4. Archer
ARCHER
I’ve seen Allie drunk plenty of times. I was with her when she took her first sip of alcohol on this very beach at sixteen.
The first time she got well and truly wasted was at Willow’s, Zander's, and my graduation party. Held her hair while she retched her guts up at her parents’ New Year’s Eve party this past winter.
I have never seen her quite like this.
It’s not even that she drank so much she’s sick.
She’s stumbling, sure, but she hasn’t complained about nausea or dizziness.
She’s just weepy and whiny and needy. I think her emotions are taking a toll on her, and while she’s certainly had enough to drink that she’ll feel it for the next several days, I don’t think it’s only the alcohol having this effect on her.
“I want to go to bed,” she slurs against my shoulder. Every word out of her mouth this evening has been laced with intoxication, but there is some kind of sadness swirling in her voice too.
“C’mon,” I say, patting her thigh. “I’ll put you to bed.”
Sitting up on my knees, then stand, grasping her wrists and hauling her boneless body into my arms. Wrapping one around her waist as I sling her arm over my shoulder, walking us toward her and Willow’s tent behind the fire.
She stalls, feet anchored to the sand as I attempt dragging her tent. She turns, extending an arm toward mine. “No. With you.”
“Allie…” I wipe a tired hand down my face, as the day’s chaos settles into my bones.
I don’t blame Allie for any of it. Her boyfriend sucks. Based on what Macie told me earlier, he said some pretty fucked-up stuff to Allie before Dad and Dom kicked him out, and his venom was overheard by many people in Allie’s life—including intimate knowledge about her and me.
I don’t blame her for getting so drunk she can’t walk straight, and I don’t blame her for seeking me as her safe space either. I don’t even blame her for being with him—she’s self-sabotaging exactly the way I do.
I am frustrated, though. This kind of chaos is exactly why I didn’t plan on coming home this summer.
It’s too fucking painful, and no matter how old we grow or how much we think we mature, Allie and I are incapable of breaking this cycle.
I landed in San Diego this morning, and it doesn’t appear I’ll survive even twenty-four hours without crawling into bed beside her.
I thought we’d be stronger this time. I thought the distance had finally made its impact. I thought I’d be capable of looking at her without instantly dissolving, but that failure was both intense and immediate.
“Just let her sleep in your tent, Arch. It’s not going to change anything with that asshole at this point anyway,” my brother calls from behind us.
I couldn’t give less of a fuck about where she stands with Declan.
I care about keeping my own goddamn soul intact—and Allie Evans has always had a terrible habit of unraveling it.
But as she stares up at me, tears glistening in her dark eyes, full bottom lip trembling with vulnerable desperation, I’m reduced to nothing but the pathetic boy who never stopped pining after his best friend.
“Let’s go to sleep.” I puff a resigned sigh, leading us to my tent instead.
I unzip the entrance and hold it open to let Allie crawl in first. She flops down onto the queen-sized mattress that takes up the entire tent and rolls over before I slip inside and close up behind us.
“Do you have pajamas you want to change into or anything?” I ask.
She groans, shaking her head. I know she won’t be comfortable sleeping in her denim shorts and cut off, but I don’t have the strength to invite her to sleep naked, and I’m not going to argue with her about the whereabouts of her loungewear.
I grab her ankles as I squat in front of the mattress and slip off her shoes, tossing them on the ground before leaning over her, reaching beneath her hips to shrug down the sheet and blankets I set up earlier.
Allie curls herself into the fetal position while I toss the covers over her and crawl across the mattress, tucking myself beneath them too. I lie on my back, staring up at the sky through the tent’s open netting, hands crossed over my stomach as the length of the day settles over me too.
“We don’t sleep like this, Archer,” she murmurs softly into the pillow. “Not with this space between us.”
“You’re in a relationship,” I say.
“And I think about you every night I spend beside him.”
“That doesn’t make it okay.”
“You asked for this.”
My eyes fall closed, agony sluicing off me in waves.
She’s right. I created the box we lock ourselves inside, and I handed her the key.
My resolve dissolves into dust as I roll to my side and slip one arm beneath her ribs, tugging her back to my chest as I toss my other arm over her stomach.
My chin nestles into the crook of her neck and shoulder, instant warmth settling over my weary bones.
I become something different when my skin is aligned with Allie’s. I’m no longer a quarterback or captain or leader. Not a student or brother or son. The pressure constantly straining my shoulders alleviates into weightless peace, because when I’m touching Allie, I’m simply hers.
Her Archer—all other titles irrelevant.
I made her promises years ago, the same ones she made to me. The only betrayal she’s committing at this moment is to herself, because each time she crawls back to me, she’s breaking the vow she made to me—and I’m the person to blame for that.
I should’ve known better. I should’ve known how helpless we’d be to each other, and I should’ve known that no amount of passing time or distance could erase it.
It’s like asking the planets to drop out of orbit, or flowers to cease blooming, or demanding the western sun not to drown beneath the Pacific each day.
“I think about you when I fall asleep at night too,” I whisper against her neck, savoring the way her body trembles as my voice rakes down her spine. The difference between us being that I fall into bed each night alone, though Allie never asked me not to move on from her.
I guess she knew better, and I’m the one who underestimated the tether between us.
She doesn’t answer me, only shifting her hips so that she’s more firmly burrowed beneath my weight. I brush my thumb over the skin of her waist, listening to the depth of her breathing as it evens out and she drifts to sleep.
I hold her tightly through the night.