“What are you doing out here?”
“Trust me”—he shakes his head—“that’s not a place you and I need to chill. I’d rather sit in shit than hang out there and see how that unfolds.”
He starts walking to the parking lot, and I follow him.
“A little less cryptic?”
“Chloe showed up.” He digs around in his pocket.
“And?” I ask.
“The three of them started talking about becoming Seashore’s first thrupple.”
“How fucked up is she?”
“She?” He laughs. “She’s been there twenty minutes. Sober as a judge. They, on the other hand, are high as fuck.”
“Well, then I think we should go back in there and stop that from happening.”
“You gonna grab a cold pail of water and break that up?”
“Are they already …?” I pause. “Oh my God, were you watching them?”
“Shit, Savvy.” He looks at me like he’s offended. “You really think that little of me?”
“No?”
“Are you saying no like it’s a question? Like you’re unsure? I mean, porn’s cool to watch sometimes, but that? Really?” He scowls.
“I’m just trying to figure out what to do.”
“Just be a Beatles and … Let. It. Be.” He hits the unlock on his key fob and starts to open the door.
“Um, hello? Drunk Patrick, where are you going?”
“To sit in the Jeep, chill with you for a little bit, try to sober up, maybe pass out and wake up with that mess swiped from my memory.”
“Okay, fine, you can’t sit in the driver’s seat. Someone gets a bug up their ass and calls the cops, you could get in much bigger trouble. Give me the keys.”
He hands them to me then stands there, smiling.
“Patrick, go get in the passenger side.”
“That’s a great idea.”
“It’s also a warm one,” I mumble as I climb in his Jeep.
Once he’s in, he closes his eyes and shakes his head. “Started out as a chill night, and then I entered the sexual Twilight Zone. Started out as a nice, chill conversation about their future pot farm, and then she showed up talking about working for them.”
“I really feel like I should go drag her out of there.”
“I really don’t think you could.” He laughs.
“She’s gonna regret this.”
He closes his eyes and shakes his head.
“Someday, she will.”
“Do you regret any of your sexual experiences?”
I shrug. “I guess not.”
“Good to know.” He nods then shakes his head. “You mind cranking the heat?”
“It’s, like, sixty out,” I say as I start it, gaining a lot of satisfaction from it firing on the first try.
He pulls his phone out and looks at it. It annoys me. I bet it’s her.
Devina Silver.
When he starts typing back, while I’m sitting here, I get annoyed.
“Let me go get the bus and take you home.”
He looks at me, his head cocked. “You pissed at me?”
“I mean, no, but I didn’t come over here to sit here and watch you message your newest whatever she is.”
He drops his phone in his lap and turns toward me. “Got something else in mind?”
That voice … got deeper. A lot deeper, and huskier, too.
“If you make your first move after getting worked up about a text or my roommate that you had sex with—”
“Technically, Chloe had sex with me. She’s got some control issues. Requires top. She also says some filthy shit. Filthy isn’t sexy. I suppose, when you’re in a relationship for, like, twenty years, you could role play to spice shit up. But no, not at all my jam. And I’ve watched my share of porn. Her shit could make a porn star blush. Terrible acting, though. And—”
“I swear to God, Patrick Steel, if you’re about to star rate a hookup, I’m going to kick you out of your own vehicle and run over you one limb at a time until you realize how ridiculous that is or cry uncle.”
He shrugs. “My bad. Just trying to prove a point.”
“And what point is that exactly?” I cross my arms.
He shrugs then rests his head against the seat, looking my face over.
“What?”
“I’m not gonna ask you to kiss me.”
“That’s a good thing.”
“You said make my first move. That would be my first—a kiss. But when I do it, I’m not gonna ask if I can.”
“I didn’t mean—”
“I’m not going to ask to hug you or hold you either, Savvy Sutton. I’ll know when you’re ready for that, just like I did that night on the road.”
I feel my face begin to heat up.
“I’m done asking you to go places with me. Truth be told, it hurts a bit when you say no, even though I know you will. And I get it. There’s a lot of things going on in my world, and this bubble with just you and me is comfortable and, at the same time, it can be suffocating.”
“Patrick, I—”
“It’s cool, Savvy. But still, sometimes it sucks.”
His phone rings throughout the vehicle.
He looks at the screen and taps it to answer. “Who is this?”
I look at the screen. It says: Asshole #1.
“Steel, your cousins are at my place; lost their keys. Come get them, or I’m calling the cops.”
“Straight up, Easton, you better check yourself with them, be on your best fucking behavior, because you don’t, you get me. And trust me, you don’t want that.”
Tobias’s tone doesn’t change when he says, “I got shit to do tonight, and you know it.” Then Tobias hangs up.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck. What the fuck are they doing?” he says while he searches through his phone for something and running his hand over his face. “You know where Easton lives?”
“No, but apparently, you do.”
He looks from his phone. “What makes you think that?”
“Whatever shit that’s going on tonight that you know about,” I say, hiding the bitterness.
Shaking his head as he looks through his phone, he tells me, “Got an invite from that fucking app for some fight.”
“So, now you’re hanging out with them?” I ask, shocked, because I know Gabrielle and Harrison have been assholes to Kiki and Truth.
“Fuck no. Keep your friends close and your enemies closer kind of deal.”
He hits a few
