Michelle’s eyes are still vodka-vacant and her smile is rabid as she yells, “That’s my cue!” And as quickly as she surfaced, she’s lost to the swarm of ex-cheerleaders getting into formation.
My disapproval is palpable as I take in the insurance liability before me.
Liv’s disapproval is palpable, too, but her stare is trained on me. “Be nice.”
Turning away from everyone and everything else, I meet the warning in Liv’s eyes and enunciate my words above the fray: “I’m too sober for this.”
—
By our third drink, Liv and I have retreated into our own world the way we have since we were young. Huddled together,codependently swearing to never love another the way we love each other—and incessantly checking train times. Liv’s already missed the first three she’d meant to take.
Three drinks, it would seem, is also the exact amount of alcohol required for me to start confessing the deep dark stuff.
I expect Liv to die laughing when I tell her about Zola’s matchmaking ambush, but she’s uncharacteristically quiet.
“Why aren’t you saying anything?” I ask, when I can’t take the silence any longer.
A lazy smile spreads across her lips as she chases her straw down with her tongue. She finally catches it and takes a long sip before speaking.
“You’re considering it, aren’t you?”
I can’t swallow my own sip fast enough. “Hellllll no.”
Liv shakes her head, braving my glare toboopmy nose.
“I know you,” she says. And even though her words are slower and drenched in tequila now, they still sound likePOP! POP!“You can’t say no to them. They’ve got that Harper hold on you.”
That Harper hold.I don’t have to ask what she means by it.
Liv was there in the weeks after my dad left, when there was no order in our world anymore—no constants, no control. She saw how it changed me to realize how vulnerable we’d been. How fragile our world was that it could be destroyed by one man’sgoodbye.
All my dad had to do was flick a finger to turn over the ignition, and everything came crashing down. Our old lives, and old selves, shattered.
One moment we were the people we’d always been, and the next, we became something different. I just made sure my “different” was stronger, so I couldn’t be torn down like that again. So even if everyone around me fell, I’d still be standing. Readyto help them get back up. I never paused to consider if the thing holdingmeup was muscle or scar tissue.
“You should have seen them,” I say, surprised by how quickly I sober at the thought of Mom and Zola. “And Zo,” I whine. “I want this for her. I want her to have something nobody can take from her. But there’s gotta be another way.”
“Zo would be doing you a favor by keeping you off the apps. I’ve been swiping up here for years. That shit is horrendous.” Liv braces for impact as she continues. “And I love you, but you, my friend, have looked fucking miserable all night. A little dumb fun isn’t the worst thing that could happen to you. Or a crush. I haven’t heard you talk about a guy since—”
“That guy with the hands?” I ask, cupping the air above my lap.
“Ew, god, no.”
“Okay, but I do kinda miss him.”
“That’s ’cause you’re disgusting,” she says, a little too quickly. “No, it was the one who’d come see you at the bar every night. We tailgated with him when I was in town.”
“Oh! Adam.”
“Wait, I thought Adam was gay.”
“He is.”
“Then why would I be talking about Adam, Kai?”
I shrug as Liv’s phone vibrates in her hand.
“Well,” she says, face going momentarily blank to unlock her phone, “if we just scanned the last four years of your dating history and all we came up with was a creep and a gay guy, my vote on this thing with Zo is a hard yes.”
