“They made you an elf,” he says, laughing. “Perfect.”
I glare at him.
He laughs some more. “Oh, that’s a good one. Kinda hot. Much hotter than the corpse look you usually got going on.”
I narrow my eyes, but he doesn’t stop smiling, even when he reaches forward and brushes a thumb over my lip, pulling me in for a kiss. He laughs against my mouth.
“You know you made it big when people write fanfiction about you,” he says.
I huff a breath. “We haven’t even been drafted yet.”
“Even better. We can only go up from here.”
“You don’t think it’s creepy? Like at all?”
“It’s hilarious, are you kidding? I can’t believe they made me the prince and you the assassin. Amazing.”
Oh my god. Is he serious right now? He keeps a hand up by my jaw and goes right back to reading, and I am full of regret. I groan. “Showing you was a mistake, wasn’t it.”
“Not at all. I’m gonna bookmark this.”
I lunge forward and snatch my phone away from him, drop it on the floor, and crawl into his lap. “You were supposed to cringe with me.”
He gives me a crooked grin and pushes a hand through my hair, knocking my hat off my head. “We’ll see how it goes when I actually read it.”
We kiss like that for a few minutes, me in his lap, his hand in my hair, until there’s an uproar downstairs that has both of us looking to the door.
“Bruins probably scored,” Cauler says all smugly. I roll my eyes and stand up. We’ve been up here too long already. I adjust my clothes, fix the mess he’s made of my hair, and put my hat back on. Make myself look like I didn’t just have someone else’s tongue in my mouth.
Cauler gives me this soft, almost loving last kiss before heading downstairs, and I just feel so … sad all of a sudden. The kind of sad I felt watching Dad go through security at the airport without me when I was ten. My mom and sisters leaving me behind as they drove off ahead of the moving truck.
Cauler and I will never be more than this. And the worst part is I know he wants more. And I think I do, too. But the prospect of what happens when we mess it up is just too much to handle.
I swipe the back of my hand across my mouth like it’ll erase the memory of Cauler’s lips on mine and go to the kitchen for another drink.
* * *
FIVE MINUTES LATER, I’m in the longest keg stand of my life. Barbie and Kovy hold my legs up while Delilah reluctantly works the valve, Dorian and Zero screaming right in my face. I’m not in it to break Colie’s house record. I’m in it to stop feeling.
The two probably go hand in hand.
By the time I’m back on my feet, barely holding myself upright, my name’s replaced Colie’s on the whiteboard hanging over the pong table. Might as well replace more names.
“Lilah?” I say, motioning toward the pong table where Dorian and Barbie have already taken a side.
She frowns as she looks me up and down, taking in my probably glassy eyes, the way I can’t hold my head up straight.
“C’mon,” I beg. “It’s the end of the semester.”
She lets out a soft sigh. “Fine.” She puts a cocky smile on her face and leads me to the table.
“Dude!” Dorian says. “No way, you two don’t get to be a team!”
Delilah lets out this absolutely maniacal laugh as she pushes back the sleeves of her dress. She rolls the ball between her hands and sinks a cup right off the bat.
“Ugh, here we go,” Barbie groans.
By the time we beat Dorian and Barbie, and Zero and Sierra take their place, I’m at the point where I’d usually be half-naked and dancing on a table or claiming to be the second—or fourth or maybe seventh by now—coming of Jesus Christ. But Cauler’s in the living room playing Smash Bros and not thinking about me at all, and Mom and Dad are down in North Carolina in their massive house that doesn’t have a single touch of me in it, and I am not in the mood to dance or perform miracles.
An hour ago, I was being kissed senseless. Now all I want to do is drink myself senseless.
Delilah and I sink cup after cup, even when I start swaying on my feet when I throw and leaning on Delilah when I watch, to the point where she takes my drink away from me and makes me switch to water. Sierra keeps bending over every time I’m up, trying to distract me with a clear line of sight down her shirt. It only works when I let it.
Cauler literally hates me when he’s not touching me. I don’t owe him anything.