Day 6 #3
Caleb and I sit on a blue love seat pushed against one wall of the living room.
Like Kara said, he had some trouble at work, and he spends most of the night telling me about how ridiculous the tourists are that come to River Depot.
The kids from the city who have never held a paddle before, and the moms and dads who think they’re going to need Mace to fend off wild creatures as they canoe through the woods.
“As if Mace would help them,” Caleb says, laughing.
I wonder if he’s forgotten that I’m technically a tourist. Though I don’t feel like one—Riverton is my second home.
Every once in a while I hear Asher’s voice boom across the room and it startles me.
It isn’t angry, it’s just loud. Louder than I’ve ever heard him.
I can’t make it out, but I can’t help trying.
I spend the rest of the night with 60 percent of my attention on Caleb, and the other 40 listening for Asher.
Toward the end of the party it sounds like his voice is being muffled by something, like maybe he’s outside or in the basement. He seems off tonight.
An hour later, Caleb looks at his phone and frowns. “I have to go. We have a training thing in the morning.” The same thing Kara has to go to.
“Okay. Well … I’m glad we got to hang out.” Smooth, Sidney. Smooth.
“Me, too.” Caleb runs a hand over his short blond hair. “You wanna go out tomorrow night?”
Something tightens in my chest. “Yeah. Definitely.” I hand him my phone. “Text me.”
Caleb smiles and gets up, reaching his hand down to pull me up from the couch. It’s the first time we’ve touched all night—even on the little couch, we were at opposite ends. I’m not sure if I should just shake his hand while I’ve got it, or hug him, or …
He pulls me by my hand and wraps his arms around me, making the decision for me. “Night, Sidney.”
“Good night.”
When Caleb is gone, I wander through the house.
Kara is long gone; she sent me a text an hour ago saying she was leaving.
But I still have to find Asher. I weave through the kitchen, to the little room that looks like an office.
I poke my head out into the yard, but don’t see him.
Finally, on my second pass through the living room, I see him coming out of the stairwell. He was in the basement.
“You ready to go?”
He looks past me, eyeing the kitchen. “Nope.”
“Come on, I’m over this.”
“So go home.”
“You know I can’t. I’m driving you home.”
He just looks at me blankly, and I can’t tell if he’s about to say something, or if he’s just going to fall asleep.
I spend fifteen minutes trying to coax Asher out to the car.
I promise him food when we get home. Threaten to call his parents.
Tell him that if we stay for a single minute more, I’m going to pass out from exhaustion.
We’ve both been up since 6 a.m. That seems to convince him—maybe he forgot how tired he was.
He lowers himself into my passenger seat in a slow crumple, and when we pull into our driveway he bolts from the car before I can even cut the engine.
But he doesn’t go to his house, he takes the walkway straight to the lake.
Crap.
I find him sitting on the hill, just on the other side of the row of flowering bushes that divides our yards from the fire pit area on the edge of the downward slope to the lake. I thrust a bottle of water at him, and ask him if he needs something to eat. He tells me to leave, but I won’t.
“Why are you being nice to me?”
“Because I don’t think you’re going to remember this in the morning. And I’m not being nice. I’m making sure you don’t die. That’s not being nice, that’s just being a decent human who doesn’t want someone else to die.”
“Right,” he says. “Human.”
I cross my arms over my chest. “Your parents will kill me if they find you dead in a puddle of your own vomit tomorrow morning.” I’m trying to be patient with him, but I’m cold and so tired I feel a little drunk myself.
“You’re not, though.”
I shake my head, unsure what he’s talking about. “Not what?”
“Human,” he mumbles.
“Go to bed, Asher.”
“Make me,” he says, smiling.
God, he’s impossible. I think about what could get Asher to leave, and decide talking to him may be my best bet.
Maybe I can drive him back to his house with my presence alone.
I sit down on the concrete walkway next to him.
“You know, you weirded out Caleb tonight. You just had to mess with me and wear that stupid matching shirt.” I take a swig of my own bottle of water.
“At least I get a do-over tomorrow night.”
Asher groans, like he’s heard this a million times.
“You know, if you don’t want to listen to me talk, you could just go to bed.” I give him my best I can be as obnoxious as you can smile. “Problem solved.”
“This is the only nice shirt I have with me.” He pinches some fabric at his chest. “I don’t know why you have so many nice clothes with you, but I don’t.
” His words are all slurring together. “So I wore the pink shirt, because it was my only nice one. And you looked nice. Too nice.” He grabs at the bottom of his shirt, and gets it halfway up his chest before he thinks better of it.
He starts working at a button and he has half his shirt undone when he starts up again.
“So then we both looked too nice. And yeah, we also matched. Sorry.”
He dressed up so I wouldn’t be the only one?
My overtired brain can’t even process it.
Asher being nice? But I saw his face, he was thrilled that we matched.
I would bet that was the whole appeal. Looking nice and taking the spotlight off of me was just a side effect of torturing me.
He’s got all of the buttons undone, and is sliding one arm out of his shirt. “What are you doing?”
“I’m hot,” he says, tossing his shirt to the side.
I look out at the lake because it’s weird to look at him shirtless, even though that’s how he looks all day. But he was just clothed, and I’m clothed, and that’s different somehow. “Seriously, will you go inside, please?” He doesn’t move and I stand up. “I can go wake up your parents.”
“Fine, fine.” He throws his hands in the air. “I’m going.”
But he isn’t. He’s just sitting there, his head turned up to the sky, like he’s investigating something there.
“Do you remember that first summer?” he says.
It’s actually what I was thinking of when I saw him sitting here.
The way we used to sit out on this hill for hours past when our parents had given up on the evening.
When the night air got colder, and no one wanted to refuel the fire, because firewood is at a premium up here, and Nadine hoards her personal stash—ironically lined up right outside Lake House A—like the greedy little troll she is.
That first summer together feels like a lifetime ago.
“Ouch.” I smack at a bug that’s feasting on my thigh. I nudge Asher in the side with my toe and nod toward the houses. “Please?”
“Just go.”
“I can’t leave you here.”
“I’m not going to die in a puddle of my own vomit, Sid.” Apparently when Asher’s drunk, he calls me Sid. It’s highly unnerving. “What if I promise not to lie on my back?” He rolls over so the last few words are muffled in the grass, and I can’t help but laugh.
“Come on, Asher.” I poke him once more with my toe and walk away.
“Where are you going?”
“Shh,” I whisper-scream behind me. “I’ll be right back.” I hike up the concrete stairs. “Don’t die,” I yell back at him in an angry whisper. He’s rolled onto his back again, but I don’t think anything’s going to happen in the two minutes it’s going to take me to get to the house and back.
I return with a giant orange pitcher of water—the one my mom used to make my cherry Kool-Aid in—and a box of toasted sesame crackers.
Asher looks at the pitcher as I set it down next to him, and takes the box out of my hands, looking at it like he’s not sure what to make of it.
“The kitchen is right next to my parents’ room. I had to be stealthy. Drink the water.”
“And the world’s grossest crackers were the stealthiest thing you could find?”
“For your information, I love these.” I grab the box away from him and open it, sticking my hand inside.
He takes the pitcher with one hand. “I’m definitely going to puke if I drink all of this.”
“Let’s take that risk, okay?” I don’t expect him to drink all of the water, I just didn’t want to make multiple trips and risk waking my parents.
He lifts the pitcher up to his mouth, holding it by the handle, and takes giant gulps, his neck bobbing with each swallow.
Maybe he is going to make himself throw up, just to spite me.
To drive me to leave, maybe. I grab the handle and pull it away from his face, and a little rush of water spills down his face and onto his bare chest.
“Sorry,” I say, my eyes snapping back to his face.
His eyes go wide in feigned shock at the word.
“Whatever,” I mumble, lowering myself onto the grass beside him and stretching onto my back.
“Settling in?”
“Seems like you’re never leaving. I might as well.”
We lay in silence, looking up at the sky, and my eyes get heavier by the minute.
I’m not sure how long I’m asleep, but when I jolt awake, Asher’s face is right next to me, slightly angled into the grass.
He’s so still I have a momentary panic that he’s dead.
I roll onto my side to face him. “Asher.” I whisper it harshly, because I won’t let myself really commit to the idea that something could be wrong.
He doesn’t move. “Asher.” I can hear the panic in my voice.
I grip his shoulder, and he startles with a soft jerk.
I pull back like I’ve just been electrocuted.
But Asher wakes slowly, his eyes fluttering, mouth parting.
His eyes open, and close, open and close, as if he’s reorienting himself, unsure of where he is.