I grab a seltzer from the fridge and almost run into Asher when I turn around. He clicks his tongue and wags a finger at me as he leans on the wall. “Sloane Sawyer, you naughty girl.” He crosses his tan arms and sports a smug smile, looking as though he just caught me doing something I shouldn’t have.
“Asher.” I give him a tight-lipped smile. “If this is about last year, everyone’s over it by now.” The boys loved to tease me about both the affair and the DUI. I let them make their jokes and waited for the next big thing to steal their attention.
“I saw you this summer,” he says, eyebrows rising up to his sandy-blond curls that brush over his forehead. Wesley and Asher have the same light green eyes, being that they’re cousins. And I wonder how it’s possible to melt when I look into one pair and boil at the other.
“You all saw me this summer. I came back here for Jake’s birthday party, remember?” I edge around him to walk back to the living room.
“I saw you after the party, and I saw whose bedroom you walked out of in the morning.” That stops me dead in my tracks, and I turn again to face him. “You and Wesley. Interesting.”
I walk back toward him, bringing the conversation down to a whisper. “I think you’ve just had too much to drink, Asher. You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
He looks down at my unopened drink. “Maybe you just haven’t had enough.” He pops the top of the can. “Loosen up, Sawyer, it’s a party,” he says with a smile as he tips the can to my lips and puts a hand on the door to the backyard.
“Wait,” I call out before he leaves. “Who all knows?”
He taps a finger to his mouth, pretending to think about it. “I think just me. For now.” He gives me a wicked smirk. He thinks this is funny.
“Asher,” I say through clenched teeth. “Please keep this to yourself.”
He leans back against the door. “What’s in it for me?”
“What is it that you want?” I bite out, not able to fully believe he would require anything from me just to keep a secret. But it’s Asher after all.
He doesn’t even need time to think about it. “Free drinks at the wine bar you work at, anytime I come in.”
I gape at him. “I can’t just make those free. I’d have to pay for them myself.”
“Do you think Annica knows about what happened? Or Marissa?” I can’t hide the flicker of my expression when he says it. “Oh, you didn’t know her and Wes are back together?”
“Fine,” I grit out. “Free drinks.” He doesn’t venture out of Pembroke anyway, so I likely won’t have to give him free anything, but Asher was always the biggest asshole of the group for seemingly no reason, so he just might.
When Asher walks out the back door, I stand there alone in the kitchen, taking a breath. Wes is back together with Marissa Wilder. Of course. Of course! We’ve been friends since freshman year, why would that change just because of one drunken hookup? My mind switches back to Jonah as another stab of guilt pierces my gut. He hasn’t been dead a full twenty-four hours and I’m already worrying about someone else. But Wes is in my mind like a song you just discovered and love. You play it over and over againuntil you’re tired of it. It’s been four years and I’m still not tired of it. I bring the seltzer to my mouth and start to chug. Then grab another.
The party fizzles out around midnight, when most people leave for the bars or other house parties. Annica left an hour ago for the hockey house and Dani is now wanting to head to the bars as well.
“You ready?” she asks, grabbing her purse and pulling the strap over her shoulder. I glance around the party, now thinning out, and catch Wesley’s eyes. He tilts his head toward the stairs. To his room.
“Uh, no. I might go home. I’m just not feeling it tonight.” It isn’t a complete lie.
Dani gives me a sympathetic frown. “Okay.” She rubs my shoulder. “Text me if you need anything.” I watch as Charlie places a hand to her back to guide her out, and I wonder if anyone will ever love me like Charlie secretly loves Dani, with longing stares and light touches. He’s her fallback. Her casual hookup whenever she’s lonely. I can only hope for his sake that one day she gives him a real chance.
Jake and Sam follow the two of them out the door and that leaves just me and Wes. And Asher. At the base of the stairs with my hand on the railing, I look around the living room before going up. The last thing I need is Asher catching me leaving Wesley’s room a second time. I wonder what I’d owe him then. He’s nowhere in sight, so I climb the rickety wood staircase, then walk down the hall and into the last room on the left. Wesley’s room.
It looks the same as it always has. Just a bed, no bed frame, a dresser with a TV on it, and that stupid high school flag he won’tget rid of. “Wow, I love what you’ve done with the place,” I joke, pretending to admire it.
“I actually added a new flag. You didn’t even notice.” He points to a small American flag in a mug on his nightstand.
“Wow, so patriotic, a real nationalist.” It’s easy to joke with him after a few drinks. Easy to pretend we’re back to normal.
He starts to take off his sweatshirt, and his T-shirt underneath comes up in the process, briefly showing off his bare abdomen and chest, and I catch myself staring before he pulls the T-shirt back down and throws the sweatshirt into a hamper.
“Jake spilled a beer all over me,” he says, ruffling his dark wavy hair and setting his hat on the dresser. “You’d think this kid would know how to hold his alcohol by now.”
I clear my throat and look away from his toned arms, and his hands, the same ones that touched me and— God, get it together, Sloane. “So you wanted to talk?”
He crosses the room and sits on his bed. “Yeah.” He looks down at his hands, then up at me still standing here. “You can sit if you want.” He motions to the bed, but when I look at it all I can think about is last summer. I slowly take a seat, careful to create distance between us.
“I feel kind of weird about it, with what happened,” he says finally.
