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I looked up at him as we walked hand in hand back to the dance. “We’re okay, right? You forgive me for what I did with Jacob?”

Axel’s fingers tightened around mine. “Can we just...maybe never talk about that again? I really don’t want to picture you on your knees in front of my best friend.”

“Yeah, I won’t mention it again. I’m sorry.”

Axel sighed. “You don’t have to keep apologizing. This is all my fault. If I’d just told you the truth...”

“No, it was my dad’s fault.”

Axel didn’t say anything to that.

“And maybe a bit of my fault too for not asking you out instead.”

Axel squeezed my hand. “Definitely more your dad’s fault, I think.”

I stopped walking when we reached the cafeteria doors. “Do you think you’ll hate my dad forever?” Because that was going to make things very awkward going forward. Thanksgiving was coming up. I pictured the two of them glaring at each other from opposite ends of the table. And Uncle Tyler and my dad getting in another fist fight.

“Are you mad at him?” Axel asked instead of answering my question.

“He apologized. Kind of. But I’m still furious with him. He’s manipulative and awful and...” I sighed. “But he’s my dad.”

“If I can pretend you haven’t sucked Jacob’s cock maybe I can pretend your father was never an asshole.” He reached out and tucked a loose strand of hair behind my ear. “Does that work?”

That was probably as much as I could ask for. I slowly nodded. “Thank you, Axel.”

“But can we maybe not think about any of that right now? Tonight is about us.”

I stood on my tiptoes and placed a kiss against his lips. He was right. Tonight was all about us...

The sound of sirens made the music from the cafeteria almost disappear completely.

“Oh crap!” I said. “Sophie!”

“What about Sophie?” Axel glanced toward the front doors of Empire High where blue and red lights were lighting up the night sky.

“She has a half-kilo of cocaine in her purse!”

“Excuse me?”

“The cops are going to arrest her!” I grabbed Axel’s hand and pulled him into the cafeteria. “We need to find her before the cops do! We have to flush the drugs!”

“Why does Sophie have so much cocaine?!”

“She was trying to get Mr. Halifax...” I shook my head. “It doesn’t matter. We need to split up and find her.” She’d left the cafeteria with Mr. Halifax, but she might have come back by now. And we didn’t have time to search the whole school. I shoved Axel toward the dance floor and ran into the crowd to make my way over to where the punch was.

The dancing had gotten a lot raunchier since Axel and I had snuck off. Everyone was so much closer together and everything seemed blurred in the dim light. Sophie wasn’t anywhere near the punch bowl. I spun in a circle.

“There you are,” Jacob said. “Where did you guys run off to?”

“Jacob!” I put my hands on his arms. “We need to find Soph!”

“Or we could dance.”

“No, it’s...”

Jacob twirled me around in a circle.

Axel stepped out of the crowd, grabbed my waist, and pulled me away from Jacob. “Not a chance, man.”