She closes her eyes, exhales slowly, then pops them open. “Mia, is he sure he was driving that night?”
“Yes. He doesn’t remember it, but Coach found him in the car and woke him up.”
She grabs her keys. “Come on.”
I put down my wine and follow her out the door. “Where are we going?”
“To get answers,” she says. “We don’t have the full story.”
Five minutes later, Bailey knocks on the door to Mason and Chris’s apartment, and I shake my head. “I don’t know if we should be doing this.”
“Yes, we should,” she says. “We need to find answers, and that’s why we’re here.”
“But maybe Sebastian was right. Maybe nothing good can come of digging up information from that night. If we don’t want people to look at Arrow and find out what happened, we shouldn’t ask too many questions.”
“We don’t know what happened,” she says. “Nobody does. Just be cool. It’s fine.”
Chris opens the door and sees Bailey. His eyes go wide. “Hey! Mason’s in the living room.” He seems surprised to see her here. He seems to have some opinions about Bailey’s relationship with Mason, and he’s not alone.
“Thanks,” she says. “But I’m not just here for him, ya know. You’re my friend, too.”
“Mmm,” Chris says, unconvinced. “Okay.”
We go to the living room and find Mason sitting at the TV with a PlayStation controller in his hands, some military game with lots of gunfire on the screen. He looks up and sees Bailey, does a double take, and then turns the TV off.
“Hey.” He puts the controller on the cluttered coffee table. “What’s going on?”
“Can’t I come and hang out with my friends?” she asks. “You guys show up at my place all the time. What’s the difference?”
Chris clears his throat. “No, we don’t.”
“Shut up,” Mason says to Chris. Then to Bailey, “It’s cool. You can come over anytime you want.”
“Mia got fired this morning,” Bailey says.
“Bailey!”
“What? It’s not like it’s a secret.”
I sigh. “My pride or something, okay?”
“Ouch,” Mason says. “Why’d the old man fire you?”
Bailey opens her mouth, but I shoot her a look and she closes it again. I don’t really need her talking smack about my dad to these guys.
“It’s complicated,” I say.
“Complicated?” Chris asks, “Or Gwen didn’t like you sleeping with Arrow?” Bailey and I both spin on him, and he holds up his hands, palms out. “I’m not judging! I just know she doesn’t like your relationship. It’s pretty much all over her face every time she sees you two together.”
“I’m not sleeping with Arrow,” I say. Then I grimace. “I mean, not anymore. Exactly.”
Bailey moves toward the kitchen. “It doesn’t matter. But speaking of people who are sleeping with Arrow—”
“Or not sleeping with him,” I say.
“Yeah, whatever.” She rolls her eyes. “What do you all know about him and Trish?”
“Oh, man,” Chris says, turning away from us and busying himself stacking dishes from the drying rack in the kitchen.
Mason shakes his head. “I don’t want to get into that. She’s a hot mess. A live grenade ready to blow.”
“A live grenade? You play too many video games,” Bailey says.
Mason lowers his voice and points his thumb toward the hallway. “And she’s sleeping in Chris’s room.”
Bailey and I both turn to stare at Chris.
“Not like that,” Chris says. “He’s right. She crashed here last night. Showed up at our door drunk—maybe high. I don’t know what she’s doing. She started going off about her dad, and we took her keys so she couldn’t drive home. I gave her my bed and slept on the couch.”
Bailey looks at me, then back to Chris. “What did she say about her dad?”
He slides a stack of plates into their spot in the cabinet and shuts the door. “Normal daddy-issue stuff. He’s a selfish asshole. He’s made her life hell.” He shakes his head. “I don’t know. But I do know that the last thing I need is for Coach to catch his daughter at my house, high on God-knows-what. I’d have taken her home myself if she hadn’t threatened to slit her wrists if I did. Someone needed to keep an eye on her.”
“Do you guys remember her and Arrow being together on New Year’s Eve?” Bailey asks.
“Who could forget?” Mason mutters.
I have goosebumps and that uneasy tightening in my chest and stomach. I always feel like this when we talk about that night. It’s as if I’m standing on the side of the road again,