Page 51 of Finding Noah

Her face contorted with sympathy, her body sagging and her head tipping. “Oh, Noah,” she whispered, shaking her head. Then she sighed again, this time with resignation. “All right. I will take your car and drive you home. Let's go.”

“It's fine,” I murmured, hastily wiping the tears away. “I'm perfectly capable of walking. Don't want you to spend the rest of your night babysitting my stoned ass.”

“I thought you weren't high,” she quietly said, her lips quirking into an affectionate smile.

“I was trying to trick you. Guess it didn't work,” I muttered with a shrug as I started to turn in the direction of my parents' house.

Without sticking around to hear if she ever replied, I slowly trudged my way down the sidewalk toward home, knowing there was no fucking way I was getting any sleep tonight.

CHAPTER TEN

BETWEEN THE BARS

AGE TWENTY

“Dude!” Jay cackled, flopping backward and clutching his hands over his stomach. “Are you fuckin’ crazy?!”

The girl at his side laughed soundlessly along with him as I pulled off my shirt and threw it on the ground. She was about as drunk as we were. I couldn’t remember her name, but I guessed it probably didn’t matter.

He’d broken up with Giselle a couple of years ago, after she took Ash’s side and wanted Jay to stop hanging out with me, and ever since, he’d been sowing his wild oats all over the southern border of Connecticut.

Still, I tried to make note of their names. Tried not to be a rude dick about his casual conquests … or mine for that matter.

My girl this week was Julia, and her eyes twinkled with excited mirth at the sight of my shirtless body, though I couldn’t understand why. I wasn’t fat, but no amount of weight lifting seemed to have much of an effect on my string-bean body. My jeans hung low on my scrawny hips, and her chocolaty gaze dropped to the trail of hair leading from my belly button to my waistband.

She’d get fucked later.

But right now, I had a dare to make good on.

And to answer Jay’s question, I was.

Fuckin’ crazy, I mean.

I dug my wallet, keys, and phone from my pockets and tossed them on the ground between Jay and Julia, telling them to “watch those.”

Then I turned to face Mayor Fischer’s house. Or more specifically, her backyard, where her pool was open and secured only by an easily hopped fence and a border of well-kept rhododendrons.

“She’s gonna kill you, bro,” Jay said, but he continued to laugh.

Jay always laughed, and I thought it was what egged me on. The laughs. The attention. The thrill of doing the things I knew were wrong.

Spray-painting the Main Street trash cans with a dick mid-jizz.

Slipping a laxative into one of Kylie O’Leary’s lattes at Black & Brewed.

Swiping a shitload of sod from a house Kev Scott was in the middle of building.

Knocking over a few garbage cans before Connor Jacobs could grab them and toss their contents into his truck.

The list was endless.

But anyway, my point was, Jay dared me to do stupid shit, and I always pulled through, despite the trouble I inevitably got into. I always got caught, and I thought … I thought … that was my ultimate why. Deep down, at the heart of it, I wanted to get caught. I wanted someone to see me, to listen to the things I wasn’t saying. And the wildest thing was, nobody ever did. The people in town saw the shit I did, and they all swept it under the rug, giving me excuse after excuse.

Guessed it paid to be traumatized, and I was constantly testing the limits of their forgiveness.

And today, I was going to skinny-dip in the mayor’s in-ground pool.

I unzipped my jeans, letting them drop and pool around my ankles.