"Well, you need backstory for it to make sense," I say.
"I'm not going anywhere," Ember says.
"Amy and I were…" I roll my eyes. "The 'it' couple in high school, I guess. Most likely to get married first. Prom king and queen. Y'know, the whole small-town sweethearts thing. I had offers to play football and baseball from U of M."
She looks at me, then. “Wow, really? I mean, I'm not surprised you were a star jock."
I laugh. "Yeah, I guess so. That's how the four of us became such good friends—me, Rye, Cole, and Nyx were Three Rivers sports royalty from the time we hit middle school. Rye was the QB, Cole the running back, Nyx the tight end, and I was the running back. Some people called us the four horsemen, and others the three musketeers, because there were actually four of us."
She chuckles at this. "Some high-brow humor there."
"Actually, only Mrs. Jones, the lit teacher, called us that."
"Now that makes more sense."
"Anyway." I rake my hand through my hair. "A year or so after graduation, Marty and Marcus Gershwin threw a giant-ass party in a field on their parents' property, and I mean that shit was massive. Pretty much the whole school showed up, as well as quite a few kids who had just graduated or or were home from college."
"Nothing good ever happens at parties like that," Ember says. "Been to a few of them."
I eye her. “Really?"
She shrugs. "Sure. I was great at sniffing out parties. By the time I had my license, I was pretty damn sick of Phish concerts, so once Mom was occupied I'd take the van and go looking for trouble. And I never found as much trouble as those rural small-town field keggers."
I laugh. “Facts."
"So. You and Amy, the golden couple, were at a kegger. What happened?"
"I got obliterated. Like, how did I not end up in the hospital with alcohol poisoning type of obliterated." I shake my head. "So fucking stupid. I'd driven, of course. Most of the party, Amy and I were together. We were always together. Usually at those things we'd camp out by the bonfire and sort of…hold court, I guess. But that party, we ended up getting separated. One of Amy's friends was having drama with her boyfriend or something, so all the girls in the crew were huddled together talking about it, which meant I was left to my own devices."
Ember cringes. "Oh boy."
"Yeah. It's not like Amy was policing my alcohol intake—she could get just as wasted as me. But when I was with her, I was usually more concerned with when I could sneak her away from the party so we could mess around."
She grins. "Of course you were."
"I couldn't begin to tell you how much I drank. Only that the last thing I clearly remember is realizing way too late that I wasnotin good shape. I realized this when I puked everywhere, fell into it, and couldn't get up."
Ember cringes again, this time in disgust. “Ew."
"Yeah. For a while, I just laid there hoping I’d feel less…whirly."
"That doesn't work," she says.
"No, it does not." I rub my face. "This is where it goes sideways. See, there was this girl, Cassie Miller, who was sort of obsessed with me. I swear I never encouraged it—I tried not to be a dick about it, but I was with Amy. Cassie never got the hint. She'd wait for me at my car after school and try to seduce me, follow me into bathrooms and offer to blow me, show up at my house on the weekends."
Ember looks at me with wide eyes. "Wow. That's…a lot."
"Yeah, it is. I even had Amy try to talk to her—let's just say that didn't go well and leave it at that." I sigh. "I was almost passed out on the ground. In my own vomit, remember. So, y'know, not at my best. All I remember is a dark-haired girl appearing and talking to me. Touching me. How I got hard with as drunk as I was, I don't know. At this age, I’d have whiskey dick, but I guess when you're nineteen, it's different. I dunno. I just know I couldn't see straight—and I don't mean seeing double, I mean I was seeing, like quadruple, and it was all spinning. It felt like I was on an out-of-control merry-go-round."
"Oh god." She looks at me. "It wasn't Amy, was it?"
"Nope, it was Cassie taking her shot. I…" I cover my face and groan. "Right there on the ground, in front of the whole party, when I was hammered."
"Jesus. What a whore."
"Amy watched the whole thing happen. But she didn't realize how drunk I was. She'd been with her girls most of the night. So all she saw was Cassie and me fucking."
"Did you tell her no?"
