Page 24 of If This Gets Out

“Nothing! I think she’s just drunk.”

An unfamiliar girl appears with a bottle of water to hand to the girl. She takes it and clasps it between both hands. Zach crouches down. “Is she okay?” he asks.

“Yes, this happens sometimes,” the new girl says in a French accent. “I’ll call an Uber.”

“How far is the drive?”

“Maybe thirty minutes?”

“That’s a long trip. She doesn’t look so good.”

“We don’t have anywhere else to stay.”

“I feel sick,” Heartbreak Girl moans. “Let me sleep on the floor, Manon. Please?”

Zach hesitates, then looks at me hopefully. It takes me a moment to realize what he wants through the haze of alcohol.

“If you wanna give her your bed…” I say with a shrug.

“You wouldn’t mind? If I crashed with you?”

Well, Levi might mind. But Levi will just have to get over it.

Working in tandem, the three of us help the heartbreak girl to her feet and steer her into Zach’s room. He hurriedly shoves his stuff into his suitcase, and I work with the girl’s friend, Manon, to get her safely into Zach’s bed. Manon thanks us on repeat, between composing typo-ridden tweetsabout how Zach Knight needs to be stanned until the end times. Then Zach and I drag his bags into my room, and I collapse onto my bed, officially too dizzy to stand anymore.

“Sorry to interrupt your, um, thing,” Zach says in a weird voice. He hovers by his suitcases and hugs his arms to his chest.

I groan and throw an arm over my eyes to block out the ceiling light. “It’s fine. What are friends for but to cockblock?”

“Crap. I’m sorry.”

“I’mkidding.Kind of.” I peek at him and grin. “I can’t be mad at you when you’re just being, like, the most decent guy. That’d make me shitty, wouldn’t it?”

“You could never be shitty.”

“I could, if I put my mind to it.”

The mattress bounces. He must have sat on the bed. “You wanna head back over?”

“Mm-hmm. We could. But the bed isreallynice, and the room’s movingwaytoo much suddenly.”

“Tell me about it. Those kids candrink.”

“Right? Levi had about half a bottle of vodka and he wasn’t even slurring.”

I send Jon a text to let him know we’ve ditched. No point texting Angel, he wouldn’t see it until morning.

“Levi,” Zach repeats. His voice is all weird again.

“Yeah, the guy I—”

“Yeah, no, I got that.’

I haul myself upright and yank my jeans off. “He’s a model,” I say.

Zach, who’s started undressing, too, pauses with his shirt half over his head. “Ofcoursehe is. Wonder if he got on that list.”

Oh, the list. I’d forgotten about it. “Fuck the stupid list, Zach,” I say, crawling under the covers.

---