The Promise of Amazing (15 page)

Luke held out his glass. “In vino veritas.”

We clinked our glasses together. Luke downed his before I even had the shot to my lips. I could feel his eyes on me as the Absolut and acai slipped down my throat. The same warmth filled my chest, but the mood was different. I placed the glass back on the bar and met his penetrating gaze, feeling self-conscious but not wanting to show it.

“So do you always get so close to your friends?” he asked.

“What?”

“You and Grayson seemed pretty chummy a moment ago. I was just wondering if that’s how you are with all of your friends?”

“Luke, get out of her face,” Grayson said, clapping a hand on his shoulder.

He looked at Gray’s hand, then at me. “Dude, just talking. Maybe I want to be Wren’s friend too,” he said, eyes moving from my mouth back to my eyes.

“Ava’s trying to get your attention,” Grayson said, pointing. My eyes swept across the room to my favorite Sacred Heart schoolmate, Ava. She wore an oversize, metallic flower in her hair, which she pulled off as chic. Her face lit up when she spotted Grayson and Luke, but the moment she saw me between them, she frowned. The expression on her face read,
OMG, WTF are you with them?
If it weren’t for the weird encounter that had just taken place, I might have enjoyed her reaction more. She gestured for Luke to come over.

“Ah, she can’t let me out of her sight for long,” Luke said to me. “Dude. I need to talk to you later.” He pushed off the bar and pointed at Grayson, then snaked his way through the crowd. The whole scene left me feeling confused. Grayson put a hand on my shoulder.

“What was that about?” I asked.

“That,” he answered, “was about Luke.”

I wanted to ask him to elaborate when Jazz sidled up to me. Grayson offered her a shot, but she shook her head vigorously.

“We need to get out of here. Now,” she whispered in my ear.

“Why? Did something happen with Logan?” I asked.

“No. I just . . . can’t do this . . . I have to leave,” she stated again.

Arguments filled my brain.
We just got here! Grayson and I came this close to kissing again! One more set!
But what did it matter? Truth was, I didn’t feel comfortable at all. Not with Luke. Or Ava. Or even Grayson. The way he’d thrown out the “friend” remark so quickly. And as I recognized others from school—girls who might ask for notes in class but would snub you in the hallway—I wanted to leave too.

“If you want to stay with Grayson, I understand, but I’m outie,” Jazz said. “I can pick up my stuff from your house tomorrow. I just had to sit through Darby Greene describing what she did to a guy in the bathroom. And by the way, if you stay, don’t use the bathroom.”

“No, let me just say good-bye to Grayson. We’ll go.”

“I’ll wait for you by the coats,” she said, heading toward the side door as quickly as the crowd allowed her.

Grayson was just finishing up a conversation with the guitar player. Unlike Luke, the guitar guy was an open book, loose and relaxed and holding out his knuckles to give me a fist bump.

“I’m Andy, little Caswell.
Mi casa es su casa
,” he said. A moment ago this would have been charming; now it felt forced. I knocked my knuckles against his before he walked away.

“Grayson, I have to go,” I said.

“What? Why? You just got here.”

“Jazz feels sick. I want to make sure she gets home okay.”

“Can you come back?” he asked, leaning on the counter like before.

“No,” I said, ignoring the tingle of regret I felt as his eyes darkened.

“Let me walk you out.” And before I could protest, he was behind me, his hand on the small of my back as he guided us toward the door. Jazz was in the laundry room, my coat in her hand, chatting with Logan. Grayson acknowledged him with a tilt of his chin. The lie I’d told about Jazz feeling sick was obvious. Grayson’s eyes told me he knew it too.

“Feel okay?” he asked her.

Jazz handed me my coat. “Oh . . . no, I feel a migraine
coming on. If I don’t get out of here now, I’m going to be doubled over in pain.” Score one for friend telepathy.

“I keep telling her a beer will fix that right up,” Logan said, raising his bottle. His remark was met with tense silence. Logan nodded to Jazz, then skulked back to the party.

I put on my coat, and we climbed up the stairs.

“Grayson, the band was great,” Jazz said, leading the way down the dark alley.

“Glad you could enjoy it before the migraine hit.”

We emptied out onto the street. A light dusting of snow was already on the ground, and flakes seemed to be falling sideways on us.

“Jazz, would you mind if I talked to Wren for a moment? Alone?” he asked. She prodded me toward him.

“No problem. I’ll wait by the corner,” she said to me. “Bye, Grayson.”

We watched her walk toward the street lamp. Finally Grayson spoke.

“If Jazz has a migraine, then I have dengue fever,” he said, shrugging his shoulders against the cold. “Did I do something?”

“No, Grayson.”

“Then what is it? I thought we were having a good time,” he said.

“We were, I guess, then . . .” I trailed off, not knowing what to say. The truth made me sound pathetic.

“Come on, come back.”

“Gray, I suck at parties, okay? I thought I could deal, but it’s just not me.”

“Wren, it’s a party, not a pop quiz. What’s to deal with?”

How could he understand? He
was
the party.

“I don’t know half the people in there, and the people I do know I can’t stand.”

“And what half do I fit into?”

I toed the snow collecting at our feet. “Jazz wants to leave, and you’ll be playing another set soon, and then what would I do? Call me later if you want. Or I’ll just see you next week, at work,” I said, backing away from him.

“You’re sure we’re okay? You can get home all right?” he asked, stepping from one foot to the other.

“Yep. No worries.” I gave him an awkward wave and caught up to Jazz. What was I doing? Why was I walking away from him?

“Are you sure you want to leave? I’m fine leaving solo,” Jazz said, linking her arm through mine as we braced against the cold.

She’s not my girl. Just a friend
.

“Yeah, totally.”

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

..................................................................

TWELVE

GRAYSON

WAS I DESTINED TO WATCH WREN WALK AWAY?

Why couldn’t it always be like earlier tonight, when I saw her in the crowd? That smile.
Pow
, like an electric jolt from across the room. I’d had to concentrate on not losing my sticks, focus on the song, play for her. That smile made me feel like Keith fucking Moon.

The snow fell faster. I closed my eyes and let the flakes it my face. Part of me held out hope she’d change her mind and come back.

The other part of me was cold.

I walked back to Andy’s, trying to shake the feeling that I’d done some douche-bag thing to screw this up.

Things had been good . . . hadn’t they? Why didn’t I kiss her again? She was right there, in front of me. I could taste
the sweetness of her breath, would have licked the acai from her bottom lip.

Until Luke and his
besties with testes
and in-your-face sociopathic stare conveniently got in the way. What was he up to?

I didn’t realize how cold I really was until I walked back inside. My face and hands were numb. I stomped the snow off my Vans. I’d need another acai shot just to warm up; otherwise I wouldn’t be able to hold my sticks. Then I realized the fire I’d felt about playing earlier had more to do with Wren being there than hanging out with my so-called friends.

“You so want to nail that girl.”

Luke was at the foot of the stairs, holding on to the railing.

“What are you talking about?” I asked, not in the mood for a Dobson mindfuck.

“Grayson, come on. I know the Barrett work over when I see it. She seems a little pure for you, don’t you think?”

Before I knew what was happening, I was down the stairs, my hands on Luke’s chest, shoving him across the small walk space between the stairs and the door, until he hit the back wall. Shock flashed in his eyes when I put my forearm across his neck, pinning him. He turned his face sideways. I leaned into him with all my weight, got right in his face.

“Stay outta this, Dobson,” I said through clenched teeth. I held him against the wall, panting harder than if I’d just run a full field clear.

“Are you done?” he asked.

I held him there, fighting every urge to crush his windpipe, until my breathing returned to normal. I backed off.

He grabbed my wrist, twisted my arm back behind me until a jagged pain shot through my bicep to my shoulder. My cheek met the wall, hard.

“What’s happened to you, Barrett? You’re as flabby as a chick,” Luke breathed into my ear.

“Screw you.”

He gave my arm another twist, just to the edge of pain, and let go.

“Dude, ‘besties with testes,’ really?” I asked, shaking the pain out of my arm.

Luke leaned back on the stairwell, grinning.

“You didn’t like it? Thought it was catchy, myself. So what’s up with the quiet chick if she’s not a thrill or kill?”

Thrill or kill. Two words I hadn’t used to describe a girl since the spring. This was Luke code—
kill
meaning a great hit,
thrill
meaning a great lay. Hearing him saying it in reference to Wren made me ashamed I’d ever thought it was funny. I wanted to deck him.

“Why can’t you believe I’d be friends with a girl?”

Luke walked over to the dryer and pushed aside a leather jacket.

“Ah, Logan and his Stellas. Don’t think he’ll mind if we grabbed a few,” he said, pulling two bottles out of the case. Logan preferred his beer from the bottle and would notoriously
hoard his own secret stash during parties. It was something we kidded him about, but whenever the keg was tapped out he became the most popular guy in the room. After three years, we knew all of his hiding places.

Luke used the edge of the stairwell to pry off the caps, then handed me one of the bottles.

“Drop the friends bit. You were about to taste her tonsils before I broke it up.”

“Fine. Why
did
you do that?” I asked, tipping the bottle to my mouth.

He swigged his beer. “Because you never could juggle a girlfriend and find hits at the same time. And Wren seems like the kind of girl to get serious with. And I need you
not
to be serious.”

“Really?”

“Grayson, come on, why are you here? You’re not that good a drummer. Are you forgetting the summer of debauchery? The five of us crossing Europe, big finish in Amsterdam?”

“Not interested.”

Luke’s eyes sharpened.
“Rosse buurt
was your idea. Beer, coffee shops with legal weed, chicks behind glass ready to do anything you want. And you’re giving it up just because you got in trouble for the term-paper thing?”

“That ‘term-paper thing’? You make it sound like all I got was detention.”

“I know you’ve been through some heavy shit the past few
months, but that’s all the more reason to—”

“I’m out.”

He stared at me, searching my face for some hint that I was messing with him.

“You can’t back out. My old man changed his mind about financing my airfare—he set up an internship for me at the stock exchange next summer. Wants to brainwash me; thinks liberal arts is for pussies. So I have to get serious about this again.”

“Hey, here’s an idea . . . why don’t you just get a job?”

“Yeah, keep up a four-point-eight GPA, get us to another championship, and hold down a real job. Even I can’t do all that. C’mon, Grayson, you’re the one who got the best hits. Andy, Dev, and Logan suck at that part. You can’t tell me you’re satisfied with the minimum wage you get from being a . . . wow, I can’t even say it . . . wa . . . wa . . . wa . . . waiter. The hunt used to get you high.”

He was right. It did get me high. Rarely a thought that what we were doing was wrong, that anyone would get hurt or caught. All a game.

“Just bang this chick if that’s what you want. Get it out of your system.”

I shoved him away from me.

“So that’s what’s stopping you, isn’t it, this girl? The one who saved you.”

“How did—”

“Ava’s all nuclear about it. Gave me a friggin’ earful when I went over there. She doesn’t think Wren is good enough for you. But that has more to do with the thing she still has for you than anything else.”

My lip curled thinking of the
thing
Ava had for me. About a year ago, at another Andy Foley party, I’d been hammered to the point of stupidity. So gone, I’d checked out upstairs on the couch, wishing like hell my head would just stop spinning. It was pitch-dark, and someone snuggled up next to me.

“Grayson,” a girl whispered, and then lips were on mine.

As sick as it sounded, this wasn’t out of the ordinary at Foley’s house. I’d been talking to so many chicks that night and just went with it. Then the lights clicked on. Luke stood across the room, fists clenched.

Ava
. She’d been coming on to me for months, but I’d never given her any reason to think I was interested. Besides, Luke was into her, so even if I’d been remotely attracted, I would have made it a point to stay away.

The moment I realized what was happening, I sprung away with such force that I nearly knocked myself out on the corner of the coffee table. Without a beat Ava gasped and looked at Luke.

“Omigod, baby, you told me to meet you up here! I thought he was you.”

Luke and I were the same height and build, so it wasn’t completely off the wall, except for one thing. She’d said my name.

That night he either bought it or was too blitzed to care. Luke may have joked about Ava liking me, but I knew somewhere in the recesses of his twisted brain it had to bother him.

“How do you stand that?”

“What? Being her second choice? Easy. She’s a warm body, no strings. What’s not to like? We’ve got our whole lives to be serious. You used to understand that.”