“Oh my God,” Tyler groans under his breath. He turns his face to the side and stares at the sand, his jaw clenched, eyes shut. He takes a deep breath, lets go of my body, walks around me, and, in one swift movement, bends and pulls me onto his back. “You need to sober the fuck up,” he mutters as he starts to walk.
My arms are slung around his neck and it’s possible I’m choking him to death as I cling onto him. His firm hands are under my thighs, my legs are wrapped around his waist, and he’s walking so effortlessly that the thought of me not weighing much gives me a moment of satisfaction. I rest my head on his shoulder and blow air against his neck as he continues to carry me across the beach.
“Troy-James,” Tyler calls out, and the unfamiliar name makes me lift my head in curiosity as Tyler comes to halt.
There’s a small group of people, three of them, standing in front of us, and they all spin around to Tyler’s voice. There’s two girls and…TJ. The guy from Dean’s, the guy that’s the cornerback. Troy-James. I mentally piece the obvious together and I feel exceptionally clever when I do.
“What’s up?” Troy-James, or TJ, says. The hard expression he wore earlier is long gone, and he looks like he’s having fun. This is understandable given the fact that there are two clearly older girls hovering by his side. They both offer me sympathetic smiles.
“I need your apartment,” Tyler says straightaway. “You’re still on Ocean Avenue, right?”
“Bro.” TJ blinks for a while and then exchanges a quick glance with the girls he seems to have charmed. He settles his eyes back on Tyler. “What are your plans, man?”
Tyler shrugs as he flicks his eyes over his shoulder at me, the movement causing me to jolt against his body, and he says, “Sobering her up. Her dad’ll kill her if she goes home like this.”
“Dude, you’re kind of messing up my plans,” TJ mutters in a strained voice. He pulls a face and squints at us.
“My place is free,” one of the girls comments, and with that, TJ reaches into the pocket of his shorts and tosses Tyler the keys to his apartment. Just. Like. That.
“Leave ’em under the doormat,” he says.
Tyler manages to squeeze in a thank-you before TJ and the girls head off. I feel him sigh again as he tightens his grip on my legs and starts to walk again, walking and walking until I realize that we’re heading away from the party.
“Why are we going to his apartment?” I mumble into his shirt, because it’s almost impossible to keep my head up now. “Why does he even have an apartment?”
“Because you’re just embarrassing yourself out here,” he says with a chuckle, and it makes me wish that I could see his face right now, so I could look at his eyes and wonder what’s going through his mind. But I’m still too tipsy for that. “And his parents are, like, millionaires. They bought him an apartment down here for his sixteenth birthday. Who the hell does that?”
“Millionaires,” I reply. He laughs again.
I don’t mind leaving the party. I’ve already lost my phone and my money and my friends back there, and now that the alcohol is wearing off and the sun is beginning to set, I just want to go home. Of course, going home isn’t an option right now. Dad thinks I’m at the movies, watching some mediocre love story, but really I’m being carried away from a party because I took too many shots earlier. I’m just thankful that it’s Tyler who ended up coming to my rescue. If Jake or Dean or even Meghan had tried to escort me away, I would have put up a fight.
“You can put me down, you know,” I murmur after ten minutes of nonstop walking on Tyler’s part. I’m worried I’m hurting him.
“What, so you can get hit by a car? No way,” he says curtly as he pauses on the edge of the sidewalk. He throws a quick glance in both directions and drifts across the avenue. I can still hear the music from the stage.
“You’re missing the rest of the party,” I say, but he doesn’t reply.
He carries me over to the row of apartments and condos and hotels on Ocean Avenue, the buildings that I’ve jogged past on so many of my runs, the ones overlooking the beach. We slow down by a four-story building, and Tyler carries me up the steps and pauses outside the entrance. Carefully, he slides me off his back. My legs feel like jelly when I try to stand.
“How are you feeling?” he asks without glancing up, too busy fumbling around with the key and the lock.
“Embarrassed,” I admit. I’m gradually sobering up after my last drink, almost three hours ago, and I’m starting to become more aware of how ridiculous I’ve been acting. I vaguely remember spitting all over Dean’s parents’ car.
Tyler finally gets the door open, and he reaches back for my arm to pull me over the threshold and into the lobby of the condo building, which is bright with polished flooring. “We’ve all been there,” he muses, trying to comfort me.