Between the Lines

Page 11

MiShaun swats Tadd’s head too gently to be much of a reprimand. When everyone drinks, including Jenna, there’s a shocked silence before the room is filled with laughter and Quinton leans across to high-five her as she blushes red. Tadd eyes her blearily. “You are an enigma,” he means to say, though what comes out sounds more like you are an enema. We laugh until our sides hurt; Quinton laughs so hard he’s crying.
Next to me, Reid’s gaze sweeps slowly from my face to my breasts, over the ribbon tie at my waist, to my pink toenails and back up. I want to know how he feels about me—not just my body (when he’s drunk and paying attention), but me. After our scenes this week, I was reduced to mush, and he ignored me at the club. I should be pissed. Which proves to be impossible when my head is spinning and he is sitting right next to me, looking so crazy gorgeous.
Balls. The tequila caught up with me quickly.
“What should I do with you, Emma Pierce?” He’s inches away, his mouth turned up on one side, his eyes slate blue in the dim light of the room.
“What do you wanna do?” I flirt back.
“Hmm.” His eyes are locked on mine, and I feel the vibrations to my toes. “You don’t know?”
I shake my head, immediately wishing I hadn’t. The effects of the tequila are building, even though I started cheating half an hour ago, feigning shots. My thoughts spin along with my vision. I close my eyes for a moment, and hear Reid’s soft laugh.
Oh, man. I can’t let everything move this fast with Reid; I’m not sure yet what he wants. Correction. I’m pretty sure what he wants, but I don’t know what it means. The hot/cold game is confusing. Is he trying to slow it down? Does he regularly hook up during films? Is a hookup what I want, if it’s all I can get with him? I’m far too buzzed to think clearly.
“Let’s play spin-the-bottle,” Quinton suggests. “Or seven minutes in heaven. We can use the balcony.”
MiShaun stands. “This is where I call old lady privilege, children.” She zigzags across the floor to the door, waving off protests. “I’ve done junior high.”
“MiShaun, I think you’re just afraid to kiss me,” Tadd says.
She turns, one hand on the curve of her hip. “And you may be right.”
As she leaves the room, Tadd quips, “I believe I’ve just been insulted.”
Graham’s eyes meet mine, but I’m sure there’s no way he remembers what he promised me several hours ago until he stands, stretching. “I’m beat. And just so you know, Tadd, I’m not afraid to kiss you.” He picks up his guitar. Like a postscript, he turns and adds, “Emma, you said something about running in the morning?” reaching a hand down to me. I link my hand with his and he pulls me up. The room tilts back and forth, but he holds my wrist firmly. Half a minute later, we’re in the hallway walking towards our rooms, one of us less steadily than the other.
“Maybe I’m weird, but those kissing games feel so awkward.” My words slur together—kissygameshfeelsawkward—which makes me giggle.
He passes his door, his warm hand at my waist, keeping me from bumping into walls or falling down. “I agree. I’d rather control who I kiss than leave it to fate and an empty bottle,” he says softly, taking my key, unlocking my door and pushing it open.
“I wasn’t ready to go out onto the balcony with… well. I mean, we’re all kinda smashed. Balconies aren’t safe. Somebody could fall over the edge. Or something.” I lean against the open door, a blush creeping up my neck.
“You know, it might have been me you ended up with out there, not him,” I look up at him then—his brown eyes so dark they’re nearly black as he teases me about seven minutes we might have shared on Brooke’s balcony, doing… who knows what.
“Huh.”
He hands the key card back to me and smiles. “Goodnight, Emma.”
He turns back to his room, and I watch until he unlocks his door and pushes it open. “Emma?” he calls softly as I stumble into my room.
I catch my door before it closes, my heartbeat drumming in my ears, and answer without looking around the corner. “Yeah?”
“That’s definitely four.” He’s chuckling as his door closes with a click.
Chapter 13
REID
Emma and Graham are gone before I can react, thanks to the number of shots I’ve had. With exception of that one look between them, he seemed focused on Brooke all night, so the idea that he’d leap up and take Emma with him at some point was out of nowhere.
Tadd gets to his feet unsteadily after a quick glance between Brooke and me. “Quinton, help me get this baby into her room.” He gestures to Jenna, who’s curled up asleep on the floor. We’ve successfully set a fifteen-year-old on the road to corruption, as others did for each of us. Tadd nudges her semi-awake and he and Quinton each take one of her arms. “Thank God she weighs as much as a postage stamp,” Tadd says, propping her up.
Quinton closes his eyes, steadying himself with one arm around Jenna. “I’m going to hate myself in the morning.”
“I hate you now, man. I still don’t believe you’ve never had lobster.”
They both laugh, weaving towards the door, Jenna barely conscious between them.
“G’night. You two behave,” Tadd leers at Brooke and me, eyebrows raised, as the three of them stumble into the hallway.
The door closes behind them and we sit, staring at each other across the expanse of carpet. Neither of us says anything for a couple of minutes.
Finally, I incline my head towards her bed. “Once, for old times’ sake?”
Incredulous, she blinks, measuring how serious I am. Given that Emma just left the room with Graham, Brooke is drunk and looking hot and doable, and we’re in her room alone, I’m game if she is. For a few seconds—one, two, three—I think she might be. And then she shuts it down. “Not on your life.”
“So serious and bitter.” My mouth twists in amusement. “It wasn’t so bad.”
She gasps lightly, her mouth a small “O” as she blinks, and again, before she shutters it, there’s more naked emotion in her face than I thought she possessed. She gains control of it quickly, her eyes locked to mine. And then she crawls across the ten feet of space between us, onto my lap, straddling me, her knees at my hips. Kissing me, at first softly and then hard, like punishment, she wraps her arms around my neck, her nails piercing the skin through my t-shirt as her fingers rake across my shoulders and she grinds her pelvis against mine. Despite the alcohol in my blood, my body responds, though perhaps because of the alcohol in my blood, I don’t realize what she’s doing.
Without warning she recoils and slides off my lap, forcing my hands away from where they grip her waist. “It wasn’t so good, either.” Her tone is disinterested and her smile, glacial. She pushes herself upright and walks an erratic path to her bathroom, dismissing me. “You can go now, Reid. I want nothing from you.”
I stand and laugh, watch how her shoulders tighten at the sound. “Right. I forgot for a moment what a cold bitch you are, Brooke. I remember now. Don’t worry, you’re not nearly as difficult to leave as you assume.”
“Fuck you,” she says as I pull the door open. I chuckle as it shuts behind me, seemingly unaffected.
When I get to my room it takes every effort of restraint not to put a hole through the goddamned wall. Brooke was my first, and I was hers. We were young and stupid and for a brief space in time, I thought I loved her. I hadn’t, of course, any more than she loved me. As much as I wish I was unaffected by her, that’s impossible. No reason I can’t conceal it, though.
*** *** ***
Emma
While the room spins, I lie across the bed, calculating how many shots I had tonight. Definitely more than I’ve done before in one sitting. Running in the morning is out of the question; so much for new good habits. I remember to text Emily just before my battery dies, though the message is probably an incomprehensible jumble of letters, since the buttons on my phone keep shuffling.
I wake to a tapping noise and at first I’m convinced it’s coming from inside my head. I crack an eye open. My mouth feels like someone has wallpapered it with felt. Tap-tap-tap. Nope, definitely the door. The clock on the nightstand says it’s not quite ten a.m.
On my toes, I peer out the peephole. I unlock the door, open it a sliver and squint in the bright hallway lighting. “Graham?”
He holds up a lidded cup with a Starbucks label and smiles. “Go brush your teeth and splash some water on your face.”
“Graham, I look, and feel, like shit.”
He slips into my room. “Go on, it’ll help. How do you take your coffee?” He walks to the desk with the coffees, pulling packets of sugar and cream out of his pockets.
I sigh, unable to argue with a head full of cotton. “Gimme the works.” Obediently, I go into the bathroom and close the door behind me. I wash my face, brush my teeth, and pull my hair into a ponytail, avoiding the mirror as much as possible while doing so, which isn’t too difficult since my eyes refuse to open fully.
When I come out, he hands me the cup.
“How are you up, and feeling this—” I snap my fingers “—this… what’s the word…” I gesture towards him, then rub my eyes and sit on the bed.
“Unhungover?”
“That’s the word.”
“Well, I outweigh you by at least seventy pounds. That’s pretty much the secret.” He moves a pair of shoes from the desk chair to the floor and sits down.
“So you never get hungover?”
“I wouldn’t say that. But I took it easy last night while everyone else got plastered with the help of high school party games.”
“Didn’t have any fun, huh?” I say, taking a sip and closing my eyes.
“Last night was fun in its own way.”
“Meaning?”
He watches me, sipping his coffee and sitting back with one foot resting on top of the opposite knee. “Mmm. I’d like to know what you thought.”
“I’m just glad we didn’t play spin-the-bottle or… well, I’m not a fan of the whole, uh, kissing game concept…”
He sips his coffee, considering. “Yeah, me neither.”
“I thought guys liked those kinds of games.”
His lashes sweep down, hiding his eyes. “I’m not really a games sorta guy.” I think about that while he sips his coffee, and then, in what I’m starting to realize is a typical maneuver for him, he changes the subject completely. “Think you might be up for brunch and some shopping?”
A guy who wants to shop? “You aren’t going to lure me into a sporting goods place or a comic book store, are you?”
“I was thinking bookstore. But if you’re into comics…”
“No, please. Bookstore yes; comics no.” I briefly dated a guy last year who was into comics. He never stopped talking about them, even when I threatened to start talking about Gilmore Girls reruns. I know more about comic books than any girl ever wants to know.