25

RUBY

I’m drunk again. I didn’t mean to be drunk. Especially not two nights in a row. But I am. So drunk. Drunker than drunk. All of the drunk. Very wickedly drunk.

“You know you’re saying that out loud,” Everly says, poking me with her foot. We spent the last few hours picking out photos for her senior portfolio project, which she’s calling Heart Eyes. She’s been snapping pictures of people when they’re not paying attention, specifically when they’re looking at someone she thinks they care about. Apparently, it’s not an invasion of privacy as long as she does it in public. Great. She’s mostly got a good mix of parents looking at their children, people looking at the people they’re dating or married to . . . and then there’s me. Fucking heart eyes for days over Morgan Matthews. Not that Everly knows that.

She’s curled up behind her now-official boyfriend, Marcus, her chin resting on his shoulder as he plays Xbox with his headset on and occasionally takes a swig of whiskey. Living the hetero dream, I guess, while I sit here, lonely and drunk. Drunk. Dunk. Dink. Dank.

I roll over on my back and stare at the sky. The ceiling. Whatever you call it. I don’t even know. I just look up and try to think about anything else. Because somehow, around hour two, Everly convinced me to let her put my picture in her showcase. She still thinks I was looking at Tyler. I’d be laughing if I didn’t feel so much like crying.

So here I am. On her floor. Trying to forget Morgan’s soft lips and angry face. And the fact that photographic evidence exists of how she makes me feel.

“Wait, whose lips?” Everly asks.

Shit, am I still talking out loud? I reach out my hand, taking the bottle from where it rests on Marcus’s hip, and gulp down some more, wishing the alcohol could burn every last thought out of my skull.

“Morgan who? Morgan Matthews?” Everly asks, sitting up a little straighter, which jostles Marcus.

“Damn, baby,” he says. “You made me miss my shot.” But he smiles when she kisses his temple before crawling over to sit beside me.

I turn my head away from her, but she turns it back.

“Morgan Matthews? Really? That’s who has you showing up on my porch with two bottles of whiskey? I thought this was about Tyler! Ruby, Morgan is a girl.”

I take another swig. “Don’t I friggin’ know it,” I say, curling away from her again, because I will not get emotional over this. I can’t.

“Oh my god,” she says softly. “That picture . . .” Everly tries to pull me toward her again, but I refuse, jerking my shoulder away and staggering to my feet. “Were you looking at her?”

“No, it’s . . . Forget about it,” I mumble.

“Ruby, it’s cool. I was just surprised. Don’t—”

“I gotta get out of here,” I say, picking up the still-unopened second bottle of booze and my keys from the coffee table.

“Uh, no,” she says, snatching the keys out of my hand. “You’re definitely not driving anywhere.”

“I’m fine.” I reach for them again, but she shoves them in her pocket.

“Stop. You’re not thinking straight right now.”

I laugh, and when she looks confused, I add, “Pun intended?”

“Oh my god,” she huffs, but I don’t hear the rest. I stomp up the stairs and out the front door of her split-level ranch. Unfortunately, she’s right behind me.

“Ruby, stop.” She darts forward and cuts in front of me, mirroring me when I try to sidestep her. Damn her sober reflexes. Everly doesn’t drink. It used to annoy the shit out of me until she told me it was because both her parents are in recovery. She’s scared if she starts, she’ll never stop. How responsible, I think, untwisting the cap on the bottle.

“What do you want from me, Ev?”

“I’ve been your best friend for seven years. Don’t you think it’s finally time to let me in?”

“You are in,” I shout, raising my hands and then slapping them down to my sides. “You know everything there is to know about my shitty life. What else do you want?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Hypothetically, let’s just say you had a crush on the new girl. It would be nice if we could talk about that. You know, like best friends? Instead of you coming over and getting all angsty and shit-faced in my basement. If you’re afraid I’m weirded out or something, I’m not.”

“I don’t have a crush on her,” I say, which is technically not a lie. She’s more than a crush, she’s a goddamn . . . I don’t even know. A chair-stealing, car-hitting, loudmouthed life ruiner. I take another swig.

“Fine.” Everly sighs. “But if you did or ever do in the future, I’m here for you.”

“It’s fine. I’m fine. I don’t need you to be ‘here’ for me or whatever. You and Tyler and everyone else can just take all of this pity and concern and throw it right in the trash, because I don’t need it!” I punctuate my words with a tilt of the bottle. “Do you hear me? I don’t need anything!”

Everly steps forward, wrapping her arms around me so tight that I almost lose my balance. I will not cry. I. Will. Not. Cry.

“Shh, it’s okay,” she says.

I bury my head in her shoulder as Marcus opens the front door. The light from inside the house spills out onto the driveway, swallowing us whole. “You good?” he calls out.

I step back into the shadows and wipe at my eyes. “I’m going,” I say quietly. “But thanks.”

“Come inside,” Everly says.

I shake my head but hold the whiskey bottle out to her. “Take this away, and please let me go. I’m gonna walk it off.”

“Let me drive you home at least. It’s like two miles.”

“We’ll talk tomorrow or something, okay? I just want to walk.”

She looks unsure but doesn’t move to stop me. And I wonder, is this what coming out feels like? Is it always this bad and drunk and confusing? Does it still count if you try to take it back?

I’m barely to the end of Everly’s street when I start to get mad. Mad that Morgan makes me feel these things. Mad that she makes me question things that I thought I knew right down to my bones. Things like I’ll only crush on famous girls I’ll never meet and I’ll never want to be anyone’s girlfriend. Ever. Screw her for stirring this up and then shutting the door in my face. She. Shut. The. Door.

I don’t need her. I don’t need her shit. Her goddamn . . .

There are other hot people in the world, is all. And if I’m going to end up on the floor, drunk, confessing that I like girls, then it’s gonna be over someone who warrants it. And Morgan Matthews doesn’t. I deserve, like, Kristen Stewart or Tessa Thompson or, like, every girl in the cast of Riverdale. Go big or go home, right? That’s big, not Morgan. Morgan is tiny. A blip. A minuscule thorn in my side that just keeps digging and digging and . . . I should tell her that. Right now. Just march up like, Oh, you don’t want to kiss me? Well, guess what? I don’t want to kiss you anymore either.

There’s a teeny-tiny part of my brain screaming at me that this is bad idea, but I hang a right anyway and find my way to Morgan’s front porch. Because there is a much bigger part of my brain that wants her to know that I’m done. That I tried. That she’s the mess that I can’t be a part of, and not the other way around.

I knock. And when she doesn’t come to the door, I knock again, harder. And then I push the buzzer until the door is wrenched open by a very sleepy-looking Morgan saying, “Jesus, Dylan, did you forget your keys or . . .” Her words drop off when she sees me.

I stand up a little straighter. “Hi.”

“What are you doing here?”

I scratch my neck, conceding to the little voice in my head that, yeah, maybe showing up drunk on Morgan’s doorstep in the middle of the night was, in fact, a terrible plan. But oh well.

“Ruby?” Morgan crosses her arms. She’s in a T-shirt advertising some track invitational and the tiniest pair of sleep shorts that I have ever seen. I can tell she’s not wearing a bra, and I know I absolutely should not be noticing that, so I look away hard and fast before I stare too long.

I try to tell her that I don’t want to kiss her. That she’s no KStew. But everything gets jumbled, and what comes out is “I want to kiss KStew.”

She scrunches up her forehead. “Okayyyyy? Cool?”

I take a deep breath and hang my head. “No. Well, yeah, but no. I was trying to say that it’s fine that you slammed the door. Because there are ten thousand other hot people in the world, and you’re just a blip or . . . or . . . a speed bump, you know, because of the whole . . .”

She raises an eyebrow. “Hitting me with your car thing?”

“Exactly. You remembered!” A goofy smile spreads across my face. “Anyway, I’m officially raising the bar. So, yeah. You”—I poke her chest—“are out.”

“Okay, thanks for letting me know, then.” She starts to shut the door.

“You’re welcome, little blip,” I answer, tilting my chin up as I turn to walk down the steps. But I misjudge the distance and end up skidding down all three of them on my butt.

I try to push myself up, scraping my arm in the process, which is when Morgan appears beside me, barefoot in sharp gravel, and no, no, no, she shouldn’t be out here because of me. She should be inside in her little sleep shorts, sleeping.

“Quiet. You’re very drunk,” she says. It’s not a question but a statement. She wraps her arm around me and hauls me up.

“So what?” I mumble, and try to shrug her off.

Morgan tightens her grip, steering me inside her apartment. There’s a little scrape on her cheek that wasn’t there earlier, and I reach out my hand, grazing it gently, until she unceremoniously drops me onto the couch and leaves.

I’m not sure what I’m supposed to be doing, so I sit still, right where she left me, hoping we’ll both hate me less in the morning if I behave. I regret leaving my bottle. Not that I’m anywhere near sober, but I would like to be drunker. A lot drunker. Like, won’t remember any of this tomorrow drunker.

She returns a second, a minute, an hour later—what is time when you’re wasted on stolen whiskey on your crush’s couch?—with a washcloth and a little first aid kit. She dabs at the scrape on my arm and shoves a Band-Aid in my hand with a clipped “Here.”

“Thanks,” I say, choking on a smile. Because I should definitely not find Morgan playing nurse this hot.

“Anything else, or are we done?” she asks, putting distance between us.

I duck my head. “I guess not.”

She sighs and heads down the hall, disappearing into one of the rooms. I’m not sure if I should stay or go. Probably go, right?

I’m almost to her front door when she comes back.

“What are you doing?”

“Leaving,” I say, turning to see her holding a pillow and a blanket.

“Not like this, you aren’t.” She drops the stuff on the couch. “Please tell me you didn’t drive here.”

“Everly took my keys.”

“Everly should have taken all of you and put you to bed.” She spreads out the blanket and fluffs the pillow.

“She tried, but I’m stubborn.”

“I’ve noticed.”

“You don’t have to do this.”

Morgan puts a hand on her hip. “I’m not letting you walk home alone, and my brother is at a concert with the car. It’s this or I get dressed and bike you home, and I really, really don’t feel like doing that, okay? Will you please just lie down and sleep this off so I can go back to bed? I’m begging.”

“Okay,” I half whisper as I move over to the couch. “I’m sorry I woke you up.” I search her eyes as I say it, hoping she sees how serious I am. She must see something, because her face softens, just a little.

I think I hear her whisper good night as her bedroom door clicks shut.