‘I didn’t want to draw attention… because of who my stepmother is.’
‘Echo told me you’d come to see him. He would have said something. If he didn’t want you here. He has no capacity for bullshit. Just tells it like it is.’
He takes the rest of the bottles, and we make our way back to the pool table, where the college kids in red and white varsity jackets have taken over.
‘Turns out Reyes didn’t bring enough fucking quarters,’ Chase Brennan grumbles, taking one of the beers from AJ.
‘You could have brought some of your own damn quarters,’ is Reyes’ comeback as he takes another. I hand a beer to Nicole and we clink bottle necks.
I talk to Nicole after that. AJ doesn’t look my way. It seems that’s to be the sum total of our interaction for the night. I didn’t even get to ask him if he’d heard from Noah.
So, after a while, I make my excuses, and I go back to my friends.
And, just like five years ago after Amber Bradshaw’s party, maybe that’s it. I don’t have a reason to see AJ Callahan again.
I wanted to prove to them that I am different. But maybe I’m just the same.
Chapter Sixteen
AJ
Hollie Palmer’s walking away from me and I feel powerless to stop her.
My plan to play it cool just backfired.
I’m a fucking jerk.
‘She is not at all how I remembered,’ Nicole says when I go over to the barrel and pull myself up a bar stool. ‘She’s a regular sweetheart. With a cute British accent.’
Reyes and Chase are tryna flirt with some college chicks.
‘And we were dicks to her in high school,’ I comment.
‘Y’all were dicks to her, AJ, not me.’
‘You went along with it. Just like I did.’
Nicole looks pissed. ‘I’m so glad I shed my high school skin.’
‘Can I ask you something?’ I ask.
‘Shoot.’
‘You were at that graduation party, right? In Electric Hills.’
‘Amber Bradshaw’s? Holy shit, we went skinny dipping in her pool that night. That party wasoff the hook.’
‘I played a game. Up in Amber’s parents’ room with a bunch of them cheerleaders and jocks.’
‘What game?’
I wince at the memory, because now it seems so dumb. ‘Amber puts a blindfold on a guy. They go stand in her mom’s walk-in closet. Amber sends in a girl, and after, the guy has to guess who he’s kissed. Shot of tequila if you guessed wrong, and so on.’
‘Amber had you play that?’
‘I kissed a girl in glasses. Amber’s wearing sunglasses, right, and she claims she’s the one who I kissed. Only I kiss her after, and I can tell it’s not the same girl from the closet.’
Nicole draws her brows together. ‘Who’d you kiss?’
