“I’m—”
She starts to laugh. “Oh my God, your face! I’m kidding! I mean, not about the dead part. He’s extremely dead. But he wasn’t drunk driving.”
I wait another minute just to make sure this isn’t a joke too. “Drew, I’m so sorry. I had no idea.”
She hitches a shoulder, leaning back to close her eyes again. “It was a long time ago.”
I turn toward the Halekulani at last, feeling slightly ill and thinking about Sloane’s quiet warning the other day—She’s messy—and knowing there was some merit to it. Reaching beneath the surface with Drew is like reaching blindly into broken glass. But the way she’s so cavalier at times, the way she acts as if nothing matters, it also seems like resilience, like the thing you’d do if you thought caring would destroy you. It worries me but I admire it at the same time.
I pull up to the valet and open her door. If it was up to me, I’d just carry her upstairs, but just because I didn’t recognize her earlier today doesn’t mean other people won’t. I place a hand on her shoulder to wake her, leaning over to unbuckle her seatbelt.
Her long lashes slowly flutter open, and suddenly our faces are inches apart and we’re way too close. My gaze dips to her mouth before I can stop myself. I imagine leaning closer, pressing my lips to hers, and for a moment there’s something in her eyes saying she’d let me.
Fuck. I’m imagining taking advantage of my brother’s drunk girlfriend. It’s got to be a new low.
I take a step backward. “Can you walk? I can carry you, but I’m worried someone will take a picture.”
“I’m invisible now,” she says in a stage whisper. I think they probably heard her one town over.
I laugh to myself. “Yes, super invisible.” I help her out of the Jeep and wrap my arm around her. She can’t walk a straight line even with my help, so we cut through to the pool area, where it’s dark and vacant, rather than go through the lobby.
“Are we going to swim?” she asks, giggling.
I scoop her up like a child. “No, I’m just trying to get you to the room without witnesses. Do you have your key?”
She shakes her head no, resting her head against my shoulder and then she sniffs my shirt. And sniffs again. “You always smell so fucking good,” she says. There’s a hint of a groan to her voice and my body reacts before I can stop it.
“I need to be bathed in boiling water,” she adds.
“Man, you get weird when you’re drunk,” I say, but I’m smiling. “I didn’t expect that about you.”
“You just thought I’d be all sleazy, didn’t you?” she asks. “You thought I’d be like the Naked video. Dancing around with only the naughty bits blurred out.”
I wish she hadn’t reminded me of the video. Yeah, I hate the song, but no straight male hates the video, and I don’t need to be thinking about what wasn’t blurred out when she’s in my arms and my hand is inches away from her breast and she’s groaning You smell so fucking good against my neck.
When we reach my door, I set her down gently. “I need you to be really quiet, okay? Sloane’s in the bed, so I’m gonna put you on the couch.”
She nods but all my caution was unnecessary—there’s a light on in the bedroom. Sloane must be up and she probably knows I left, which will go over about as well as everything else I’ve done this week.
Drew falls onto the couch without appearing to notice the blanket and pillow already there. She curls up and kicks off her shoes and just like that, she’s out cold. I get a second blanket from the closet and am pulling it over her when Sloane walks in, fully dressed.
“She smells like a distillery,” she says, arms folded across her chest.
“I thought you’d be asleep.”
She walks into the bedroom and I follow, feeling too tired for a fight but knowing we have to discuss it.
She’s got her suitcase out and it’s already packed.
“Sloane,” I say, running a hand over my face. “What are you doing?”
She swallows. “I’m going home.”
“It’s the middle of the night,” I argue. “Look, go to sleep and we’ll discuss it in the morning.”
“I need to get out of here,” she says. “I hate what it’s turning me into and I should never have come in the first place. I know that now." Her shoulders sag as if defeated and I hate that.
“I’m sorry,” I tell her. “I’m so sorry this wasn’t what you wanted.”
She shakes her head. “Don’t apologize,” she says, and she forces a small smile. “I knew the deal from the beginning of the trip. You told me how you felt but I chose to ignore it.”
I sink onto the edge of the bed. “You seemed so ambivalent in Somalia. I had no idea it meant anything to you.”
“I know,” she says. “I’m not sure I thought it meant anything myself until I got back to Atlanta. I turned it into a competition with Drew, rather than admitting to myself that coming here in the first place was a terrible idea. And competing with Drew was my second terrible idea, because that’s a competition I was never going to win.”
“Drew had nothing to do with this,” I argue. “Obviously. She’s here with my brother.”
She takes her toiletry kit and shoves it in her carry-on. “Is she, though? I was hoping once your brother got here it would change, but it hasn’t,” she says. “She’s at the center of every room for you. She’s the center of every conversation. She’s all you can see.”
"Sloane…" I begin, running my hands through my hair. What she’s saying is ridiculous. "I don't know what you think is going on between me and Drew, but you're wrong. There is absolutely nothing there."
She puts her bag on the floor and pulls it over to where I sit. And then she stops and wraps her arms around me, pressing her cool lips to my cheek. "I know you think that's true. I just hope you work it all out before a bad situation gets worse.”
There’s no arguing with her, clearly, and I’m not sure I would anyway. Because the truth is that I like having Drew here, all to myself. I wish my fucking brother had never shown up at all.
19
DREW
January 27th
I wake up half on and half off the couch with the sunlight blazing through the window.
For a moment, I wonder if I’m on tour, because it’s very much like the morning after a show. My mouth feels like I shoved it full of sand, and my brain is howling like a wounded animal that deserves to be put out of its misery.
Not on tour.
Hawaii.
Fuck my life.
What the hell happened yesterday? I see flashes of things—eating tacos at some total dive with a bunch of surfers, getting beers with our Uber driver, and a pig roast with some random Hawaiian family. I’m pretty sure I offered to let one of them get married at Tali’s beach house. I seem to recall even showing photos of her wedding.
I bury my head in my hands and groan.
“There’s Advil on the table beside you,” says a voice. I squeeze open a single eye and see Josh sitting at the desk, tapping away on his trusty laptop.