Fuck her.
Fuck Angelica and her friends, and Max, and Ms. Holland. They didn’t know. They had no fucking idea what I’d been through. How my life had been turned upside down that night and never quite turned back around.
The bathroom door creaked open, and I held my breath, hoping to God she hadn’t followed me in here to finish the job.
“Maguire, you in here?” Nate’s voice filled the room.
“Go away,” I shouted.
“Afraid I can’t do that.” His footsteps grew closer.
“This is the girls’ bathroom for a reason, asshole.”
“Yeah, well, I’m not leaving until you show yourself.”
“Creeper much,” I murmured as I pressed my nails into my palms, willing the erratic beat of my heart to calm down.
There was a thud to the side of me and Nate appeared over the partitioning wall.
“Oh my God, what are you doing? I could have been peeing.” I clambered to my feet.
“Good thing you weren’t then. Want to get out of here?”
“With you?” I balked. “No thanks.”
“Come on, don’t be like that. I can make it worth your while.”
“How can you possibly—”
He dangled a small baggie in his hand, and my world went quiet. It was a bad idea. The worst. But I couldn’t go back in there.
“You’re thinking about it, aren’t you?”
“We’ll get into trouble for skipping class.”
He gave me a crooked smile and said, “That’s half the fun.”
“I can’t feel my face,” I said, closing my eyes and letting the weightlessness sink into me.
“It’s some good shit, right?” Nate chuckled.
Slowly, I turned my head to look at him. “You look funny.”
“That’s the drugs talking.”
It was a bad idea leaving school with Nate, letting him drive me across town to the edge of the reservoir and hotbox his car until we were both blissed out. But I couldn’t find it in me to care.
I felt great.
So fucking good I wanted to stay here forever.
“Do you have any more?” I asked, every syllable elongated as if it was an effort to make my lips form words.
Nate smirked, his eyes thin, expression goofy. “I think we had enough.”
“Yeah,” I let out a soft sigh, stroking his soft leather seats. “You’re probably right. I like your car.”
“I think it likes you too.” He chuckled and then I was laughing until we were both hysterical with tears streaming down our faces.
“I-I can’t breathe,” I wheezed.
“For real? Do you need CPR? Or mouth to mouth? You know, I’m pretty good at that.” He started smacking his lips together.
“Oh God, stop. Stop. I love your car, not you.”
Never you, my stupid traitorous heart echoed.
He was a sleazy asshole.
A sleazy asshole with some damn good weed.
“Is it true?” he said when our laughter died down. “What Ange said?”
“What do you think?” I stared him dead in the eye.
“I think something inside you is broken.” Sincerity coated his words, sobering me.
Rolling my eyes, I said, “Is this the part where you tell me you want to fix me? Be the one to piece me back together?”
He studied me, too closely considering how high we both were. “I’m not the good guy here,” he said cryptically.
“No. What are you then? The villain? Because I’ve met plenty of those before and you don’t scare me, Nate Miller.”
“I’m…” He paused considering his answer for a second. “A friend.”
“What if I don’t need any more friends?”
His brow lifted. “Something tells me that you do.”
“Is this a game? Did Marc Denby put you up to this? Should I expect him and his friends to appear any moment and—”
“Ever heard of keep your friends close and your enemies closer?”
“You know, being high aside, I can’t get a read on you.”
“Maybe that’s the way I like it.”
“I think you should take me home.”
We’d been out here too long. School was over and Celeste had been blowing up my cell phone. I’d given her the CliffsNotes version of what happened, and she’d promised a) not to kill Max with her bare hands and b) to cover for me with Michael and Sabrina if they got home early from work.
I didn’t think anyone would appreciate me turning up at the house as high as a kite.
“I’m gonna need time to sober up,” he said, cranking his window down.
“Actually, before you take me home, can we get something to eat? I’m starving.”
“The lady wants food, the lady shall get food.” He swished a hand in the air. “But first, we must hydrate.” Snagging the bottle of water out of the central console, Nate uncapped it and downed the thing in one.
“Why’d you really bring me out here today?” I blurted out, the fresh air already counteracting the THC in my system.
“Because Maguire…” His eyes narrowed at me. “You looked like you could use a friend, and we all need one of those sometimes.”
“I… really don’t know what to say to that.” I cranked my own window open and inhaled a deep breath of fresh air.
“Feeling okay?”
“This was a bad idea.”
“Ouch.”
“You tried to feel me up at that mixer in the summer… I stabbed you with a fork.”
“I haven’t forgotten. But listen, I was drunk. I’m an asshole when I’m drunk. Actually, I’m an asshole most of the time, it’s easier that way,” he said cryptically.
I studied him through glazed eyes. He was like all the other rich entitled pricks at DA, but there was something in his eyes I hadn’t noticed before. Something that looked like sadness.
His cell phone started blaring and he cussed under his breath. “We need to go.”
“But I thought you said you need to sober up first.”
“I do. But I also need to be somewhere. We’ll have to take a rain check on dinner.”
“Oh, it wasn’t… yeah, okay.”
This was weird.
He was acting weird.
And it occurred to me that maybe there was more to Nate Miller than I first thought.
Nix
“Is your old man around?”
I glared at Vince Colombo, unable to hide my sheer contempt for the guy.
“He’s not here.”
He glanced over my shoulder, peering into the trailer. Yanking the door behind me, I stepped forward, forcing him to back up. “I said, he’s not here.”
A wolfish grin tugged his mouth, revealing three gold-plated teeth. They glinted in the moonlight making him look deadly. “You know, Nix, I always did like your balls, kid.”
He shouldered me out of the way and entered the trailer uninvited. Anger rolled down my spine like lightning. Vince Colombo was a local dealer. A bad guy. The type of guy you didn’t want sniffing around. Joe worked with him sometimes, but even Joe knew Vince was someone you kept at arm’s length. So the fact he was here, in the trailer, was a huge fucking problem.