She’s standing outside the door when I finish puking, and the amusement on her face can’t be ignored. “Cline left you. Said I could bring you back to his house.”
“Why?” I’m only vaguely aware that my legs are really cold.
“He said something about wanting to choke you out, but then you passed out on the couch, and he went back into a room with that girl again. He took her home this morning. Said there wasn’t enough room in the truck.”
“He really is the shittiest best friend on the planet.”
She grins. “The. Absolute. Worst. I made him a t-shirt that said that exact thing once.”
“You’re the one who bought him that? He wears it all the time.” Just chuckling makes my head hurt, and she pushes off the wall tsk-ing as she walks away. “Why am I only wearing boxers? Where are my clothes?” I’d be embarrassed if I wasn’t feeling like death.
“Someone brought them in from outside. You weren’t wearing much when you were dragged in here.”
When she returns, she has a cup full of stuff that fizzes like Alka-Seltzer but tastes like really bad Gatorade. I assume I’ll puke this up in about five minutes, but miraculously, after laying down for another fifteen, I am perfectly fine and asking about breakfast.
In the time it’s taken me to recover, she’s cleaned up what she didn’t get to before waking me. If I wasn’t in so much pain, I would be really impressed with how pristine the place looks before we shuffle outside. When she locks the door behind us, I can see this look cross her face as though she’s disappointed that we’re leaving already. Her eyes fixate for a second on the welcome mat, and then, like a light switch, she turns to look at me with a smile.
“You’re a dude, so I assume breakfast means bacon. With a side of bacon. Am I right?”
I’m surrounded by fast food biscuit wrappers, and the taste of grease sits heavy on my tongue while I let the wind hit my face at sixty miles an hour. Audrey has graciously not spoken until this point. And then …
“What was her name?”
I crack an eye open and roll my head in her direction, hoping that the look I am giving her is one of disdain and not one where I look like a lobotomy patient. “Who?”
“The girl.” Her eyes slide to me and back to the road. “The one you were screaming out the window about. The one who made you try and pick up every last girl at my party last night.” She smiles a little. “Unsuccessfully. But still.”
I groan and lean my head back against the car seat. “Chelsea.”
“I’m sorry. Kelsey?”
“Chelsea,” I say louder. The sound of my own voice makes my head throb, like the hangover is just waiting to come back with a vengeance, and my body is ninja-ready.
“We’ll call her Kelsey. I hated a girl with that name once.”
My eyes are filmy when I blink them open to look at the delight on her face.
“Like a code name. That Kelsey Bitch. Ugh. She’s such a Kelsey.”
“You’re crazy.” I laugh and close my eyes again.
She responds almost too softly for me to hear, “Yeah. Maybe.” Then she elbows me. Hard. The car veers a little into the other lane, and I grab the oh shit handle and press my foot to the dash.
“You’re a terrible driver.”
“You’re a bad pick-up artist.”
“What?” I straighten up and face her profile. “I have amazing pick-up lines.”
She makes a face. “Is that why so many girls were into you last night? Because all I heard was a bunch of stuff about boobs and dragons.”
“‘Do you like dragons’ is one of the greatest pick-up lines on the planet.”
“You’re delusional. There are a million better ones than that.” She rolls her eyes and turns on her blinker to take the exit off the freeway.
“Sure, there are. Like last week when some chick said she couldn’t feel her lips, and then asked me if I could. Then she kissed me.”
The car jerks as her foot hits the brake and she turns to stare at me as she slows to a stop at a red light. “No way.”
“Awful, right? So the dragon line is a thousand times better than that.”
Audrey’s cheeks light up pale pink and she averts her eyes. “Oh, yes. Telling a girl you’ll be dragon your balls across her face later is probably the better of the two. But I suggest maybe you work on your game a little bit harder if you want to get over Kelsey.”
Cline is acting as if I killed his childhood pet and mailed him the head. He’s barely spoken a word to me since Audrey dropped me off at the house. Just grunts and an occasional sarcastic remark every time I try to engage him in conversation.