“Maybe we could—”

“Thanks for coming tonight. I’ll see you in class.” She closed the door before I could respond.

I drove back home to the silent house like I was sitting under my own personal dark cloud. Pouring myself a bowl of cereal and skipping the milk that had gone bad, I crunched through it, trying not to dissect all the feelings rushing through me. The high of Bay finally telling me where she was going. How pissed I was when we got there. How good it felt for her to turn to me when it was time to sing and then how it felt like I’d been kicked in the teeth with a newly-opened pair of cleats at her nearly jumping from my moving car at the thought of being seen with me at school.

The churn in my gut was ugly and angry. And it made me want to throw on my sneakers and run until I passed out.

21

Dare

My time had come—again. The blow-out celebration to cap off our season of crowning achievements was here. This was the fifth hosted at my house this year.

It hadn’t been my idea to have the party tonight, but when Knox and Bennet suggested it, I hadn’t said no. I’d let the party planning committee take over, giving them access to my house like I always did.

One perk of having a house people flocked to for parties was that I never had to buy my own booze. But he would be back soon. The cloud always hanging off in the distance waiting to rumble into my life and rip it to shreds again. Every day he was away made breathing easier, but the longer he was away the heavier the weight got, because it was only a matter of time before he was back.

Tonight was the night to forget all that, though—at least for a little while. This was the senior year party to end all parties. Why they didn’t want to have it at one of the swanky houses with a pool, I’d never know.

I leaned on the kitchen counter with a beer in my hand. The cracked and warped linoleum counter was the perfect place for more cases of beer and a few bottles of liquor someone had scored. I rolled the bottle between my hands, pretending I was paying attention to whatever recruiting trip story Bennet was recounting. With my head down, I stared into the open mouth of my beer. The same beer I’d had since they wheeled in the kegs three hours ago.

Parties were easy to get away with when your parent didn’t give a shit about you and was on the road 300 days a year. It was still 65 days too short for me. Another factor was not having anything worth a damn in the whole place. It was bare bones, which made it perfect for rowdy high schoolers’ underage drinking and playing loud music into the night.