Page 81 of Emmett

“Sorry,” I cringe as my friend grabs a soda from the fridge to wash down a small white pill.

“Stop,” she laughs. “If you were like, some rando, yeah I’d be miffed. But you’re Emmett. You’re like…ol’ reliable.”

“Eat me,” I cackle.

“No, I mean it.” Setting the can onto the counter, she adds, “Like, you stop if I ask you to and you do things like offer to get tested when you forget to pull out.”

“Wow, congratulations to me for doing the bare minimum,” I say with laugh and a roll of my eyes. I run a lighter under the blunt in my hand to seal it, careful not to let it burn. “You’re sure weed’s okay with this?”

She nods as she drops onto the couch next to me and rests her head on my shoulder. As I light the end of the blunt, she snatches it from my hand and pulls in the first lungful of smoke before passing it back to me.

I take it with me as I move around the table and lower myself to the floor, laying on my back with an arm behind my head. While Mariah makes her way over to take a spot on theground next to me, I inhale the rich flavor and hold it in my lungs as long as I can stand, letting my mind wander.

Blowing a cloud of thick smoke from my lips, I muse, “What do you think happens to people when they die?”

“Oh, I’m not high enough for this,” she laughs. She reaches for the blunt between my fingers and pulls it to her own mouth, filling her own lungs with the earthy smoke. “I hope we get to choose, you know? Haunting people forever or going off to, like, the great beyond or something. I’d pick haunting, a hundred percent. Do you know how many people I wouldtotallyscrew with?” She giggles, passing the blunt back to me.

I hold it to my lips, watching the ceiling fan spin and spin and spin above me, letting myself get lost just for a minute in the steady movement of its blades. An image flashes through my mind of the fan dropping from the ceiling, crashing down onto my head and making the world finally disappear, but I send the thought away.

“I want the ‘great beyond,’” I tell her. “If we get to choose. I want to just…float away. No pain, no fear. Just peace.”

My friend moves to settle herself on top of me, her chest pressed against mine, and she tilts her head at me with her brow carved into concern. “Are you okay, hon?”

“Yeah, I’m good,” I smile. “I’m just talking hypotheticals.”

“Well don’t,” she says. “You’re freaking me out.”

“Sorry.” My lips meet hers and I slip my tongue into her mouth until she feeds me a quiet moan. “We need burritos,” I tell her with a firm smack to her ass.

It takes us twenty minutes to order some food, another half hour for it to be delivered, and a whopping six minutes tocompletely devour every bite, leaving a mess of bags and napkins behind. I ignore the phone when my dad calls, sending him to voicemail and hoping he’ll just think that I’m asleep.

I assume that it worked, at least until my phone buzzes with a text message.

Davis:Sign of life.

I respond by sending him a selfie, flipping my middle finger at the camera with the end of the blunt between my lips.

Davis:You wanna party like that again, you do it with me.

Davis:And call your old man, would ya? You’re gonna give him an aneurysm.

I pull open my calendar app and set an appointment to call Dad when I think I’m going to be up in the morning, and I follow with an asterisk:*avoid on Monday.

That can be Tomorrow Emmett’s problem.

THIRTY-THREE

Nash

A comfortable heat pours over me from the fire in front of me and I give my drink a swirl before throwing it down my throat.

I’m not even sure how many people are here right now, or if I know all of them. I really don’t mind if they fuck around with my house, but if there’s so much as a footprint in a place I have not given these people access to in my yard, someone will lose their fucking life tonight.

None of these people like me, and for the most part, I don’t like them. But when a rich man throws a party and you get an invitation, do you really care if you like him? Or do you go to his house to drink and fuck on his dime?

Exactly.

I try to enjoy myself - the drinks and the cigars, at least – but I can’t get that fucking door out of my mind.