“I wish.” She blows a deflated raspberry at her phone before pocketing it and pulling on her coat. “Ricardo will be here in seven minutes.”
My chest squeezes tight. Seven minutes is way too soon. Before I fully realize what I’m about to say, I speak up. “Cancel it.”
Ellie’s nose scrunches. “What?”
“Cancel it and stay with me.” I stop, swallow, backtrack. What am I really offering? A place to crash, or something more? Either way, no part of me wants to let her leave, and I’m hollow at the thought of going back to an empty house. “I live a ten-minute walk from here,” I explain, “and I was fully prepared for asleepover with Kat. Snacks, air mattress, everything is set up. Just crash at my place.”
Ellie’s eyes narrow as she reaches for her phone in slow motion. “Are you sure?”
AmI sure? “You’re not paying a hundred bucks to drive across town,” I say.
“Ninety-five bucks,” she corrects me.
“Before tip.”
“Fair point.”
Her blue fingernails float across her phone screen. “I guess I’ll tell my mom I’m crashing with a friend.”
Her word choice irons my nerves flat. Right. A friend. She’s fresh off a breakup and bound for New York, and I’m just some girl from her hometown with her sights set on U of I.
Ellie hits send on the text, cancels her ride, and then, just when my nerves have fully settled, she laces her fingers into mine.
My body lights up like Third Street after dark. Crashing with a friend, my ass. Yeah, we might have entirely separate trajectories, but maybe, just for tonight, we can take things off the track.
I flip off the singular light with my one free hand and guide Ellie through the pitch black and toward the back door.
“God, when’s the last time I had a sleepover?” she asks the darkness, giving my hand the gentlest squeeze.
“I was just thinking the same thing,” I say. It’s almost true. As we step back into the cold I wonder: when’s the last time I spent this much time with someone—anyone—who wasn’t Kat?
five
Blacking out feels sort of like one giant, full-body blink; like somewhere between your seventh and eighth drink, God pressed the skip forward button on your life. It’s sudden and surprising, a slur of a vodka-soaked memory that barely clings to the edges of your brain. One moment you’re enjoying a perfectly messy evening, sneaking into your place of employment with a girl you’ve known for either three hours or five years, depending on who’s counting. Next thing you know, you’re stumbling home together, laughing and pouring shots from your parents’ liquor cabinet, and then…well, then you’re waking up on an air mattress in your living room, just like you’d originally planned, only not next to the person you expected.
I open just one eye at a time, hoping it’ll make things half as bad. If the hangover wasn’t punishment enough, the living room floor is a minefield of Oreo shards and half-eaten bags of pita chips, and it looks like we pulled all the cushions off Mom’s white leather couch, presumably for some kind of pillow fort that didn’tseem to have come together. The knocked-over bottle of Tito’s scares me fully awake, but a quick survey of the area suggests it was already empty before it tipped over. Thank God. I have until Sunday to replace it and get this place back to Mom’s standards.
I shift onto my right side, careful not to disrupt the blankets too much. Beside me, Ellie’s body rises and falls with slow, even breaths. Just looking at her makes my chest wind tight. She’s curled up remarkably small, a tiny, sleeping angel still in last night’s clothes. I pull back a blanket just enough to check my own status—still fully dressed in last night’s jeans and T-shirt. Given the empty bottle of vodka, that’s probably for the best. The few clues I have—the bottles, the snacks, the faintest memory of a pillow fort—suggest that Ellie and I ended our night on a high note, albeit a fully clothed one.
A low vibrating noise hums from across the room, and I startle, then check to make sure it didn’t wake Ellie up. It didn’t, thank God. I haven’t figured out what to say to her yet. I trace the humming sound to the coffee table, where my phone somehow ended its night safe and sound on a charger. After several attempts to stand up off the air mattress without disrupting Ellie’s sleep, I opt to logroll off and onto the floor, then scramble to my feet, tiptoe across the room, and turn my phone over. A bright glowing image of my mom flashes on the screen, then dips to a notification for a missed call. Shit.
I yank out the charger and make it halfway up the stairs before Mom calls a second time, and although I pick up right away, I don’t say a word until I’m safe in my bedroom and way out of Ellie’s earshot. “Hello?”
“Morning! Did I wake you?” Mom’s voice buzzes with caffeine and sunshine, two things I haven’t seen yet today.
“Sure did,” I manage through a yawn. I’m not as hungover as I deserve to be, but the unmistakable cement-like feeling pouring from my forehead to my sternum hardly has me in “talking to my parents” shape.
“Oh, I’m so sorry! Go back to bed, we’ll call you later.”
“No, it’s fine,” I lie, tugging open my junk drawer in search of eye drops. Blackout Murphy may have been responsible enough to charge her phone, but not quite enough to take out her contacts.
“Well happy Thanksgiving,” Mom chirps, reminding me that I’m not just hungover, I’m hungover on a holiday. “We’re so thankful for you, sweetie.”
“And we’re thankful that this place has a swim-up bar!” Dad shouts in the background. Classic.
“Are you guys at the pool already?”
“What do you mean already?” I can hear the frown in Mom’s voice. “We’re an hour ahead! It’s nearly noon!”
