She gave me a ride home, and I couldn’t shake the feeling that I had somehow disappointed her, even though she hadn’t said as much.
But I hated it.
“How much did you drink tonight?” she finally asked as we neared my street.
“Uh …” I swallowed at a knot in my throat. “Ash gave me, um … one … just one drink. One cup.”
“That pink shit in the kitchen?”
I nodded.
She sighed and shook her head. “I don’t even know how much alcohol she put into that crap. I can only imagine. It smelled like sugar and kerosine,” she went on, so much disapproval and disgust in her tone. “I found two bottles of vodka and a bottle of rum in the trash. All empty. And you drank a whole cup of it? How full was it?”
I shrugged, trying to evade the questions she was throwing at me. “Pretty, uh … pretty full, I guess. I-I dunno. I don’t … I don’t remember.”
She sighed again and muttered, “Jesus Christ. When you get home, go straight to bed. Keep a trash can next to you.”
I rolled my eyes. “It wasn’t a lot.”
“You might not think so, but it was enough,” she scolded.
She spoke to me the way Mom did, and God, it made me so mad. But could I blame her? She was a woman, easily five, six years older than me, and I was, as she stated very clearly earlier, a child.
I didn’t bother replying then. I looked out the window as we pulled up to my house. The living room light was off, but Mom and Dad’s was still on.
Fuck.
“I won’t say anything,” Meg said with a tired sigh, as if she were reading my mind. “Not about you anyway.”
I turned to look at her in the darkness of the car, but I didn’t speak.
“You’re a good kid, Noah. Don’t let kids like Ashley Montague drag you down.”
My mouth was dry as I soundlessly nodded. Then, I mumbled, “Thanks for the ride,” before climbing out of the car and hurrying up the walkway to hopefully make it to my room without alerting my parents.
All while realizing I had finally, finally spoken to her after four years of indifferent glances and tight-lipped waves, and I couldn’t help but smile.
Because it was something.
And something was more than nothing.
***This is an unedited excerpt and is subject to change.***
FN is coming 2026.
