Out of Breath (Breathing, #3)(8)

‘Wait. You slept with someone?!’ Meg’s voice rose, drawing the attention of a couple of guys walking by. I sunk into the booth, pulling my hat over my eyes when I heard them chuckle.

‘Meg!’ Peyton said sternly. ‘Why don’t you just announce it to the whole diner?’

‘Sorry,’ Meg grimaced. ‘But I –’

‘I don’t want to talk about it,’ I interrupted firmly. They both opened their mouths, and then closed them again. Our food arrived, thankfully, allowing us something to do other than dwell on my drunken indiscretion.

‘Where did you end up, Peyton?’ Meg interrogated.

‘On Tom’s couch,’ she stated. ‘Alone. He disappeared around three, and I couldn’t find Emma, so I fell asleep on his couch.’

Meg filled us in on her night as we ate our bacon and egg sandwiches – it wasn’t nearly as eventful. And, as it turns out, grease really does have miraculous effects. At least my body felt one step closer to rejoining the human race when we left the diner.

My phone rang as we reached the front steps. I knew what was about to happen, and I wasn’t ready. I took a deep breath and answered the phone anyway. ‘Hi, Sara.’

‘Happy New Year!’ she bellowed. I winced and pulled the phone away from my ear.

‘Not so loud,’ I begged.

‘Uh, okay,’ she replied in confusion. ‘Wait. Did you go out last night?’

‘Yeah,’ I answered softly. ‘But I’m not talking about it.’

Sara was quiet for a moment. ‘Does Meg know?’

I sat down on the couch and rested the back of my head against the cushion. ‘Yes.’

‘Can I ask her about it?’ she requested cautiously.

I paused and swallowed hard. ‘As long as you promise we’ll never have to talk about it.’

I could hear her thinking on the other end of the phone. ‘I promise.’ She hung up on me, and within thirty seconds Meg’s phone rang. She shot a glance at me from the other end of the couch.

‘Sara wants to know what happened to me last night, and I told her I wasn’t talking about it.’

‘But I can tell her, right?’ she confirmed.

‘Not in front of me.’

Meg stood and began to climb the stairs as she answered her phone. ‘Hi, Sara.’

‘I’m coming with you,’ Peyton called after her, taking two steps at a time. She was obviously feeling better.

I chased two aspirin with a Vitaminwater and remained on the couch, watching movies all afternoon.

I slunk away to my room in the early evening, leaving the girls with some horror movie that I really had no interest in. Sleep and I had taken way too long to finally find each other, and I didn’t want to jeopardize that with a movie.

Someone knocked lightly on my door. ‘Come in,’ I answered.

Meg poked her head in. ‘Hey.’ She sat at the end of my bed. ‘Still feel like shit?’

‘Tell me it goes away,’ I begged, my eyes closed.

‘You’ll be better tomorrow,’ she assured me. ‘Peyton told me how much you had to drink, or what she saw you drink anyway.’

I remained silent. Then she finally said it. ‘I know you don’t want to talk about it, and we won’t. I promise to never bring it up again. But before you drown in shame, know that everyone makes mistakes. And as far as I’m concerned, Ev–’

‘Don’t,’ I shot out before she could finish his name.

‘Sorry,’ she said, biting her lip. ‘I meant that it didn’t count. It was a mistake, and it doesn’t count.’

I’d never told Meg about my life in Weslyn. I didn’t explain why I almost never went out or why I refused to drink – or had, before last night. But I let Sara tell her when she came to visit after I’d moved into the house this past summer. She never mentioned what Sara had told her, but it helped her understand why I kept everyone at a distance. I trusted Meg.

I’d met her on the first day of soccer conditioning during our freshman year. She’d flown in from Pennsylvania, so we were both transplants. Meg accepted my withdrawn demeanour, and instinctively felt the urge to look out for me. This reminded me of Sara, and we bonded instantly.

Over the season, we found Peyton gravitating towards us. Truth be told, Peyton gravitated towards everyone. She was in your face and refused to be ignored. People either hated her or loved her, and she couldn’t care less either way. I think her brazen attitude is what made me like having her around.

And then there was Serena. She was from California, as was Peyton, and she was currently spending winter break with her family. But when she was with us, she completed our mismatched quad perfectly. Serena was genuinely the kindest person I’d ever met, but it was laced with a straightforward attitude that would tell a priest where to go if he crossed her. I responded to her cutting-edge Goth lifestyle with equal measures of intrigue and respect.

As much as I was grateful for Peyton’s and Serena’s patience with me and acceptance of who I was (although Peyton did have moments of being a little too … well, Peyton), it was Meg who I trusted with the truth about a past that we’d never actually talked about. Meg became my voice of reason, vying to keep me sane. When I was tiptoeing along the edge, Meg was there to make sure I didn’t fall over.