The Girls I've Been(31)

Terrance Emerson the Third is Wes’s best guy friend since kindergarten and the heir to an almond empire. He’s sweet to the point of gullible, he’s stoned most of the time, and he gets into trouble constantly but never stays in trouble because of the whole heir-to-an-almond-empire thing. He’d be the easiest mark in the world, like taking candy from a very rich, very sleepy baby, but Wes loves him and he’s a good guy—fun if you guard your junk food around him.

“Terry? What’s up?”

“Nora? Oh thank God,” Terry says. “You’ve gotta come.”

“What’s wrong?”

Iris sits up at my question.

“Wes is high. He can’t go home like this.”

“What?” Now I straighten up, and Iris mouths, What’s wrong? I hold up a finger. “What did you do?”

“I didn’t dose him, if that’s what you’re implying!” Terry says, all wounded.

“Terry . . .” I grit my teeth.

“Okay, it is kind of my fault because I had a bunch of cookies in a bag and they weren’t marked.”

“He ate pot cookies? Oh, shit.” I start to button up my shirt. “How many?”

“He went through half the bag before I got back upstairs.”

“Terry!”

“I know, I know, I’m sorry, but—” Is that off-key singing in the background? Probably. Wes gets very emotional and melodic when he’s stoned.

“You know what happened last time.” I want it to come out as an admonishment, but it’s strangled, too thick with the memory.

“That’s why I called you,” he says earnestly. “I can’t keep him here—when my parents come home and he’s like this, it’ll get back to the mayor.”

“Just keep him in your room until I get there.”

I hang up and Iris looks at me expectantly.

“I’m really sorry,” I say. “I have to go.”

“Is Wes okay?”

“How did you know I was talking about Wes?”

She arches an eyebrow. “I don’t mean this in a bad way, but who else would it be? You don’t really hang out with anyone else.”

“I hang out with you.”

“You know what I mean.”

“I’ve never been the kind of person to have a ton of friends,” I say, trying to make it breezy, but she stares at me in that perceptive way of hers.

“Is he okay?”

“Yeah. I just need to take him back to my house until he’s normal. I don’t want him to get in trouble.” I keep my voice level, but my heart is beating violently against my chest like I’m fifteen again, walking up those stairs and opening the door to his bathroom, knowing what I was going to find. I need to go. I need to get him.

“Can I come with you?” The way she asks is careful, and the look in her eyes is guarded, like she’s almost daring me to say no.

I’m so focused on getting out of there that I don’t think about it deeply. “Sure. I’ll drive.”

Terry answers the door with a bag of Doritos in his hands and a gazillion apologies on his lips. “I only left him alone for a few minutes,” he tells me as I march up the staircase, the sound of singing getting louder and louder. Wes has a terrible voice. He can’t carry a tune to save his life, and usually he remembers this, but when he takes a few hits, he starts acting like he’s in an opera.

“I’m sure it’ll be fine,” Iris says reassuringly to Terry, but when he just shakes his head grimly at her, she frowns a little. Terry doesn’t do grim, and it’s unsettling, but he knows what’ll happen if the mayor finds out.

Terry has Wes stashed in the entertainment room, and he lights up when he sees us. I can’t help but smile back, because it’s been a while since he’s looked this unburdened.

“You guys are here!”

“I heard you ate some cookies.”

“I thought they were normal.”

“You should know by now that food in Terry’s room is probably full of pot,” I point out.

“But they had toffee chips.” He actually pouts after saying this.

“Oh, well, then, you had to,” I say, and he nods seriously, my sarcasm totally lost on him. “Get up. You’re gonna come home with me and sleep it off.”

“Lee will probably want a cookie. But I ate them all.” He laughs a little too long, and I grab his arm and pull him up. I get him downstairs and into my car, though it takes him three tries to buckle his seat belt and his eyes start to droop on the drive home. He has such a shit tolerance for booze or weed.

I don’t think it through before opening the door to what was once the guest room but is now understood to be Wes’s room. His clothes are in the dresser and his shoes are on the floor and his laptop is on the desk, open with that screensaver of him posing with some of the shelter dogs in various costumes. He throws himself onto the bed with a sigh and pulls the rumpled blanket over himself like he’s done it a hundred times, because he has.

It only hits me when I turn and see Iris standing there in the doorway, taking it in, that she has never been in here before. That the unspoken agreement that Lee and I have in this house—that Wes is welcome anytime, day or night, for as long as he needs—wasn’t clear to Iris until now.