“Dude, you’re drunk again. Just leave, I swear, leave, or this is gonna get ugly. Best friend or not—this time you went too damn far! She’s a girl—you’re beating on a girl! You crossed a line, Aiden. I don’t even know who you are anymore. Men don’t hit women! I’m done covering for you every time your drunken stupors land you in hot water. Now get before I do something I regret.”
I would know that voice anywhere because I’d been secretly crushing on its owner for years, and he didn’t even know I was alive. We ran with different crowds. My jeans were soaked and slick with mud as I tried bracing myself upright against the concrete wall to regain my breath. A warm hand touched my face, and I flinched away from it like I’d been scalded.
“Woah it’s okay, they’re gone, you’re safe. Can I call someone for you, Eden, or can I give you a ride home? I can take you to the hospital—whatever you want.”
I peered up into moss-green eyes and, to my surprise, saw genuine concern there. For a moment, I was rendered speechless, almost like being star struck. When I continued to say nothing and stare, Drew moved in and helped me the rest of the way to my feet.
“Well, are you going to say something,” he asked.
“You—you know my name,” I bumbled like an idiot.
With a grin, he started chuckling, “Yeah—yeah, I do. Why wouldn’t I? You’re one of the star volleyball players. Every guy in school with a pulse knows your name. You’re just—well, not very approachable, plus your dad is a cop.
****
Drew pulled me out of my bittersweet trip down memory lane when he said, “Okay, so next question.”
Chapter Two
Question and Answer
As the International Space Station disappeared over the horizon, I shook off the bad mood my reminiscing had brought with it and placed my hand over my heart in exaggerated offense and said, “Wait—NO—it’s my turn.” He laughed at my antics, and I rolled with the enjoyment of the moment.
Drew’s laugh made my insides spasm with—I don’t even know what, but it was the furthest thing from unpleasant. He was the only one who could make me feel whatever it was that caused the spasms. When we’d met for the first time, I was in fifth grade, and I’d felt it even then. By the time seventh grade rolled around, I’d developed a crush on him, when boys weren’t gross to me anymore. Then in tenth grade, my diagnosis somehow got leaked, and I’d shied away from everyone because the shame and embarrassment I felt was overwhelming. The malicious bullying had gone on for weeks before Drew saw it happening and stepped in to defend me against his group of popular friends. I knew he’d risked social suicide when he decided to not just stand by and let it happen. Even with that, I would have never guessed that I’d become the object of his affection from then on. We were the most unlikely of people to end up as a couple. After an entire school year of him pestering, and with just a few weeks of summer vacation left before my junior year began, I’d finally given in and agreed to go on a date with him.
Grabbing his baseball from where it was nestled between the hood and the windshield, he tossed it up, caught it, and glanced down at me. Wayward strands of his mousy brown hair fell across his face to dip into his eyes, and he raked them back with his fingers.
“Okay, Eden, what do you want to know?”
“When’s your birthday?”
“I’ll be eighteen on September twenty-third, how about you?”
“July twenty-ninth, and it was my seventeenth.”
With a teasing grin, he hiked an amused brow. “Oh, so you're a brand new, fresh out the box, seventeen—youngen.”
Giggling, I affectionately nudged him on the arm, I couldn’t resist taking a verbal jab. “Oh, and what, you’re so old and wise, right? Oo, eighteen is so mature,” I laughed teasingly at his expression, “Seriously, Drew, you’re not even a year older than me—old man!”
His nonchalant shrug and full-blown smile made my heart flutter. It was just like him to take my sarcasm in stride. There wasn’t much anyone could do to get under Drew Grave’s skin.
“Well, it doesn’t change the fact that I’m older. Whether it is 1 minute or one year, older is older,” he said, wiggling his eyebrows at me. “So, the next question I have for you is about your mom. What’s her name, where were you born, and how? We’ll get to dad’s after.”
Puzzled was the best description of how that question made me feel. So, I answered with a question of my own. “How, what do you mean—how?”
This time he raised both brows, making it apparent that he didn’t understand why I was confused. “Let me clarify,” he suggested, “Were you C-section or natural birth?”
My carefree mood took an immediate nosedive, but rather than let on to it, I only partially answered and then asked another question—I’d try anything to get out of where I knew the conversation was headed.
“Well, I was born here in Oklahoma, but what on earth is the point of knowing how I was delivered?”
On the list of bizarre questions to be asked on a first date, that had to rank the highest on the weirdo meter. Why would anyone want to know which method was used to deliver their current romantic prospect? But Drew wanted me to understand and began explaining, which meant the conversation was still on track and heading toward a place I didn’t want to go.
He gave another nonchalant shrug and pinned me with a curious expression, “Well, if it’ll make you feel better, I’ll go first and answer
