Chapter Fifteen Max
Chapter Fifteen
Max
Max didn’t want to be here. These kinds of parties always got too rowdy too fast, and you couldn’t walk to the bathroom without bumping into people making out. The music was so loud, his teeth clicked in time with the bass. . . and forget trying to understand the lyrics.
This wasn’t his usual scene.
Which explained why his relay team was surprised he accepted their invitation. Jazz got so excited she thrust her cup at him when he showed up. It spilled all over his hoodie. Now he smelled like beer, and he wasn’t drunk enough to find it funny.
He wasn’t drunk at all.
But almost the entire track and field team was here, along with most of the basketball and soccer teams. Some of the football players too, but they were still largely scared to show themselves after the doping scandal.
Max stood off to the side of the fenced backyard with Nolan, who drank from a yellow Solo cup.
Jazz had disappeared into the bowels of the house, probably to find hard liquor or someone to drag home.
And Alex was near the keg—because what was an all-American college party without one of those—challenging people to keg stands.
“My money’s on the freshman,” Nolan muttered as another of Alex’s unsuspecting victims emptied his pockets and unbuttoned the top of his shirt in preparation.
Max snorted. If there was one thing that outweighed Alex’s enthusiasm for the track, it was beer foam. “Not a chance.”
“Wanna put twenty on it?” There was a playfulness to Nolan’s tone Max didn’t recognize.
Or maybe it’d just been a while since he’d last heard it.
It was jarring to realize he didn’t really know the person he at one point considered his best friend. More jarring to realize Nolan was no longer the only person he could say that about.
“Uh, no,” Max said, which effectively killed the conversation.
He welcomed the distraction of the back door sliding open. “Pong and bongs!” one of the guys who walked through yelled, and a few people standing near the folding table by the fence chanted back.
Max vaguely recognized some of the newcomers, but he couldn’t place them. Nolan did, though. He clapped the tallest one on the back, then gestured with the hand holding his cup.
“Max, this is Sam. We were the only two guys in women’s and gender studies freshman year.” Everyone but Max laughed, something he was well acquainted with. “And his friends, who I don’t know. . .?”
“Jeremy and Maya,” Sam supplied.
“Max is on the relay team with me,” Nolan offered. “He’s fast as hell, in case you weren’t aware.”
“Oh, we’re well aware.” Jeremy listed forward before Maya stuck a hand into his back pocket and towed him beside her wheelchair. “Big fan,” he said anyway, wrapping a gangly arm around his girlfriend’s shoulders.
“They’re playing Mario Kart inside,” Sam said with wide eyes. “It looked intense.”
Nolan chuckled. “It can be. They do tag team matches, where you’re on a pair and every lap you have to switch off. If you’re not racing, you’re chugging. We should snag a game if we can.” He looked at Max. “You in with that?”
Max cleared his throat. He didn’t know how to do this. How to make small talk, have friendships the way other people did. It took discipline, attention, focus. Lately, he only ever focused on running that much.
Well, running and—
“Max.”
The voice simultaneously dropped icicles down his shirt and ran hot claws over his stomach.
Slowly—as if it would make a difference—he turned.
Keely. Keely was here. At this party, where guys were drunk and horny and had little else on their minds.
And wearing. . . whatever this was. Painted-on dark jeans, a red tank top that crissed and crossed just enough to throw shadows in interesting crevices. Mascara rimmed her eyes. Gloss coated her lips. Her hair hung in shiny loose waves down her back, no clip or ponytail holder in sight.
“Nolan,” Keely greeted, but she looked at him, studying Max the same way he studied her. “Hey.”
“Good to see you again,” Nolan said. “Let me know if you need me to show you the bathrooms or anything. I’ve been here a few times, so I know where they are.”
Max couldn’t tell from the dim lighting in this part of the yard, but it looked like Keely’s cheeks flushed to match her ruby-red top. “Um, yeah, maybe. Thanks,” she murmured, looking at her feet for a second.
“Is your, uh, friend here?” Nolan scratched the back of his neck. “Zoey?”
This question, weirdly, seemed to put Keely at ease. Her shoulders fell away from her ears, and she gave Nolan a smile that scrunched her nose. “She’s back home this weekend.”
“And. . . where is home?”
“Boston?” Keely ran a hand down her arm and shivered.
Which was when Max realized she wasn’t wearing a jacket. It would be March tomorrow, but it wasn’t warm enough to go without, especially at night. Not when snow still capped the Ash Mountains and he could see his breath.
“Can I talk to you inside?” Max muttered. “I’ll. . . get you a drink.”
Keely’s gaze returned to him, and it narrowed. “I’m good, thanks.”
“You know him, Keel?” the tall one—Sam—said. He took a half step forward, angling his body toward hers.
Keel. The familiarity with which this Sam guy used the nickname turned Max’s stomach into a pretzel.
And what kind of nickname was that anyway? Keel? She wasn’t a boat, for God’s sake. It made him want to keel over.
“I do. We’re tag-teaming Matilda’s shopping.” Her eyebrow arched, a promise and a threat. “Apparently.”
Ah, hell. He knew he shouldn’t have done that. He’d set it in motion after she tried to ruin things with him at the shelter.
All he wanted was to get ahead, have a second to breathe around her.
But that seemed unlikely now. There was something that looked like hurt, just behind the playfulness sparkling in her eyes, and he was the one who’d put it there.
“Don’t worry, Sam.” Her razor-sharp glare didn’t move away. “I can handle him.”
Her tone was teasing enough that her friends laughed, but he knew she was serious.
He shifted on his feet, searching her ice-cold exterior for a sliver of vulnerability, a way past her defenses, and instead found himself noticing how golden her hair looked in this light, catching the glow from the Edison bulbs strung up over the patio.
All he could think to say was, “What are you doing here, Keely? For real.”
The rest of their group read the change in temperature and scattered around the yard, muttering about more drinks or snacks or watching that video game thing after all. So her friends were just as smart as she was.
She threw her head back and laughed, and her hair cascaded and dipped into the curve of her lower back. “I’m here to have a good time, Max. Same as you. Nothing nefarious.”
He didn’t believe that for a second, but he could play along.
“Cooler’s over there.” He pointed. “In case you can’t tolerate me sober.”
She tipped forward, peering into his cup. Peppermint assaulted his senses once more. His jaw tingled. “What are you having?”
Sprite and nothing else, but what Keely didn’t know wouldn’t hurt her. “Vodka,” he lied.
That same eyebrow arched again, dancing along her forehead. “With carbonation?”
“Vodka tonic,” he corrected.
“Tonic water at a college party?” She walked to the cooler and dug out a cherry-flavored hard seltzer. “And here I thought it was all kegs and Fireball.”
“Fireball’s inside by the Mario Kart.” He jerked his chin. “Keg’s over there. It’s the thing your friend Jeremy is currently trying to make love to.”
They looked over, and Max wasn’t sure what the guy was doing, but his description wasn’t far off.
Keely took a heavy sip of her seltzer, then hid a burp behind her hand. “Excuse me.”
It was obscenely cute. He downed the rest of his soda and wished it were ninety proof.
They stood in silence long enough for Alex to conquer another two suckers with his keg stand tournament, one of whom proceeded to throw up everything he’d chugged.
Keely’s amusement played out across her defined features. Her cheekbones were accentuated with shimmer, and the tip of her nose kept catching the light—and therefore Max’s eyes. He forced them away again.
“So,” he mumbled. His voice was low, for her ears only. “You and that Sam guy.”
That Sam guy was currently glancing over every sixty seconds or so, probably to make sure they hadn’t moved any closer.
One of Keely’s arms was crossed under her chest, her other elbow resting on it. She held her seltzer to her neck like she was hot, but goosebumps dotted her skin. Her head cocked, those same stars from earlier dancing in her vision. The patio lights, probably. “Does it matter?”
“No,” he growled, sharp and immediate. Who was he trying to convince?
Keely gasped under her breath, which made everything worse.
He cleared his throat. “No,” he repeated in a lighter tone. “Just trying to make civil conversation. But I guess we don’t know how to do that.”
She made a noise in the back of her throat, but didn’t comment otherwise.
Sam must have had enough of watching them, because he made his way over. To Keely specifically. He wasn’t looking at Max like that with stars in his eyes.
“I haven’t seen you around much lately, Keel,” Sam said, nudging her with his elbow. Max’s jaw clenched.
Keely shrugged, sliding a hand in her back pocket. “You know how I get before midterms.”
“I thought that’s why you weren’t going to come originally. So what changed your mind?” Sam shot Keely a blinding smile, and Max tried very hard not to let it bother him.
He didn’t know why Sam wound him up, especially when he didn’t usually feel anything but indifference toward guys like Sam.
Maybe it was how he looked at Keely.
“Nothing specific,” she said breezily, and maybe it was the lights, but Max swore she glanced at him. “I just remembered it’s my senior year, and I want to have at least one crazy memory to show for it.”
A roar went up across the yard. One of the other partygoers was upside down atop the keg, chugging, doing a half-decent job.