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“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.
