Chapter 20
“Come straight home after school.” My mom parks the car on the side of the sidewalk in front of my school.
I roll my eyes and huff. “I know. And you’ll be calling to make sure I’m home.” I say the words sarcastically. It’s becoming a new norm.
Without caring if my mom sees me or not, I stop and glance around the parking lot to see if I can spot Kai’s car. Some days, he has it. I never know when he will.
I can’t find the car, but I do see Paige get out of her white Corolla and run over to me.
“Holy shit, you’re alive?” she asks, as if she’s surprised,
“Yeah. I am,” I mumble.
“Saturday was crazy. I honestly thought I’d find out your mom was shipping you off to boarding school.”
I jerk back. “Why? What happened?”
She narrows her eyes. “You don’t remember?”
I shake my head.
She laughs and shrugs. “That would make sense. You got way too drunk.”
I figured that much. My mind was fuzzy about what happened, but my body kept me up to speed.
Both of us walk into the bathroom that we use to sit and talk in. It has a long counter before entering the part where the toilets are. We used to ditch, sit here, and talk. I'm surprised I haven’t ditched that much this year.
I jump up on the counter and lean my back against the wall, waiting for Paige to tell me what happened. The bell rings for first period, and neither of us move. I guess we’re ditching.
“We were playing pool. One minute you were fine, and the next you were slurring your words and couldn’t stand or walk at all.”
“Seriously?” I ask, trying to remember, but everything is still a blur.
“What’s the last thing you remember?” she asks as she grabs a lip gloss from her bag and spreads it along her lips.
“Playing pool is where it gets fuzzy. Did I keep drinking?”
She nods. “It was already pretty late, and Kai was worried about you getting home. He tried sobering you up with water, coffee, and bread, but you kept spitting it out.”
Wow, that must have been a turn-on for Kai.
“Kai and his friend drove you home around six in the morning.”
She hops up onto the counter and sits on the opposite side of me. “We didn’t know how you were going to make it back inside your house alone. That’s why I thought you would have gotten caught. Kai was talking about walking inside with you.”
I look at her, baffled. That was a close one. I can’t keep doing this. I’m going to get myself in more trouble.
“Have you not talked to Kai?” she asks.
“No. My mom still has my phone, and she won’t let me use the house phone. I’m grounded from everything.” I sigh. “To be honest, I’m surprised she didn’t ground me from school because she knows I still see you and Kai here.”
“She would get in trouble herself if she kept you from school.”
“True.”
“I miss hanging out with you. Why’d you have to get caught?”
Our conversation stops when a couple of girls walk in. They must have had the same idea as us. They turned right back around once they saw us sitting on the counter.
“We still hang out.”
“Only on the weekends. And half the time you’re with Kai.” She crosses her legs over each other.
I do miss girl time with her. We used to do it all the time. Everything has changed so much over the last few months. It’s crazy. “What’s going on with you and Owen? Do you like him?”
She shrugs. “We’ve only hung out on the weekends at the parties.”
“You guys haven’t hung out outside of that?”
She shakes her head.
“What? I thought you guys had been hanging out this whole time. You two look very cozy every time I see you guys together.”
“Nope, only on the weekends. I haven’t asked him to hang out aside from the weekends. Maybe this is just a weekend fling.”
The bell rings, not giving me enough time to ask more about how she feels about him. We both scoot off the counter and walk out.
“I’m going to need a note to excuse my absence,” I say.
“Okay. I’ll write you one.”
“Blakely.”
Someone calls my name from somewhere behind me. I look over my shoulder and see Kai with furrowed brows and a tense posture.
“I’ll see you in class, Paige.”
She looks at Kai and then back to me and nods.
“Where have you been?” he asks, pulling me into his arms.
“With Paige in the bathroom. What’s wrong?”
“I waited all morning for you. Then you never came out of your classroom, and it made me even more worried that something might have happened after I dropped you off.”
I must have been really bad if both Paige and Kai were worried about me.
We’re walking the halls hand in hand, avoiding the other students who are rushing to get to their next class. “Paige clued me in on everything except the part when you dropped me off.”
Kai walks me into the auditorium. I’m surprised no one is in here ditching. It’s a pretty good spot. It’s dark, with a ton of chairs you could hide in. If you’re quiet, I doubt anyone would see you. Why haven’t I done this before?
We take a seat on the highest chair, where no light shines in. “Do you not want to go to class?” I ask Kai.
“I would rather sit here with you. I worried all day yesterday about you.”
He pulls me into his arms. The warmth of him radiates through my body. “So, what happened?”
“First off, you were very stubborn that night.”
I smirk and raise my brows.
“I kept telling you to let me walk you inside and you wouldn’t let me because you said your mom would find out.
You were so worried about me getting into trouble with your mom.
I let you go in by yourself. We stayed back for a little to see if we saw any lights turn on or heard any noises.
Since we didn’t hear anything, we left.”
As I continue to tell Kai what I woke up to, I can’t help shake the feeling of being on edge. I can’t keep drinking like that. It’s scary to get so drunk I don’t even know what I’m doing and can’t remember what happened.