Page 51 of Jaded

“For fuck’s sake.” Our meander across the kitchen turns suddenly frantic as I hurtle towards the door, my arm still wrapped around his shoulders to drag him with me. On his other side, Syd stumbles after us.

He’s swaying, barely keeping his feet, but we make it.

I shove through the front door, and Avery goes to his knees on the edge of the wide front porch to upend his stomach in the snow. Syd kneels beside him, rubbing his shoulder.

I pace back and forth, hands clasped over my backwards cap, while I think about what the fuck I’m supposed to do. We can't take a cab with him puking like this.

“How did you get here, Av?” I murmur, my voice barely audible over the sound of his violent upheaval. “Syd, how’d he get here?”

“People . . . told me . . . fuck, this sucks.” He sits back on his ass, propping his shoulders against the side of the house. “Just trying to make friends.”

I groan, tilt my head up towards the sky. My breath clouds in the frigid air, blurring the splattering of stars overhead. “Syd?”

“Uber,” sighs Syd, still crouched at Avery’s side. “I don’t know who told him about the party, though.”

“I’m calling Brenda,” I say. “We need to get you home.”

“Please don’t.” He’s back on his knees, bent over, heaving. “Don’t, please. She’ll tell Mary ’cause they’re like best friends . . .”

And Mary would tell his dad . . . Shit.

“I can drive.” A third voice behind me joins our conversation. Another set of shoes taps the wooden porch, and I turn, like the world’s been softened into slow motion, every action such deliberate precision.

Olli steps up beside me, his long, lean form throwing warmth against my side. His eyes find mine, his mouth tightened into a sympathetic smile. “I haven’t had a drink in a few hours.”

“What? Really?” My brain’s fuzzy—fuzzier than it was—like him stepping out onto this porch shorted out any connections I had to sobriety. I’m too buzzed to understand why.

“Yeah. I don’t drink much.” His eyes skim from my face to Avery, leaning back against the house again, and Syd beside him. What the hell must he be thinking, about me out here with two teenagers?

“You don’t?” Why has my vocabulary been relegated to such simple verbiage? Why does that knowledge, that morsel of him, stick to me, like I can’t quite absorb it but I know it’s important or interesting, know it’s something I’ll want to unpack later. “But . . .”

“We should get him moving while he’s not puking.” Olli starts across the porch to Avery’s side—the one Syd’s not on—leaving me standing alone, my mouth hanging open, as he crouches. “Hey, I’m Olli.”

“Avery.” Avery tilts his head up towards Olli, but it’s Syd who makes the connection.

“Shit.” Her green eyes bulge with surprise. “Olli James?”

“You know me?” Olli asks, grunting as he shoulders Avery’s weight, trying to get him to his feet.

On his other side, Syd struggles too. “Yeah! I’m Sydney, by the way. Avery’s girlfriend.”

Those words, at least, jerk me back down to planet Earth . . .Girlfriend. But I choke down the groan. Instead, I nudge Syd out of the way and wedge myself beneath Avery’s arm, taking half the weight of his six-foot frame from Olli’s shoulders. Avery’s eighteen, but he’s well on his way to pro-athlete size.

“Shit, you’reOlli James.” Avery’s head rolls, like it’s too heavy for his neck to support, as we stand him upright. “I don’t wanna barf in your car.”

I really don’t want him to either.

“I have a bucket, actually,” Olli says as we shift down the first step, Avery staggering between us. “I have this paranoia about vomit . . . well, nobody needs to know the details or anything, but let’s just say nobody yaks in my car.”

“I will do my best,” Avery promises solemnly. “I have good aim.”

Trailing behind us, Syd giggles.

“Yeah, that’s not true,” I grunt as we ease him down another step. Would be so much easier if this whole fucking city wasn’t covered in an inch of ice like some kind of ice-age apocalypse. “But I’ll hold the bucket under your face, so it’ll be fine.”

“Perfect.” Olli’s shoes hit the paver bricks at the bottom of the porch, and our pace increases under the more solid ground. “Oh, also, you’ll have to decide if you wanna sit in the jump seats in the back or squish into the passenger seat. It’s an access cab.”

“Squish,” Avery groans, right before he doubles over. Luckily I recognize the warning and tug him away from Olli in time. We makeit to the snow-covered flower beds before his stomach stages another violent protest. It reeks of straight booze.

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