That strikes her as funny and I have to wrap an arm around her waist to keep her from laughing herself off the couch. Raychel has this problem when she drinks: she starts to slide off whatever seat she’s in. We call it the puddle effect, and it’s funny when she’s not nursing an injury. My fingers line up with her ribs, skin warm through the sheet.
“That tickles!” She squirms away from my hand, closer to my lap, her head resting on my shoulder. I could kiss the top of it if I wanted to.
The idiot hormonal part of my brain wants to kiss her mouth instead.
The urge to kiss a pretty girl shouldn’t be surprising, even if it’s Raychel. It’s not that I don’t want to, because god knows I do, but this is Raychel, so I shouldn’t.
She doesn’t smell like tequila. She smells like limes. Tart.
But we’re friends. And not the kind with benefits.
I make myself turn away.
*
We watch people migrate to the makeshift dance floor until Asha and Spencer find us again. They have drinks for us as apologies, but I decline, since everyone else is obviously past the point of no return, and someone has to get Raychel home.
That lucky someone is me, but what else is new.
“Hey,” I say, shouting over the bass. “Are you guys staying? I think we’re heading out.”
Asha looks at Raychel the Puddle and giggles. “I was going to see if she wanted to dance, but uh, guess not.”
“Yeah, pretty sure she’s done.” I wade into the crowd to get my brother, but he’s found some other friends and wants to stay. For once, I’m irritated that he’s ditching us, because I could use some help getting Raychel out of here. Back at the couch, I pull her to her feet and she groans in protest. “Ready for the hike to the car?”
“Can’t you bring the car here?” she asks.
“It’s all the way over by the stadium.”
She pouts. “Then can we get ice cream on the way home?”
“We’ll see,” I say, trying to move her toward the door. “Ice cream and alcohol don’t sound like a great combination.”
“But you dumped me!”
I snort and leave Spencer to hold her up while I go get her crutches. I’ll never live it down: We dated for four days in the seventh grade, until Mindy Merrithew smiled at me in the hallway. Then I dumped Raychel, Mindy immediately started acting like I had leprosy, and Raych has used it as her trump card ever since. I want the last cookie? “But you dumped me!” I want to hike at Eagle Point and she wants to go to Roger’s Hollow? “But you dumped me!” I want to sleep and Raychel wants to have a two-hour conversation? “But you broke my heart!”
Maybe next time I’ll say, “Let me make it up to you. Let’s go out again.”
Right after I magically grow a pair.
Instead I hand her the crutches and we make our way through the crowd. “Ugh,” Raychel says as we step outside. It’s muggy and still, the kind of night where leaving the AC is like walking into a wet spiderweb. But her gaze is on an approaching pack of guys from school, with Carson jogging ahead of them.
“Sanders!” he says to Raychel, and nods at me. It feels more like a dismissal than a greeting. “Y’all leaving already?”
Raychel mumbles something. She suddenly seems a lot drunker than before, and she’s holding on to the crutches like she needs them again. I glance to make sure her toga’s still up. “Somebody pre-gamed a little too hard,” I say.
Carson laughs. He’s a redneck, but he’s all right. His mom was our Cub Scout leader, but my brother knows him better than me since they played baseball together until Andrew quit this year to “focus on basketball.” As if Andrew can focus on anything. “Where’s Hana?” he asks.
“Hana Mori?” I ask, confused, and he nods. “We broke up a long time ago.” She stayed here for college, but I haven’t seen her since graduation.
“Oh. Right.” He nods at Raychel. “You dating this one now?”
Ah. Now I get it. “We’re best friends,” I say, and Raychel squeezes my arm.
“Well, in that case…” he says, and grins at her. “You sure you don’t want to stick around?”
I wait for Raychel to respond. I don’t want her to say yes, obviously, but she clearly has something going with this guy, and I know from past experience that if I answer for her, I’ll hear about it later. The way she’s holding herself rigid makes me think she might be about to barf, though. “Raych?” I prompt. “You want to stay?”
She leans against me. “Tired.”
Carson’s friends are starting to crowd us. “Aw, come on,” he says, lifting and resettling his baseball cap, but she shakes her head.
“She started drinking tequila at six,” I say, trying to help him save face so we can leave. “She’s going to pass out any second.”
“That’s what he’s hoping,” one of the other guys says.
I pretend not to hear, since I’m way outnumbered. Carson adjusts his hat again. “Well,” he says. “See y’all later then.”
Raychel sighs and pulls my arm against her like a teddy bear as he walks away. “I’m your best friend now?”
“You’ve always been my best friend,” I say. Pressing inside my chest is a wish that I was more like Carson: not afraid to make a move, though with a few more morals about when to do it. Although maybe my morals aren’t so much better, considering that I was thinking about kissing her when she wasn’t any soberer. I try to pull away. “And you’re also really drunk.”
“I am?” She laughs, squeezing me harder before she lets go. “I love you.”
“I love you too,” I say, and I mean it. Lately I mean it more than I want to.
RAYCHEL
Stripes of sunlight stab through the blinds, past my eyeballs, and into my brain.
So does a god-awful thumping noise. And my mother’s voice. “Raychel!”
Every blow on the door reverberates in my head like bass through a crappy subwoofer. I lurch out of bed and stumble across the room to open the door. “What?”
She frowns. “It’s eleven.”
“It’s Saturday.” I blink. “Isn’t it?”
“Doesn’t mean you should sleep the whole day away.”
I try to shift my weight. My ankle doesn’t hurt, but it’s a little stiff. “I don’t feel very well.”
She raises her eyebrows, forehead wrinkles disappearing behind her uneven bangs. She’s had the same haircut since I was ten. “Weren’t you sick last weekend too?”
“I just had a few drinks,” I admit, not bothering to lie since I smell like a bar sink. “And Matt drove me home.”
“Is he driving you to work today too?”
I glance at the clock, reality waking me all at once. “Oh—crap … Mom!” She’s already walking down the hall. “Can you give me a ride?”
“I’ll be late to work if I do.” She taps her wrist over her head. “You do the crime, you do the time.”
*
Unfortunately, the time is “five.” As in, I have been late to work five times since my current boss, Roland, started at Pharm-Co a few months ago. It’s only ten minutes, but he scowls at my frantic apologies, his patchy mustache twitching when I try to blame the crutches. “The transit stop is right outside,” he points out. “See me at the end of your shift.”