CHAPTER 16
“Your droopy eyelids do not bode well for an all-nighter,” Jamie mused from the driver’s seat. “It’s not even midnight, Daze.”
My eyes snapped wide. I hadn’t even realized they’d started drooping, which was a very bad thing, because if I’d fallen asleep, I would’ve dropped my slushie into my lap. “I’m awake,” I said, as if trying to convince myself. “I’m awake.” I took a long pull from my slushie.
It was… meh. Partly because I hadn’t wanted it in the first place. We’d gone into a local gas station for their crappy instant coffee, but the machine had been broken. Slushies were the next best alternative, but sans the caffeine that I needed to make my all-nighter dreams a reality.
“I remember it being easier,” I muttered sadly, the words sounding like defeat.
The drive had been too cozy, and his passenger’s seat was too comfortable.
I wasn’t going to last much longer. “I used to pull all-nighters with Penn when we were little. It used to not be until, like, four when we got tired.”
“And you hadn’t been spending all your energy dancing at a club.”
I stirred my slushie, staring into the blue, watery depths. “Touché.”
Jamie and I hadn’t immediately left the club after our brief break outside, but instead I’d danced a bit more with Nellie to shake off whatever weirdness that’d surfaced from dancing with her brother.
When my legs had started to feel like Jell-O, I’d gone back to find Jamie leaning against a wall—with Raelynn at his side.
“What were you and Raelynn even talking about, anyway?” I asked him now, biting my straw. “I could barely hear anything over the music.”
“We weren’t really talking. She just stood by me. I think she was just uncomfortable.”
I let out a little scoff. “More like she just wanted to be close to you.”
“See?” He reached over and patted my knee. “I told you I’m cool.”
My bare knee. His fingers were cold and long, and though the touch was quick, it shot through me. Without thinking, I snatched his hand up. “Why are your fingers always so cold?” I asked him. I laid the backs of them against my cheek.
My skin wasn’t nearly as flaming hot as earlier, but it was still warm, and the direct contact with his icicle-like skin made me shiver. After a moment of soaking up the heat from one cheek, I slid his hand around to my other, now pressing his palm there.
Sleep deprivation. Later, that was what I’d say came over me.
The sides of his fingers had small callouses, like he’d been holding a pencil too often, which was strange, because Jamie was a reader, not a writer. He sometimes carried his notebook, but there was almost always a book in his hands.
It was a long, long beat before I realized how weird this was. My eyes slid to the side, peeking at Jamie, who stared straight ahead through the windshield. He was… tense. Something about his gaze was tight, and though his fingers were gentle on my skin, his arm was stiff, too.
I dropped his hand. “S-Sorry.”
Jamie didn’t reply. He just placed his hand back on the steering wheel, knuckles flexing.
He flipped his blinker on, and after stopping at a four-way—that was dead, because no one in this neighborhood went out past ten on a weekday—he turned onto my street. The houses were dark and sleepy as we passed them, and it made my eyelids even heavier.
“I think Dalton got the memo tonight,” I said, leaning my head against the window and staring at the dark world outside it. “I like dancing with you. You’re not like Dalton. You don’t have an ulterior motive.”
Again, Jamie said nothing.
A weird feeling began trickling through me. The slushie tasted sour on my tongue. “Did you not have fun?”
He came up to another four-way and stopped. “Did you dance with him like that? Like… how you danced with me?”
“No.” He’d tried, but even if I hadn’t been able to get his hand off my hip, I would’ve just stopped dancing entirely. “I wouldn’t have danced with anyone else like that. Just you.”
Just you, because you’re my fake boyfriend, I meant, but the words also touched on a different truth. Because you’re the only one I want to dance with like that.
Jamie didn’t immediately pull away from the stop sign.
He hadn’t had fun. That must’ve been it.
It might’ve looked like he was having an okay time, but I’d pushed his comfort zone tonight.
He didn’t want to pretend with me anymore.
That was what he was about to tell me; that was my Bestie Telepathy at work—
“You have me wrapped around your finger, Daisy.” The words were quiet, as if more for himself, the same exact way he’d done before. The things I do for you, Daisy Carmichael. “You know that?”
The thought of me pushing Jamie to do things he didn’t want to made my stomach turn further. Maybe the slushie was bad. “Do you not want to do an all-nighter?”
A ghostly smile touched his lips, but disappeared quickly. “Not that.”
Jamie slowly pressed down on the gas pedal to move us forward, but the unease still tightened in my chest. “You don’t have to be wrapped,” I whispered. “We can… unwrap you.”
Jamie startled me by laughing once, and it was a soft sound, not harsh or upset or anything I would’ve guessed.
He hadn’t said it like it was a good thing—you have me wrapped around your finger—but his chuckle had come easy.
“No, we can’t,” he said simply, but something caught his eye through the windshield. “Why are all your house lights on?”
“They’re not,” I said without even looking through the windshield, because they shouldn’t be.
It was eight minutes til midnight, and everyone in the house should’ve been asleep.
Mom’s bedtime was the same as the kids’—nine o’clock sharp.
Unless someone accidentally left the stairwell light on, it should’ve all been dark.
Except every single light in the Carmichael house was on.
Even the small little windows set into the garage door were bright. Our garage was more of a storage room than anything else, and there was no way Mom’s car would fit in there anymore.
Which was alarming because her car was not in the driveway.
My stomach dropped to my toes, so sharply that I was certain I was about to be sick.
I fumbled for my seatbelt, nearly dropping the stupid slushie as I rushed.
My breath started coming fast, the doomsday scenarios even faster.
Someone got hurt, and Mom had to rush them to the emergency room.
Someone broke in, robbed the place, then stole Mom’s car.
Something happened, something happened, something happened.
Jamie pulled into the empty driveway, dodging the pothole.
I barely remembered rushing out of his car and across the lawn.
My house keys shook in my grip as I tried to shove the wrong one into the lock, and Jamie reached around me and easily plucked them from my hand.
As if he’d done it a million times before, he found the correct key for the deadbolt, unlocking that lock first before swapping keys for the knob lock, easily finding that one as well.
When he shoved the door open, I was prepared for all the worst-case scenarios.
I, however, was not prepared for one.
Jamie and I had a straight shot from where we stood to the dining room, where Theo stood barefoot on the table with a bubble wand in his hand. He was in the middle of blowing giant bubbles that immediately popped, splattering soap onto the hardwood floors.
Ivy was on the couch, idly munching on mini marshmallows straight from the bag while she watched Junie play a shooting game on the TV. The volume was up way too loud, and they hadn’t heard the door open.
Red flashed across the TV screen, and, without censoring, Junie yelled, “What the hell!”
A slow buzz had begun building in my head the second the door opened, like bees had started swarming in my ears. Without warning, I slammed the front door shut, hard enough that it shook the picture frames on the walls.
Ivy shrieked at the sudden noise, launching up and sending mini marshmallows everywhere.
Junie froze stiff, fingers curled around the controller as if she could use the measly thing as a shield.
“Jamie,” she said in a strained voice, as if she was trying to sound excited, but couldn’t manage it. “H-Hi…”
Theo slowly lowered his bubble wand, tucking it behind his back, but he hadn’t capped it. Soap fell out of the container like a waterfall, pouring all over the wooden table and dripping onto the floors.
A second later, Penn rushed out from around the corner. “What happened? What—” When her gaze locked on mine, her face whitened. “D-Daisy, let me explain—”
“Explain?” I demanded, still unsure what emotion was vibrating through me.
Definitely not the giddy, lightweight excitement from the club.
Jamie slid past me to venture deeper in the house, but I didn’t look away from my sister.
“Go ahead, Penelope, I’m listening. Explain to me why it’s midnight and no one’s asleep. ”
Ivy looked at her little wristwatch. “It’s actually not midnight yet—”
“Are you kidding me?” I snapped at her, and she shrank at my tone. “You want to nitpick now? How old are we, Ivy?”
“Ivy’s eight,” Theo muttered, letting Jamie scoop him up off the tabletop and into his arms.
Penn swallowed hard. “I just went to the bathroom. I swear, he was not on the table two minutes ago—”
“Two minutes ago, he should’ve been in bed. Two hours ago, he should’ve been in bed! They all should have!” My voice cracked off the living room walls, loud enough to make the girls on the couch wince. “Where the heck is Mom?”
Silence. Penn set her jaw, her hands in fists at her sides. I did see the sneaking peek Junie took at Penn, though, like she knew but didn’t want to say anything.
“Let’s get up to bed, guys.” Jamie set Theo down but kept hold of his hand, and reached his other hand out to the girls. “First one tucked in gets a goodnight story from me.”