Page 80 of Unsteady

“You mean your tutor?” I joke, but my mouth can barely get the hint of a smile. “No, she’s not. I-I need to… Can you just, like, go hover around her and make sure she’s okay?”

He nods and taps me on the shoulder, scooting by.

Bennett looks unflinchingly calm, but there’s a flush to his cheeks like he might have had a few drinks. He messes with his baseball cap and looks towards my shoes, a hand-me-down pair of slip-on clogs, and nods over his shoulder.

I follow him through the kitchen toward a narrow back stairwell that is, thankfully, empty.

Bennett takes them two at a time, and I follow close behind until we reach a closed bathroom door. He takes off his baseball cap, rakes a hand through a mass of messy amber brown curls and readjusts the hat back on his head, gesturing towards the door with his other hand.

“Right,” I whisper, hating the clamminess of my hands and seasick stomach. My hand knocks on the door.

“Busy!” a female voice yells. Her tone is angry, but that doesn’t stop me from grasping the wall like I might pass out, or vomit—or both.

Bennett huffs a little derisive sound and slams his fist so hard on the door it rattles.

“Open the fuck up.” He doesn’t yell, but it has the same effect.

“Go away,” Rhys slurs through the door, and I’m sure my face is ash now. “I’m fine, Ben.”

“Rhys?” I ask, pressing my entire face nearly into the wood. “It’s Sadie. Can you open the door for me?”

It’s barely a second, and he does.

Or she, because the girl is the first to slip out of the room, adjusting her high ponytail and jeans as she does. She gives a sneer of disgust towards the room and flickers her eyes to me, before snapping towards a fuming Bennett.

“Freddy told you not to mess with him,” Bennett practically growls.

She rolls her eyes. “Whatever—he’s a mess. Threw up for the last ten minutes while I just stood there. I’m assuming you’re—”

“Gray,” a voice croaks.

We all whip our heads towards Rhys.

His body is slumped into the frame, his gray shirt slightly darker around the collar that tells me he was either sweating or tossing water from the faucet onto his face. His skin is flushed, hair a tangled mess that he tries to curl behind his ear as some of it plasters to his damp face.

He looks… terrible. Yet—he’s smiling at me, dimples deep and eyes foggy.

“You’re so beautiful,” he slurs, so much that his words all come out as one.

Another wave of heat as a light pulsing starts up in my head.

“Was he this drunk when you went in there with him?” I ask, vision hazing as I glare at the girl trying to leave our little alcove.

Rhys stumbles, catching his weight on the frame again as he looks between us. “She pulled me in there,” he hurries to say, as if it’s him I’m accusing. “But I didn’t want to—”

He hiccups and I see Bennett step towards him, like a shield in case he throws up again, or passes out.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” I ask, whipping back towards the girl. She’s tall, even more so with her heels; a pair of shoes I wish I was wearing now so I could take one off and stab her in the eye with it. “He’s blackout wasted and you took him in there? For what? To hook up with the hockey star while he’s literally so drunk he can’t see straight?”

The girl’s cheeks go red, a little widening to her eyes. As if she’s just realizing what she did. She might’ve had a drink or two, but she’s not drunk.

“I didn’t know he had a girlfriend.”

Flames shoot off from the sides of my head.

I launch myself towards her before I really think it through. We tumble into the wall, my arms around her waist as I use my foot, now missing a clog from my jump, to take her down to the hardwood flooring.

“We didn’t do anything!” she screams. “He threw up all over the place before—”

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