The Devil and the Deep Blue Sea (The Devils #2)(27)

“I’m stuck outside this club,” I tell him. “Six has my ID and they won’t let me back in.”

“And you’re sitting outside on the street?” he asks. Now he sounds mad, but it’s just because he has some weird belief that I’m fragile. I spent the three years after I dropped out of school sleeping on people’s floors or at the train station. Sitting outside in Waikiki is child’s play compared to life back then.

“I texted him,” I say, closing my eyes. “It’s fine. He’ll get me in a second or I’ll Uber back.”

“Are you drunk?” he asks. I hear a zipper and wonder if he’s undressing. For a moment, I picture him pulling off his shorts and it has the well-worn quality of something I’ve pictured before. I see abs like artwork, that fine trail of hair leading to boxer briefs.

Jesus, Drew, I can’t believe you noticed his happy trail with that level of specificity. “Bad Drew,” I say aloud.

“I don’t know if that’s a yes or no,” he says.

I blink. “To what?”

“Never mind. Your inability to string words together answers my question. Where are you?”

He sounds slightly breathless, distracted. I wonder if he’s asking me all this while he’s getting busy with Sloane. That is not an appealing thought. “I can’t really picture Sloane having sex,” I tell him. She seems like she’d demand all surfaces be wiped down with bleach or ammonia before commencing, perhaps run a few quick labs to make sure they’re both disease-free.

“Drew,” he repeats, sterner now. “Where the fuck are you?”

I lean forward to look at the well-lit sign above me, and nearly fall off the bench in doing so. “The Tik Hut.” I look again and realize one of the ‘i’s isn’t lighting up. “Tiki Hut. I just want a glass of water. They won’t even let me get a glass of water. This is America. I should be able to get water.”

He’s preoccupied, talking to someone. I sit, listening to the sounds he makes—his deep voice, a car door shutting, the seatbelt warning. I bet wherever he is the air isn’t quite so muggy. I bet there’s a bottle of water. I bet if I’d come here with him, he’d have been worried when I didn’t return. He’d have looked for me.

“So tell me what happened,” he says gently.

“Happened with what?” I ask. I’m going to be too hungover to run tomorrow. And it might be our last chance.

“Focus, Drew,” he says. “What happened tonight? Why did you guys blow off dinner? I’d expect it of Joel, but not you.”

“Because I called my sister-in-law a cunt,” I whisper.

To my surprise, he laughs. “You did what?”

“I called my sister-in-law a cunt. But she is one. She’s such a cunt, Josh, you would not believe.”

He laughs again. “So you decided to blow off my parents and go on a wild drinking spree because you used the word cunt? No offense, but I pictured you as someone who’d say that word fairly regularly, and with ease.”

A group of guys slow as they walk past and I put my head down. “I didn’t call her a cunt, actually, I asked her not to act like a raging cunt, so I didn’t call her a thing. It was just a simple request. And then…”

My eyes fill with tears. Goddamn shots. They’re the only explanation for why I’m on the verge of crying right now for at least the third time.

“And then…” he prompts.

I want to say it all. I want to say that my stepbrother told me I’d ruin the party, that my mother said my career was ending and I was going to need them, that even my asshole stepfather who destroyed my family thinks he gets to chime in. I want to say all of it and hear a single person agree with me, but the truth is that when everyone is telling you you’re a piece of shit…you’re probably a piece of shit. I’m silent for so long he has to prompt me again.

“My family kind of piled on,” I whisper.

“Get in the car,” he replies.

I look up to see the Jeep the Baileys rented directly in front of me. He came here to get me. And the zipper was the sound of him dressing because he was already in bed, and he still came here.

I don’t know why that makes my throat swell. I cross to the passenger side of the Jeep. “You didn’t have to do this.”

He hands me a bottle of water and then leans over to buckle me in. “Yeah, I did. Has anyone ever suggested that you are alarmingly unconcerned with your own welfare? It’s late. Anything could have happened to you out here.”

“No one even recognizes me now that I’ve cut my hair.”

He sighs. “I wasn’t talking about the fact that you’re famous, Drew. I was talking about the fact that you’re pretty.”

I laugh. “Oh. MY. God. You actually paid me a compliment?”

He rolls his eyes. “Shut up. And no. I didn’t pay you a compliment. I didn’t say anything you haven’t been hearing since the day you were born. That’s not a compliment. It’s just, like, a line item on a list of assets.”

“You paid me a compliment.”

He laughs. “Whatever.”

The breeze whips through the Jeep and I lean my head back and look up at the sky, slamming the water. It’s ice cold. Josh is kind of a keeper, I think. I consider telling him, but even I’m not drunk enough to think that’s a good idea.