Maybe. Depends on how many beers I have.
The next evening, almost the moment I arrive at O-Chi, Zander informs me the guy who OD’d didn’t die. Relieved, I twist the lid off a Bud Light and flop onto the couch between him and Liv. With an hour to kill before the band arrives, all us regulars have gathered in the living room to spill the tea on Thursday night.
“His girlfriend called this morning,” Zander says. “Braden talked to her.”
“What did she say?” Liv asks.
Braden rests his beer on his knee. “Mostly, she just wanted to thank us. You know, for calling the ambulance and all that. She said they got him to the hospital just in time.”
I frown. “Just in time before what?” Before his heart stopped beating? Before he suffered permanent brain damage?
He shrugs. “I dunno. She didn’t say.”
“Did she tell you his name?” For some reason, it feels important for him to have an identity. Something other than “the guy who OD’d.”
“Jason.”
I nod.Jason.
“Oh.” Braden points his beer bottle at me. “And she wanted me to tell you ‘thank you.’ You in particular.”
“Me?”
“Yep. She said, ‘tell that nice blond girl I said thanks.’ For taking her back downstairs, I think she said.”
Zander pulls me tight against his side and runs a hand up and down my arm. “That’s my Betts. So sweet.”
I smile and turn to kiss him, but he’s looking over my head at Braden. “Doesn’t look like we’re gonna get blamed for this,” he says with a hopeful grin.
“Nope.” Braden salutes him with his beer. “Doesn’t look like it.”
Mia, O-Chi’s other Sweetheart, screws up her face. “How on earth did he get Molly all the way out here?”
I’m glad she’s asking because I’ve been wondering the same thing. We’re in the middle of Nowhere, North Carolina, deep in the Blue Ridge Mountains. Asheville is the closest city, but it’s over a half hour away, and it’s more like a largetown.
Cole rolls his eyes and jerks a thumb at Mia. “Naïve city girl.”
I’m pretty sure she’s a Miami native. And seeing as I’m from a Virginia suburb close enough to DC to be on a Metro line, I don’t think it would help if I jumped to her defense.
The guys proceed to mansplain how Brownhill is the ideal target for drug dealers. It’s the perfect combo: a college that draws privileged rich kids and a local law enforcement that doesn’t have the resources they need to deal with big city crimes.
To their credit, the O-Chi leadership has put in place some precautionary measures for tonight’s big party. They set up two coolers full of ice water out by the keg, told all the brothers to be on the lookout for suspicious activity, and asked the band to remind everybody to take a break and “cool the fuck down” every now and then. It’s great that the frat is being proactive and that Jason is going to be fine.
But none of it erases what happened.
The grim memories linger in my mind as, a few hours later, I find myself in the O-Chi basement again. Replay Six has drawn such a huge crowd that I’m wedged between a metal supportpole and some gangly drunk guy who elbows me in the shoulder with every thump of the bass drum. Behind me Zander sways, his hands on my hips and his chest brushing against my back.
The band is on a platform set up where the pool table normally sits. And I’ll bet there’s a blood stain on the floor underneath it. I’m still seeing Jason’s convulsions playing in my head, over and over again, like a GIF. How long until it goes away? I glance around me and see so many of the same faces I saw Thursday night. But no one seems bothered by the fact that someone almost died down here. No one but me.
Shake it off. Get over it.
I snatch the mixed drink out of Zander’s hand. It’s in a repurposed Dasani bottle, a smart little trick the brothers came up with so they could drink something other than beer without risking spilling it. In their eyes, sloshing cheap keg beer around is okay, but wasting top-shelf liquor is criminal.
I sniff the contents. “What’s in this?”
Zander grins and shrugs. “Cole made it.”
Cole isn’t exactly the straightest arrow. Knowing him, this “cocktail” is pure grain alcohol with a splash of Kool Aid.
