The mention of Daniel in her mind made her stomach turn. The expanding of her brain had done nothing for intelligence. She slowly dipped through blurry and half-blacked out memories to find the source of the uneasy feeling she’d had over Daniel. She knew that something had happened. She’d gotten drunk too often and had woken up with too many regrets to not recognize the sickly turning in her stomach.
She stopped trudging through memories when she found the one that she was looking for. She’d been on the beach with Daniel. They’d been talking about someone. She thought hard. They’d been talking about his ex. What had happened after that? The memory was filled with black holes and plot drops. How drunk had she been? How many bottles had she managed to finish before she’d jumped from the side of the boat?
The image of the railings in her mind took her somewhere new. She’d been standing on the deck with Daniel. He’d whispered into her ear and she’d felt his hot breath brush against the side of her neck. With her eyes closed, she could almost recreate the feeling. The uneasy turning returned, and she went back to the beach. The conversation about the ex, the jealousy she had felt, the excitement when his face had gotten close to her, and finally, the kiss.
Crap, she thought as she sat up straight. Her head spun with the sudden movement, but it didn’t have enough of her attention to send her crashing back to the mattress. What had she done? Why had she kissed Daniel? How had she managed to mess things up so badly? Her mom was never going to believe that she’d changed if she heard about the kiss. There was no chance that she would be allowed to stay at the house if they found at that she hadn’t curbed her partying.
A knock at her door vibrated through the room. She tried to place it, but she couldn’t. “Who is it?” she called out without inviting them in.
“It’s Daniel.”
“Oh crap,” Lucy said under her breath. She could feel her eyes widening in panic. What did he want? Why was he at her door?
“Can I come in?” he asked when she’d failed to reply.
“Um, yeah, sure.” She pulled the covers over her, even though he’d already seen everything that she had on display.
“How are you feeling?” He walked into the room with a big grin across his face.
“Rougher than you, by the looks of it.” She glared at him for being so cheerful.
“What can I say?” He shrugged. “I bounce back from a hangover pretty well.”
“Lucky you,” Lucy said dryly without lessening her glare.
“There’s no need to be such a sourpuss.” Daniel gave her a teasing kind of frown.
“There’s every need to be such a sourpuss,” Lucy disagreed with him. “I feel like my brain is trying to break out of my skull.”
“Well, that’s what you get for a good night.” He sat down at the edge of her bed. The mention of the night before threw Lucy off. What was she meant to say? Did he want to talk about the kiss that had happened between them? “Did you have a good night?” He peered at her with his leafy green eyes.
“Sure, I think so.”
“You think so?”
“I’m not sure that I remember all of it,” she explained.
“Oh.” He looked a little concerned. “I didn’t realize you’d had that much to drink.”
It was Lucy’s turn to shrug. “What can I say? I had the bartender’s attention.”
“How much of it do you remember?” Lucy could tell that he was trying to see whether she remembered the kiss.
“Some of it,” she told him vaguely. She could tell that it was getting to Daniel that she wasn’t admitting to remembering, but she also knew that it was for the best. If she didn’t bring it up, then she was sure that he wouldn’t. It was her “get out of jail free” card. All she had to do was act as though it had never happened, and it wasn’t like she wasn’t well practiced in that already.
“That’s a real shame.”
“Is it?” Lucy asked him curiously. He looked really disappointed. She wanted to believe that it was because of the kiss. She wanted to believe that it was because of her, but she knew that was probably just wishful thinking.
“Yeah.” He stood up. “It was a really good night.”
“Well, I’m glad that I went then.” Lucy smiled at him.
“I’m glad you went too.” Daniel met her eyes and held them. Lucy could feel him reaching into her again. It was like he was unwilling to accept anything she showed on her surface. His forehead pulled into a soft frown and, for a moment, Lucy felt panicked. Did he know? Did he know that she could remember what had happened between them?
“I guess I’ll see you around.” He took his gaze away and opened the door.
“Wait,” she called after him, before he had a chance to walk away. “Can I talk to you about something?” She had taken away their kiss. She owed him some small sliver of truth, even if it wasn’t actually about what had happened between them.
“What’s up?” Daniel asked her curiously.
“Close the door,” she said quietly. She was going to tell him the truth, but she couldn’t risk anyone else finding out. “Last night, I made you a promise that I wouldn’t tell anybody about your ex,” she told him.
“You remember that?”
“Yeah, I remember that.” She nodded. She could see him trying to work out whether that meant she had the memory of them kissing stored in her brain too. “I don’t remember anything after, though, I just sort of remember telling you that you’re an idiot.”
“Oh, right.” He nodded. “Yeah, that happened.” He shifted on the spot he was standing on and then walked back over to the bed and sat down. “Is that what you want to talk to me about?” he asked her curiously.
“No.” She shook her head softly. “You told me a secret. That means you trust me, right?”
He nodded. “I guess so.”
“So, that means that I can trust you?” She kept her eyes fixed on his. She couldn’t risk missing any signs of a lie.
“Sure, you can trust me.”
“I need you to promise that what I’m about to tell you won’t leave this room.” She held his eye contact.
“Okay, I promise.”
“I got kicked out of college.” Her words hung heavy in the air between them. “That’s why I’m here. I didn’t have anywhere else to go and I haven’t told my mom yet.”
Daniel frowned. “Why haven’t you told her? My dad could probably get you a place somewhere else midterm. There’s no point in wasting any time.”
“I haven’t told her because I can’t tell her,” Lucy said seriously.
“I don’t understand.” Daniel could see the guilt rushing up into Lucy’s eyes. He thought about pulling her closer to him, but he wasn’t sure how she would react.
“They didn’t just kick me out for skipping classes,” Lucy said quietly. “What I did was bad. It was really bad, and when my mom finds out—” She hesitated. She’d imagined a hundred different ways that her mom might react to the news. “She’s probably going to kick me out, at the very least.”
“What did you do?” Daniel asked, because he had to.
“That doesn’t matter.”
“I think it does.”
“I don’t want to talk about it,” Lucy said shortly.
“Then why have you told me about any of this?” Daniel asked. He was frustrated. He couldn’t understand why she’d only go so far in the story.
“I really needed to tell somebody,” Lucy admitted. “I haven’t been able to talk to anybody about it since it’s happened. My mom keeps asking me about when I’m going back there. What am I meant to tell her?”
“You could tell her the truth?”
Lucy laughed bitterly. “If I do that, then everything is over.”
“If you don’t, then she’s going to find out anyway. You can’t stay here forever.”
Lucy shook her head. “I know that.” What was she going to do? Daniel was right. It wasn’t going to be long before her mom started to push her for ans
wers. “Maybe I could just go?” she let her thoughts tumble freely from her mouth. “I could just say that I want to go back-packing or something. You know, life experience.”
“You know you can’t do that.”
“Actually, I’m pretty sure that I can,” Lucy said firmly. “I mean, why not? There’s nothing keeping me here. I could tell her that I want to take a gap year, go traveling, and when I come back—no,” she corrected herself, “if I come back, then I’ll just say that college isn’t a part of my plan anymore.”
Daniel didn’t say anything. He was just looking at her with big green eyes filled with concern and strain. “Lucy,” he said finally, when they’d both sat in silence for five minutes or so. “What did you do to get kicked out of college? If you tell me, maybe I’ll be able to help you.”
“You can’t help me,” Lucy told him quickly.