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ChapterForty-Five
VERA
Before the party, I had made plans to hang out with Maddie for tonight. But at some point, she left the party without telling me and texted me ten minutes later with a winky-face emoji, demanding that I had a good night with Blaise tonight.
“Are you sure nobody else will be here?” I asked Blaise, gnawing on the inside of my cheek and eyeing the small milkshake bar centered in the middle of Redwood’s ritzy section with a view of the ocean.
He had insisted I come out with him.
It wasn’t that I didn’t want to be seen with him—I had been to the skatepark without a problem. I just didn’t like the rich Redwood families and students who attended Redwood Academy, and I wasn’t ready for the drama that would surround my dating—are we dating?—Redwood’s bad boy.
“Don’t worry about it.” He cut the headlights. “Maddie’s brother is having a crazy, wild party while their parents are out of town. Nobody is going to be out tonight, especially not down here.” When he still saw my hesitation, he continued, “If it makes you feel any better, we can grab the milkshakes to go and sit at the Overlook?”
“What’re you trying to do, get into my pants again?” I asked, arching a brow and stepping out of the car. A gust of wind chilled my skin, forcing me to zip my jacket. “Kids only go to the Overlook if they want to fuck.”
“I’m not going to deny that.” Blaise chuckled, shutting his door and stuffing his hands into his pockets. He opened the door to the milkshake shack. “If I wanna fuck you, your horny ass isn’t going to say no.”
My cheeks reddened. I mean, he wasn’t wrong.
After scanning the room to ensure that I didn’t recognize anyone from school, I stepped into the shop and walked up to the counter, staring up at all the flavors of ice cream and types of shakes. I had only been here once with Maddie in the summer because this place was expensive as hell.
“Order anything,” Blaise said, pulling out his wallet.
I glanced down at it and gnawed on the inside of my cheek, then turned back to the menu. I didn’t want him to pay for me, but I doubted that he would even let me argue to pay for my own.
“Can I have a vanilla milkshake?” I asked the employee.
“Vanilla?” Blaise tsked, leaning against the counter to order an Oreo deluxe milkshake. He turned around to face me, crossing his big arms over his chest, his biceps bulging. “So boring, Sunshine. Thank fuck that’s not how you like it in bed too.”
“Blaise,” I scolded quietly, looking around to make sure nobody had heard him. “Stop it.”
“Or what? Hmm?”
“Or I’ll … I’ll …” I started, but then stopped short.
“Blackmail me?” Blaise offered, taunting me with the blackmail he still had on me.
But somehow, I didn’t mind it so much anymore. Sure, he could hurt me and tell everyone, but part of me thought that he wouldn’t do that. Not now. Not after the day we’d spent together yesterday.
Once he paid for our milkshakes, Blaise drove us to the Overlook. A couple of cars were parked near the rocks with kids from Redwood inside, probably swapping cum. Because it was dark, I didn’t mind getting out of the car with Blaise and sitting with him on the rocks.
“You didn’t have to get Mateo anything,” I said after a while, feeling so … guilty.
Maybe that wasn’t the right word, but I didn’t know how else to explain it. Blaise and his family might’ve had all the money in the world, but that didn’t mean he needed to spend it on a gift for a kid he had barely known for a couple weeks.
A few hundred bucks was pocket change to Blaise. To my family, it wasn’t even enough to cover a quarter of rent. Mom saved every single penny for us to get by and to have a somewhat-decent life.
And it wasn’tanypresent, but a PS5! Those things had supposedly been on preorder for a year, and people still didn’t get them on time. When they had initially been released, bots had bought up all the stock, and now, scalpers sold them for, like, a thousand bucks each.
The PS5 surpassed my gift to Mateo, but at least he liked thatAttack on Titanshirt that I’d bought him.
“Of course I had to get the kid something,” Blaise said.
“No, you didn’t,” I argued. I sipped on my vanilla milkshake and stared out at the moonlight glimmering against the crashing waves in the ocean. “He would’ve appreciated you showing up.”
“I wasn’t going to show up to his birthday empty-handed.” Blaise sipped his shake and suddenly became tense. “Besides I, uh …” He paused for a long moment, scratched the back of his head, and glanced away from me. “I got you something too.”
A gush of warmth spread throughout my chest.
