Page 83 of Heartland

“I lied about my age, officer!” Ellie kept insisting, trying to spare me from taking the blame.

Since she looks about fifteen, though, that defense is a tough sell. Everyone knows I bought that cider. I'm just lucky campus security doesn’t want to make a big deal about it.

It also helps that Ellie stopped puking. Now she’s asleep, her head in my lap, while I wait to see if the campus security people will get me in any further trouble.

"We have to call Elizabeth's parents," they’ve already said, "because she's a minor."

“How did you get so drunk?” I asked Ellie when they finally went away to rat her out.

“Alf gave me a shot.”

“Of what?”

“I think it was tequila. They had a ski with shot glasses on it.”

“A ski? Like…for snow?”

“Yeah, but it was wood. And there were holes drilled into it where shot glasses fit. The point is to—” She had to stop and yawn. “—tip it and everybody drinks at the same time.”

“Why?”

“Because funner,” she’d said. And then she’d sacked out on my thigh.

So here I sit, questioning all my life choices. I didn’t know she’d had tequila, and it explains her sudden drunkenness. I’m not sure she ate dinner tonight, either.

I wonder if I could lose my scholarships for giving alcohol to Ellie. The idea makes me feel numb. Getting almost-arrested is emotionally draining.

With my head against the concrete, I’m just nodding off when I hear someone coming down the corridor. I jerk awake just in time to see Dylan Shipley following the security officer toward me.

Just when I thought I couldn’t be any more embarrassed.

“Ellie.” I nudge the girl who’s drooling on my jeans. “Wake up.”

She sits up quickly, and then grabs her head. “Oh my God. The room is spinning.”

I brace myself for her to puke again, but it doesn’t happen.

“Oh!” she says instead. “Hot Farm Boy is here to save us.”

Dylan cracks a smile. “Who wants to go home?”

“Me!” Ellie’s hand shoots up the air like the adorable teacher’s pet that she is. The second the officer opens the door, she shoots out past him. “Can we just go?” she asks, a hand on the wall to steady herself. “I think I had a coat.”

Rising from the bench, I lift my chin, trying to hold on to the last shreds of my dignity. But I probably smell like Ellie’s puke, and there’s a spot of her drool on my jeans.

I swear it was less humiliating to work at Walgreens in my Laura Ingalls dress and uncut hair.

When I step outside the cell, Dylan folds me against his chest. I take a deep inhale, because I can’t help myself. And he smells like… “Caramel?”

“Yeah, I tried to call you. But when you didn’t answer, I just assumed it was because I’m still getting the silent treatment.” He pats my back and then releases me.

My face heats, because he’s not wrong. I have been snubbing him. But only because I don’t know how to do this. I don’t know how to go back to being his little buddy, now that I know exactly what he looks like when he’s…

A shiver runs through me.

“Cold?” He asks, rubbing my shoulder, the touch doubling my goosebumps.

“N-no,” I mutter. “I’m fine. Let’s just go, okay? Did they call you?”