibrating. I beat on the wall, but that didn’t do any good. I even tried to be nice and tell the crazy chick in the hall that they needed to keep it down. It didn’t work and I couldn't take it, so I called the cops. That shut them up.”
My mouth dropped open. “You did what?!”
“Like I said, I called the cops. I’d given those jerks enough warnings, and they didn't seem to matter, so I just did what I had to do.”
“But you know there's a ton of alcohol in their place, right? I mean… they might have gotten into a lot of trouble, Les.”
She shrugged her shoulders. “So? They knew the risk they were taking. They insisted on carrying on with the noise as if that place was a damn club or something. I'm sorry, Brooke, but sometimes people like that only learn one way—the hard way. It had to be done.”
“So what happened?”
“The cops showed up and shut the party down. That's all I know. I fell asleep a few minutes after the noise stopped.”
