Chapter 9
“They’re saying it was an accident,” Ty says on the other end of the line as I walk into work on Friday.
“They? Who’s they?” I ask.
“The school, the police, I don’t know, just whoever makes these decisions. Someone came forward and said they thought they
saw him walking along the railing or something for a dare, and they have no other evidence to go off.” Ty is quiet for a moment.
“Though Colton is going around saying some crazy shit . . . like that it was you.”
I wonder if she knows about the note. If the whole campus does. “Me?” I feign shock.
“Yeah, but I think he’s just looking for someone to blame. He’s grieving, obviously.”
“Right, obviously,” I say, setting my bag down behind the bar just as Tristan walks in. “Ty, I have to go.”
I greet Tristan with a welcoming smile, but I feel my lips twitch and he apprehensively returns it. “Just the person I wanted
to see,” I say.
He has on a Bloomfield Fire Department T-shirt and gray sweatpants.
I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t an attractive look.
Especially the gray sweatpants, which I quickly avert my eyes from.
Sometimes I wonder if I never found out about that idiotic bet if we would be together now.
He sets his bag with his work clothes down by the bar, taking a seat before he has to go change.
“Not sure if that’s a good or bad thing?”
“I just wanted to ask you something,” I say, wiping down a glass.
“And what is it you wanted to ask?”
I try to think about how to phrase it: Have you received your eulogy lately? Just doesn’t sound like something a sane person
would say. “Have you gotten any strange notes recently?”
“Strange notes? Like what?”
Yeah, Sloane, like what? “Like, I don’t know, strange. Anything you’d look at and be like, what the hell? You know?” But he
does not know. I had a thought last night that maybe Ryan wasn’t the only one to get a page from my journal. What if they
all did? I had to know for sure.
“No? Have you?”
“Yeah,” I lie, trying to think of a reason why I would ever ask this. “I think one of the regulars wrote a story about me
and left it on my car after my last shift.”
“What the hell?”
“Exactly! Yes, my reaction exactly. And in this story, I died. So I was curious to know if you got one too.”
“No, but that’s so creepy. You should tell Jess,” he says, picking up his bag. Although Jess, our manager, would probably
think it was funny.
“Right, I will. But just let me know if you ever get a note like that, will you?”
“Sure, Sloane, you will be the first to know.”
I decide to surprise my friends out at the bars when I’m cut from Cantine early. But as I look around Ray’s, our usual first
stop, they aren’t here. I text Annica and Dani while I sit at the bar to see if anyone shows.
“Solo drinking tonight?” a voice says from behind me. I don’t need to turn around to know it’s Wesley. He takes a seat beside
me and orders a draft.
“Looks that way,” I say, sitting up in my seat. When I turn around, I realize he’s alone. Our group isn’t with him. Marissa
isn’t with him. “Where is everyone?”
“Jake invited over some girls from Ivy Gate for a pregame but they’re all so hammered I don’t think they’ll make it out. I
think Annica and Dani are at the hockey house for a party. Did they not mention it?”
“I was working tonight but ended up getting off early. I just texted them,” I say.
“So that’s why you smell like french fries,” Wes teases, and my cheeks turn pink. I didn’t stop home to shower or change.
I’m still in my jeans and the fitted white T-shirt I wore today, which, yes, now that I think about it, smells like fries.
“No Marissa tonight?” I ask, because I need to be prepared to get my feelings hurt these days.
“No, she’s studying tonight. It’s just me.”
“Hm.” Just him. I sip my vodka soda and try to quell the butterflies in my stomach over the idea of just me and Wes out tonight. Where that might lead.
“Hey, remember the end of sophomore year, and we were the only two out of the group to not have our fake IDs taken, so before
the semester ended we tried to do the rounds and see if we could make it without getting caught?”
I laugh. “Yeah, and we only made it to three bars because you threw up and they kicked us out.”
“What? No, we got kicked out because you thought you could dance on the table.” He playfully nudges me and his touch is electric
the way it sparks up my arm and I feel it everywhere.
“What’s an elevated surface for if not dancing?” I say, taking a drink, trying not to cringe at the words that just left my
mouth.
“Let’s finish the rounds,” he says. “Tonight. Just us.”
The rounds he’s referring to are the order of bars that are customary at Pembroke. Everyone knows you start at Ray’s and finish
at 157. There are five major ones you need to get to in a night; a lot of times we only make it to three.
“All five bars on a Friday night?”
“With the specialty drinks at each.”
“You’re on, McCavern.”
And with that we cheers and chug our drinks, before ordering the Ray’s specialty: a Long Island iced tea.
The second bar, Loft, is a little hole-in-the-wall dive bar known for karaoke, barrels of peanuts, and some disgusting shot
that no one knows exactly what it’s made of. They put a trash can next to anyone brave enough to take it.
“We’re doing the Grecian Urn,” Wes announces as we walk in, aka the shot that no one knows what it’s made of.
“Do you think we should finally ask what’s in it? Now that we’re seniors, I just feel like we should know,” I say, trying
to peer over the bartender’s shoulder to watch what he’s pouring in it.
Wesley reaches over to cover my eyes. “And ruin the mystery? No way. I want to die never knowing.”
“Okay, fair.” I laugh.
We’re holding the shots in our hands, and I’m swirling it around with what must be a disgusted look on my face. I’ve done
one only once in my time at Pembroke and I did in fact need the trash can they supplied.
“Time to man up, Sloane.” Wes holds up the shot and I clink it with mine. Down the hatch, I guess. I hold my breath when I
take it, anything to stunt the taste, which seems to work because it doesn’t come back up.
“Ah.” He sighs like he’s refreshed. “So what are we going to sing?”
“Sing?” I repeat.
“Yeah, we’re doing the rounds, so we have to do karaoke. I put our names in.” He gives me a devious smile that makes me want
to put my mouth on his like a magnet.
I look around the bar, which is already bustling with a crowd. I recognize a group of guys in the back who are in the Sig
Chi fraternity. One of them being another ex-boyfriend of mine, Bryce Peterson. I let my eyes linger on him for a moment longer,
wondering if I should go talk to him about the eulogy but . . . no, not tonight. Not while I have Wes all to myself. “Oh no
no, I’m not singing.” I shake my head. “No.”
He leans in to whisper in my ear over the noise of the bar.
“If you do this with me, then I’ll owe you a favor.
It can be whatever you want, and you can call it in whenever you want.
” Chills, instantly. If I said I wanted the favor to be sex, what would he say then?
I open my mouth but our names are being called over the microphone on the small stage.
“We’re up,” he says, grabbing my hand and pulling me to the front.
Wes says something to the guy and he hands me a mic.
I recognize the sound of the keyboard as “Dancing Queen” begins to play. “It’s your favorite, right?” Wes asks over the sound.
If I didn’t have to sing, I’d be speechless. “You requested it like five times at that one bar during spring break freshman
year.” Again, speechless.
He looks at me as it starts, ignoring the screen with the lyrics. He clearly doesn’t need it: He somehow knows all the words.
“This song is, like, forever ingrained in my memory,” he says in answer to the shock on my face. “Now, are you going to sing
with me or what?”
We put on the best damn concert that I think Pembroke has ever seen, and I hope he can’t tell that the blush on my face is
from being so totally and completely enamored by him that it would consume me whole if I let it. But there’s no time, as he’s
pulling me out of Loft for the next bar.
Zephyr, one of our less-frequented bars, is on the top floor of a record store. It has a colorful, vibrant atmosphere with
disco balls hanging from the ceiling and lava lamps on every surface. There are plush couches that surround a light-up dance
floor and we both take a seat on one.
We’re holding the featured lava lamp drinks in our hands, and Wes looks over at me. “You know, I actually really like this bar. I feel like we never go to it.”
I look around, crinkling my nose. “Probably because these couches smell like mildew and the bartenders are all sixty-year-old
men with porn staches.”
Wes looks around like he’s seeing this bar for the first time ever. “Well, great, now I can’t unsee it.” He puts his arm around
the back part of the couch, almost around me. “So what are you doing after this?”
After this, as in tonight? Is he about to ask me to go home with him? “Um, I don’t know, going home, I guess.”
“I mean, like, after college, what are you going to do?”
My face falls because I realize this is the moment to ask him what he’s going to do about the ski business. Asher would be
on the edge of his seat right now if he were here. It makes me wonder if he is. If this whole night was somehow set up by
him.
“You first,” I say, turning on the couch to face him. My leg is now pressed up against his and I lean in closer.
“My dad wants me to take over the ski resort,” he says, looking down at his drink.
“And you don’t want to do that?”
“I don’t know,” he admits. “I’d have to move there and learn the ropes. I’m just not sure . . . if I want it.” He looks up
at me when he says it and then huffs a laugh. “That’s the first time I’ve ever admitted that to anyone.”
I give him a small, encouraging smile. “Then . . . what do you want?”