Emmy & Oliver - Robin Benway Page 0,44
wrapped her arms around Oliver’s neck. “This is both super weird and really helpful,” she said, trying to pull down her skirt in the back so that she wouldn’t flash half of Canyon Crest.
“You’re welcome,” Oliver said. “Can you, um, loosen your grip a little, though? My neck.” He coughed and winced.
“Oh, sorry, sorry.” Caro readjusted herself, then looked down at me and grinned. “You look so little from up here.”
“You’re, like, six inches away from me,” I pointed out as the three of us (well, two and a passenger) trekked it toward Drew’s house. The last time we had all gone to Drew’s house, it had been for Drew’s fifth birthday party, but I could still picture Oliver, Caro, and I trudging up the driveway, gifts in hand.
“It’s a dramatic change,” Caro told me, unaware of what I had been thinking. “You don’t understand because you’re average height.”
Oliver just hefted her higher onto his back. “Caro, your shoes. Ow.”
“Oh, sorry, sorry.” She dug her heels out of his sides. “My bad.”
We hiked up Drew’s driveway (empty, of course) and I almost slipped in the loose gravel, grabbing Caro’s ankle at the last second to steady myself and almost pulling the three of us down to the ground in the process. “If I die . . .” Caro warned.
“If you die?” Oliver said, trying to right both himself and me. “Who makes driveways like this in real life? Why is it so long?”
“Because if you can afford this driveway, you can afford the car that’s good enough to drive on it,” I said. “It’s a show-off thing.”
“Well, where’s Drew’s car?” he asked, looking around.
“In the garage,” Caro said, gesturing a little without actually letting go of Oliver.
“Stop talking, we’re almost there,” I said.
Drew gets a little twitchy when people talk about his parents’ money. “It’s not even mine,” he says whenever someone brings it up, then he changes the subject.
Sometimes, the things people don’t say are louder than the words that come out of their mouths.
“You should’ve seen the moat they tried to put in,” I whispered to Oliver in a not-very-whispery voice as we climbed up the (massive, seriously) front steps. “Zoning laws and all that, but trust me, it could have been epic.”
“Well, an alligator is one thing,” Oliver said without missing a beat. “But when you need five or six, that’s a different story.” He grinned down at me as Caro slid off his back.
Caro noticed, though. “He’s picking up what you’re throwing down,” she whispered to me as Oliver started to knock on the door. “Wait, no, what are you doing?” She interrupted him, reaching up to stop his hand before he knocked again. “This is a party, you just go in.”
“Lead the way,” Oliver said, but Caro took an extra second to give me a Meaningful Look before plowing through the front door.
It looked like things were already in full swing. I could hear Drew’s brother, Kane, laughing from somewhere deep inside the house—or maybe it was just in the next room. Drew’s house was so large and the ceilings were so high that it made the acoustics weird, like that whispering spot at the US Capitol. (We took a field trip in eighth grade. And yes, my mom was a parental chaperone. No surprise there.)
“Hey!” I heard Drew yell, and he appeared at the top of the stairs, already on his way to very drunk and with a bottle of something in his hand. It was actually a double staircase, one on either side of the foyer that met at the landing at the top. We recorded ourselves acting out a scene from Romeo and Juliet on that balcony for an English assignment back in freshman year, when Caro swooned so much that she nearly fell over the railing. “A-plus for effort,” our teacher had said when he saw the footage, but we ended up with a B-minus, anyway.
“Remember?” I grinned, turning to Oliver. It was instinctive and accidental, like my brain could place him there even though he hadn’t been there at all.
“Remember what?” he replied. His eyes were sort of wide and I realized that Drew’s house was probably a smidge overwhelming, what with the staircases and the noise and the total strangers.
“Nothing,” I said. “We should get something to drink.”
“A-fucking-men,” Caro echoed, and we went past some of Kane’s friends and into the kitchen, where a keg was sitting on the kitchen floor, with dozens of beer bottles and red cups