Page 61 of Fade into You

He’s not my dad.But that won’t help matters. So, I think fast, faster than I was thinking this morning. “I’m sorry,” I say, looking back and forth between her mom and dad. “It’s my fault. We were going to stay at my house, but Liv is—we’re in the middle of this huge fight right now and I didn’t want to be around her, so we went to our friend Jessa’s house instead and we didn’t tell anyone because—well, we didn’t expect to stay the night and, and…”

Kayla jumps in. “And I knew you guys wouldn’t let me stay over without knowing Jessa, so there.”

“You’re right, we wouldn’t have,” her dad says.

“See?” Kayla waves her hand in convincingly righteous frustration, as if this is really, truly what happened. I don’t know when she got to be such a good actress.

“Were you drinking?” her mom asks.

I shake my head vehemently. “No, we weren’t.”

Kayla sets the greasy bag down, digs around inside, and pulls out one of the sandwiches. She starts unwrapping it, tearing at the paper. “Bird wasn’t drinking, Mom. But yeah, I was. And haven’t you guys told me ten million times that I should never drink and drive? Huh? No matter what?” she says, getting angry—like, angry for real.

“Of course,” her dad says.

“So we stayed the night at our friend’s house and didn’t drive home and stayed alive, okay?” She takes a giant bite of the sandwich and talks with her mouth full, inching closer and closer to her mom’s face. “Now, can you let me eat this fucking disgusting sandwich in peace?”

“Kayla!” her dad yells.

“Just go to your room,” her mom shouts, backing away from her. “Right now!”

“Happy to!” she growls, showing us all her half-chewed food. “C’mon, Bird.”

“You are grounded, young lady!” her dad yells after us.

I follow her up the stairs to her bedroom and wait until she closes the door before I speak.

“Kayla, holy shit. Why did you just do that?”

She swings around, and for a second I think she might start yelling at me, too, but she just smiles and says, “It’s fine. I can handle them. That was good improvising, by the way.”

I release the breath I was holding. “Yeah, you too. I really thought you were losing it there for a second.”

“Who says I wasn’t?” She wiggles her eyebrows and laughs. “Birdie. Stop looking at me like that. I’m fine. All right?”

I nod and take my sandwich out of the bag because I’m still starving, even after the waffles.

“Here, want mine?” She holds her sandwich out to me, minus one giant bite mark.

“No, you eat it.”

She shrugs and wraps it back up, squishing it into a ball that she tosses in the garbage can under her desk.

“So where were you really?” I whisper. When she picked me up, all we had time for was the plan of showing up at her house as if we’d been together all night save for Kayla running out for breakfast and coffee.

“I went out with the band to this party at Emmanuel’s. I ended up sleeping there.”

“So you reallyweredrinking?”

“Yeah, and you were smoking weed with Jessa.” I must look shocked because she continues, “Please, I can smell it on you.”

I pull my hair in front of my face and sniff. “Oh, god.”

“Thank you for ditching me last night, by the way.”

“I know, I’m really sorry. Something happened at the club. I had to help Jessa out. It was kind of a mess.”

“Ugh, did someone try to kick her ass?”