Page 28 of Going the Distance
Then he smiled again, waved, and drove off. I was fumbling around in my purse for my house key when my dad opened the door.
“I wasn’t expecting you back for a while.”
I just shrugged. “I got bored. Wasn’t a great party.”
“That doesn’t mean you got so drunk you threw up, does it?” He frowned like he was already trying to decide how long that deserved grounding me for.
“No, it means it was a crappy night. I just wasn’t feeling it. Levi gave me a ride home.”
“Did anyone else leave early? What about Lee?”
“No, only me. I’m just gonna go up to bed.”
“Are you sure? Me and Brad are watching the new Tom Cruise film. There’s not long left, but you can come watch it with us. It’s not exactly a difficult plot to pick upon….”
Brad didn’t usually stay up this late, but I guessed it didn’t matter as a one-off. And Iwaskind of tempted, because I felt so crappy and maybe being around my family with a not-too-crappy movie would make me feel at least a little bit better.
But I was way more tempted to go crawl under my comforter and stay there forever.
“No, thanks. I’m just going to go to bed.”
“Okay.” My dad had never known me to leave a party early; if anything, he’d tell me off the next day for getting home too late. So right now, I wasn’t surprised that he was looking at me with concern knitting his eyebrows together behind his glasses.
I got halfway up the stairs before he called after me. “Are you sure everything’s okay? Did something happen?”
I gave him a smile, seeing the worry turning to panic. “No, Dad, really. It’s fine. It was just a really sucky party, and I’m beat.”
“You know you can tell me anything, right, bud?”
“I know, Dad.”
“And there’s nothing you want to tell me about?”
“No. God, everything’s fine!” I huffed, and carried on up the stairs, and that was the end of that.
• • •
Once I was wrapped up inside the cocoon of my comforter and wearing one of Noah’s T-shirts he’d left behind, and my makeup was all washed off, I looked at the screen on my cell phone, my contacts pulled up.
June Flynn. Lee Flynn. Matthew Flynn. Noah Flynn.
My thumb hovered, and I knew I needed to talk to one of the Flynn brothers—I just couldn’t decide which.
Call Lee. Talk to him. Sort this out. He might be home by now. He promised his mom he’d be back by one and it’s twelve-forty. Call him.
No, call Noah. You haven’t had a chance to talk to him properly since Monday, and that was only a little. Call him. Tell him about Lee and see what he has to say. It’s a Friday night and he’s probably just getting in from a party, too.
I called Noah, even though he’d be fast asleep by now.
It rang, and rang, and…rang, and…
“Hey, it’s Noah. Leave me a message and I’ll get back to you.”
Instead of hanging up as the message started, I held the phone at my ear as the beep sounded. When had he changed his voice mail message? It used to be shorter:“Hey, it’s Flynn. You know what to do.”
I realized that, by now, he’d have ten seconds of me breathing down the line, and I figured I should probably say something. “Hey. It’s me. Um, Elle. I wanted to talk but I guess you’re asleep. I’ll call you tomorrow. Um…Love you.”
Tonight, more than ever, I wished Noah were here withme.
