Don't Kiss the Messenger (Edgelake High School, #1)(31)

She tore some pages out of her notebook. “I’ll leave this at the door. I’m not trying to do you any favors,” she snapped. Yep, she was completely pissed off. “I don’t want to bomb this discussion. I actually care about my grade.”

“Wait.” I rubbed my fingers against my forehead. “I mean, shit,” I said.

She walked the rest of the way down the steps. “Well, I’d love to stay and listen to your poetic attempts at an apology—”

“CeCe, hang on a second.”

I headed down the stairs that wound from the balcony to the ground. The steps were small and narrow and I had to keep my hand tight on the railing.

“Why didn’t you text me?” I asked.

“My phone was dead. Besides I’m not your automated reminder service.”

CeCe met me at the gate and handed me the notes.

I reached out, but instead of grabbing the paper, I grabbed her arm. She froze and looked at me with surprise.

“I’m sorry, okay? I completely spaced.”

Her eyes narrowed in disbelief.

“I’ve seen your games,” she said, calling my bluff. “You don’t space anything.”

Whoa. This was more than a class grade. She was taking this way too personally, as if my issue wasn’t with the study date, it was with her. I dropped her sleeve and she shoved the notes in my hand. That’s when she looked at me, really looked at me.

She dropped whatever hard-ass front she was holding up.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

I shrugged.

“Tired?” she asked. “Sick?”

I smiled. “Just stricken with extreme guilt for forgetting about our study date.”

She leaned closer, probably catching a whiff of the bottle of alcohol I had nearly finished tonight.

“What happened?” she asked.

I shook my head and looked past her, out at the street. I didn’t want to get into it.

“Look, I’m not mad,” she said. “People flake out on these things all the time.”

I gave her a knowing look. “You’re completely pissed.”

She shrugged.

I set my hand on the latch and hesitated. “You want to come up?”

I leaned over the gate and my eyes came closer to hers. She looked at me. Those eyes. Guarded and secretive. Beautiful. They were striking at night. They made something catch inside of me, something unexpected. I opened the latch and leaned away so she could walk through.

She followed me up to the balcony and I sat down on the metal bench. She leaned against the railing and looked down at the bottle on the floor next to my feet.

“Whiskey?” she said.

I nodded. It was my dad’s favorite.

“This is Football Frat,” I reminded her. “There’s always liquor somewhere.”

She crossed her arms over her chest. “You don’t seem like the partying type.”

I picked up a shot glass off the ground. “I’ve never drank during the season before,” I said.

“Then why start?”

I looked up at her and studied her face, half lit by the window and half in shadow. “Don’t you ever break the rules?”

She grinned. “Hello, Emmett’s dark side. Nice to meet you.”

I flipped through her notes. There were six pages. She wrote hard—pushing the ink firmly against the paper until it made indentions on the page. It made the notebook paper curl up at the sides. Or maybe she was just mad when she wrote this.

I held the notes up to the light coming through the window. The last page was an outline for our discussion, broken down into five main sections. I couldn’t decipher a word of her messy scrawl.

“I can’t understand any of this,” I said.

“Maybe you’re drunk,” she figured.

“Maybe you have the worst handwriting I’ve ever seen,” I said.

“I’m a scientist. We think faster than we write.”

I tucked the paper underneath the whiskey bottle. She looked over at me, stalling, probably wondering why I invited her up here. I was still trying to figure out the same thing. Thunder rumbled in the distance and the wind picked up again, whipping the leaves back and forth like a thousand tiny flags.

“If you need help decoding it, just message me.” She took a step back and turned for the stairs. “I’ll leave you to resume your evening of drinking alone in the dark,” she said.

“Want one?” I asked. My voice came out low, like an instrument playing all the minor notes.

She looked down at the bottle. Before she answered, I stood up and walked inside. I crossed my bedroom, stepping around instrument cases and CD’s that littered the floor.

I grabbed a shot glass off my bookcase and brought it outside.

I sat down on the bench and looked over at CeCe, nodding to the open space next to me.

She sat down and I poured each of us a shot. I handed one to her and she threw it back, swallowing the amber liquid. Her face winced and she coughed into her arm.

I smiled and took my own shot. The alcohol ran down my throat, flaring into a fire in my stomach.

“Rubbing alcohol,” she said. “My favorite flavor.”

She coughed again. A streak of lightning lit up the sky and almost on cue, the rain started to fall. Within seconds it turned into a downpour, like a sheet of water was suddenly released from the sky. I grabbed CeCe’s arm and pulled her up. We stood in the doorway, watching the rain ricochet off the balcony like a wild percussion.