Chapter Fifteen Max #2
Keely gestured to them. “Like that.”
“You, Keely Sinclair, doing a keg stand?” Sam snickered, elbowing Max like he was in on the joke.
Max staunchly ignored him, choosing instead to study Keely’s reaction. Her eyes narrowed at the challenge.
“Why is that so hard to believe?” She sniffed. “I could do a keg stand.”
Sam snorted around a drink of whatever was in his own cup. “Sure, and I could take off my clothes and sing ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’ on top of that table over there. I’m not gonna do it, though.”
Keely raised her chin. “It can’t be that hard.”
“Can’t be that hard,” Sam echoed. “Wanna bet?” What was this guy’s deal?
“Keely.” Max’s jaw ached from how hard he was clenching it. “You don’t have to prove anything to—”
Keely silenced him with a look. Then her mouth quirked. “Just watch me.”
· · · · ·
What a disaster.
Alex was giddy that someone else wanted in on his game, and he’d gathered everyone he could from the party. Maybe some neighbors, too. The result was approximately fifty people in a half circle around the keg.
“Ladies first,” Sam said, gesturing.
Alex explained the rules to Keely, who listened intently, tucking her tank top into her jeans. Max, once again hanging out on the periphery, got one too many glimpses of smooth pale skin for his liking.
Keely gripped the edges of the barrel. “Is someone going to hold my legs?”
Across the circle, Sam took a step forward. Which—no.
“I’ll do it,” Max muttered. Sam rolled his eyes, but Max ignored him. He tipped his head down, so his words were only for Keely. “No pranks right now. Promise. Fair and square.”
She bit her lip. Was that still her lip gloss, or was it from her seltzer? And why the hell was he thinking about that right now?
Her gaze searched his face. “The same way our little game is fair and square?”
He gritted his teeth. The onlookers were getting rowdy, and the attention stiffened his shoulders. “Do you want to do this or not?”
“I’ll hold your other leg,” Nolan offered. “As an impartial third party.”
With a sigh, she nodded. “You only live once, right?”
Did she just—
Keely grabbed the rim of the keg, kicking off the ground, and Max grabbed one of her legs. His grip was firm on her ankle, his thumb brushing the smooth skin between her jeans and sock. Heat flashed at the base of his spine.
“My first keg stand.” She whooped.
Her friends cheered in response. Jeremy started a chant of Keely.
As they hoisted her upside down, Max and Nolan shared a look.
Yeah, this was going to end horribly.
Keely, surprisingly, didn’t puke. Not at first. She chugged like an athlete would, breathing through her nose while downing the beer in slow, steady beats. He tried counting in his head, but lost it around twenty seconds, when the cheers of the crowd got too loud.
Max tried not to notice how her jeans hugged the curve of her ass. How these weren’t her shelter shoes, or the normal, cleaner sneakers she wore on campus, but pristine red Keds that matched her tank top.
And just when Max realized how weird it was that he kept noticing, of all things, her shoes, someone yelled, “Spit or swallow, Keely!”
Keely’s stomach spasmed with a choked-back laugh.
“She’s gonna hurl,” Nolan murmured, and they lowered her.
On instinct, Max’s hand found the dip of her waist as she came right side up and the blood rushed back to her extremities.
For a split second, Keely looked up at him with something other than animosity in her eyes. Here, in the moonlight, with music so loud it rattled his bones, she almost looked. . . thankful. A drop of beer slid down her chin and he wasn’t thinking when he reached to wipe it away.
“You okay there, Key?”
Her lips parted, eyes widening; they danced in the fairy lights. Max’s heart kicked up so hard, he felt like he’d just finished a sprint. The nickname had slipped out before he could stop it. Looking at her now, he didn’t know if he wanted to stop it.
Then Keely covered the bottom half of her face as white foam spewed out from between her fingers and out her nose. It sprayed over his chest, dripped onto his neck and across his skin. She doubled over, coughing and gasping for breath.
Oh. That look of hers made more sense now.
The vibe died pretty quickly as people floated off and were reabsorbed to the rest of the party. Aside from Jeremy, who was taking a video. His girlfriend shoved his arm down and muttered, “Be so for real right now, Jer.”
Max scooped his near-empty drink off the ground and held it out to Keely. Her face and neck were bright red. She shook her head, pushed him away, but he persisted. “It’s just Sprite. Drink it, Keely.”
She wrapped greedy hands around it and gulped it down. Her mascara was ruined, globbed around her eyes and in tear tracks down her cheeks.
He wouldn’t let himself wipe it away this time.
Instead, he slipped off his flannel, the one he’d found in his car earlier after the first round of alcohol had found its way to his shirt. Thrust it at her. “Here.”
Over her shoulder, near the porch and the drinks, Sam watched them. Max cocked an eyebrow.
Sam just shook his head and went inside after his friends.
“I’m not cold,” she said through chattering teeth. She wiped her forearm across her face, and more mascara smudged toward her temple.
“Well, I don’t have a towel, so—” He waved his shirt in front of her again like a white flag. Is that what it was? A surrender?
No.
This was a temporary ceasefire, until she wasn’t on the verge of passing out. Until she wasn’t looking at him like this anymore. So small, and yet so dangerous.
She took the shirt, wiping it down her chest, across her arms, everywhere sticky beer clung to her bare skin in fat drops.
Max looked away with a thick swallow. Someone turned up the music, and it helped drown out all the thoughts Max wasn’t supposed to be having.
Keely handed him back his shirt and empty cup. “Um, thanks.” She burped again, louder. Her hand came up too slowly to cover it, and she swayed a bit.
He had a sinking suspicion that Keely Sinclair was a lightweight.
“I’m gonna sit,” Max said. “And I would encourage you to do the same. Only so you don’t fall down.”
Her gaze narrowed as she followed him to a hanging bench. “Any whoopee cushions on your person?”
“Nah,” he said, sitting and patting the spot next to him. He didn’t start swinging until she was settled. “I’d rather make you throw up after the keg stand.”
“Har, har.” She wiped the back of her hand across her mouth. “I’ve never done that before.”
“No,” he gasped, deadpan.
She shoved his shoulder. “I meant throw up after alcohol, doofus.”
“There’s that crazy college memory you wanted.” The music switched, and he threw his head back on a grumble. “God, this song sucks.”
Her nose wrinkled. “I love this song.”
“Of course you do.” But he chuckled, and she smiled, and his heart suddenly had a stitch in it, the way his side did on distance days if he didn’t stay focused on his breathing. Sharp and uncomfortable, but he relished the sting.
“Do you like to dance?” she said.
Max looked out at the other partygoers. Even the people who were supposedly dancing were just grinding on rhythm.
“I took a ballet class freshman year,” he blurted. He hadn’t had a single sip of alcohol—he hadn’t since Coach’s birthday—so he wasn’t sure why he was being so vulnerable, giving her more ammunition to kill his chances at the scholarship.
She didn’t laugh like he thought she would.
She nodded thoughtfully, something akin to appreciation tugging at her mouth.
“A lot of professional athletes take ballet. Yoga, too. It helps to use your muscles in a different way. Focuses on flexibility and fluidity instead of strength and speed.” She burped to punctuate her sentence. Her hand came up. “Excuse me.”
“You’re sort of drunk.” He was halfway joking. “You called me a professional athlete.”
This time, she bumped his shoulder with her own. Their arms settled close to each other. Body heat radiated off her in waves. “Don’t get used to it, jock. By tomorrow morning I’ll be back to normal.”
Somehow, he doubted that. He certainly wouldn’t be.
The bench creaked as they rocked in a gentle back-and-forth, nothing that would further upset her stomach. But it gave him something to do with this restless energy. The same one that cropped up whenever Keely was around.
“Why are you here tonight? I didn’t take you for a party girl.”
“I’ve been to parties,” she said, resting her head on the back of the swing. “It’s been a while, though. I’ve been busy.”
“Perfecting your application?”
“More like wondering what the point is.”
Exactly how much alcohol had she had? He eyed her seltzer and clocked the condensation line.
Her chin hit her chest as she murmured, “My parents are getting divorced.” Her hair fell forward and created a wall between them.
Max ran straight into it. That had to be why all his air snagged behind his ribs. “I’m sorry. That really sucks.”
“It does.” She took a glug of seltzer. “Especially when I never told them I didn’t have grad school locked down. Now there’s no good time, and we graduate in two months, and I have even less space to figure it out than before.”
His heart squeezed in his chest. He should get that looked at. He shifted on the bench, and his foot knocked against hers. “That’s a lot of pressure.”
“No, pressure is force over area. This is. . . an equation. I’ll figure it out soon enough.”
She looked over at him, tucking her shiny hair behind her ear. Her earrings were little stars, except they had six rounded points instead of five, with a gemstone dot in the middle.
Atoms, his brain supplied. Her earrings were atoms.
The song changed, and with it, her mood shifted. The threat of tears was gone, replaced by alcohol-fueled excitement. “Do you want to dance now?” she asked, scooting forward to the edge of the bench. “Not with me or anything. Just like, generally. Out there, with everyone.”