Meet Me at Midnight - Jessica Pennington Page 0,23
It isn’t angry, it’s just loud. Louder than I’ve ever heard him. I can’t make it out, but I can’t help trying. I spend the rest of the night with 60 percent of my attention on Caleb, and the other 40 listening for Asher. Toward the end of the party it sounds like his voice is being muffled by something, like maybe he’s outside or in the basement. He seems off tonight.
An hour later, Caleb looks at his phone and frowns. “I have to go. We have a training thing in the morning.” The same thing Kara has to go to.
“Okay. Well … I’m glad we got to hang out.” Smooth, Sidney. Smooth.
“Me, too.” Caleb runs a hand over his short blond hair. “You wanna go out tomorrow night?”
Something tightens in my chest. “Yeah. Definitely.” I hand him my phone. “Text me.”
Caleb smiles and gets up, reaching his hand down to pull me up from the couch. It’s the first time we’ve touched all night—even on the little couch, we were at opposite ends. I’m not sure if I should just shake his hand while I’ve got it, or hug him, or …
He pulls me by my hand and wraps his arms around me, making the decision for me. “Night, Sidney.”
“Good night.”
When Caleb is gone, I wander through the house. Kara is long gone; she sent me a text an hour ago saying she was leaving. But I still have to find Asher. I weave through the kitchen, to the little room that looks like an office. I poke my head out into the yard, but don’t see him. Finally, on my second pass through the living room, I see him coming out of the stairwell. He was in the basement.
“You ready to go?”
He looks past me, eyeing the kitchen. “Nope.”
“Come on, I’m over this.”
“So go home.”
“You know I can’t. I’m driving you home.”
He just looks at me blankly, and I can’t tell if he’s about to say something, or if he’s just going to fall asleep.
I spend fifteen minutes trying to coax Asher out to the car. I promise him food when we get home. Threaten to call his parents. Tell him that if we stay for a single minute more, I’m going to pass out from exhaustion. We’ve both been up since 6 a.m. That seems to convince him—maybe he forgot how tired he was. He lowers himself into my passenger seat in a slow crumple, and when we pull into our driveway he bolts from the car before I can even cut the engine. But he doesn’t go to his house, he takes the walkway straight to the lake.
Crap.
* * *
I find him sitting on the hill, just on the other side of the row of flowering bushes that divides our yards from the fire pit area on the edge of the downward slope to the lake. I thrust a bottle of water at him, and ask him if he needs something to eat. He tells me to leave, but I won’t.
“Why are you being nice to me?”
“Because I don’t think you’re going to remember this in the morning. And I’m not being nice. I’m making sure you don’t die. That’s not being nice, that’s just being a decent human who doesn’t want someone else to die.”
“Right,” he says. “Human.”
I cross my arms over my chest. “Your parents will kill me if they find you dead in a puddle of your own vomit tomorrow morning.” I’m trying to be patient with him, but I’m cold and so tired I feel a little drunk myself.
“You’re not, though.”
I shake my head, unsure what he’s talking about. “Not what?”
“Human,” he mumbles.
“Go to bed, Asher.”
“Make me,” he says, smiling.
God, he’s impossible. I think about what could get Asher to leave, and decide talking to him may be my best bet. Maybe I can drive him back to his house with my presence alone. I sit down on the concrete walkway next to him. “You know, you weirded out Caleb tonight. You just had to mess with me and wear that stupid matching shirt.” I take a swig of my own bottle of water. “At least I get a do-over tomorrow night.”
Asher groans, like he’s heard this a million times.
“You know, if you don’t want to listen to me talk, you could just go to bed.” I give him my best I can be as obnoxious as you can smile. “Problem solved.”