Page 129 of The Score

A voice whispers my name from far, far away. Jeez. Maybe I’m in the cave again. Maybe I never left it. How fucked up would that be? If I died in some cave in Austria but didn’t know it? If the life I’ve been leading ever since that Europe trip is really a figment of my imagination, and my dead body is actually decomposing in an ice cave right now?

“That’s fucking trippy,” I slur.

“Dean.” Warm hands cup my cheeks. There’s a soft curse. “Jesus. You’re drunk out of your mind.”

I’m bouncing. No, the mattress is. It’s shaking because someone is climbing on the bed with me, and my stomach starts to feel queasy. Nausea sticks to my throat. I swallow. I breathe deeply. I can smell the whiskey, but there’s another fragrance in the room too. Allie’s mysterious scent.

“Baby.” I feel my head moving. She’s tugging it into her lap, threading her fingers through my damphair. I’m sweating bullets. Why is it so hot in here? “Logan just told me what happened. I…” Her hand trembles in my hair. “I’m so sorry, sweetie.”

“Broke…his neck.” My voice sounds far away, too. It doesn’t even sound like my voice, actually. Jesus, I’m so drunk. Disgustingly, pathetically, lost-in-oblivion drunk.

“I know,” Allie whispers. “And I’m so, so sorry. I know you’re hurting right now. I…” She strokes my hot forehead. “I’m here, okay? I’m here and I’m not going anywhere.”

I draw a ragged breath. “Babe,” I mumble.

“What is it?”

“I’m gonna…” I lift my head, but the simple act of doing so incites the very thing I was trying to warn her about.

The nausea spirals to the surface and I throw up on my girlfriend’s lap.

ALLIE

The memorial servicefor Beau is held in the football stadium. The entire team is there, along with the coaching staff, his friends, his family, hundreds of alumni, and thousands of people who probably never even met him.

One notable absence?

Dean.

Before I left the house, he was upstairs in his room, wearing a black suit and a somber expression. He told me to go on ahead with Hannah and Garrett, and he’d meet me at the memorial.

When I get back to the house, he’s stillin his room, still wearing the black suit and the somber expression. Except now he’s clutching a vodka bottle and his cheeks are flushed.

He’s drunk.

He’s been drunk every day since we got the news about Beau. Well, either that or high. Two nights ago, I watched him smoke four joints, one after the other, before passing out on the living room couch. Logan had to haul him over his shoulder and carry him upstairs, and the two of us stood in the doorway, looking at Dean passed out and spread-eagled on the bed. “People grieve in different ways,” Logan mumbled.

I get that. Believe me, I get it. When I lost my mom, I went through the various stages of grief. Denial and depression mostly, until eventually I learned to accept that she was really gone. It took a while to reach that acceptance, but I got there. Dean will get there too. I know he will. But it’s been painful—no,unbearable—to watch him turn to alcohol and weed when he could’ve been turning to me.

“Couldn’t do it,” he mutters when he sees me in the doorway. He’d taken off his jacket and tie, and the collar of his white dress shirt is askew. His blond hair is mussed up, as if he’s been running his fingers through it repeatedly.

I enter the room with timid strides, still wearing the simple, high-necked black dress I chose for the memorial.

“Just couldn’t stomach it, baby.” It’s a whisper. Ringing with misery. “I kept picturing his parents…and Joanna…seeing their faces…” Dean sets the vodka bottle on the dresser and slowly sinks to the edge of the bed.

Taking a breath, I sit beside him and rest my head on his shoulder. “She sang.”

“What?”

“Joanna,” I say quietly. “There was a stage set up with a piano. She sang ‘Let It Be.’ It was beautiful. And sad.” I blink through an onslaught of tears. “It was sad and beautiful.”

Dean makes a choked noise.

I stroke his cheek with the pads of my fingers. His skin is hot, but he doesn’t seem as inebriated as he was last night. He leans into my touch, his unsteady breaths puffing against my hand. “I couldn’t do it,” he says again.

“I know. It’s okay, sweetie.”

Is it, though? He should’ve been there, damn it. Beau’sfamilywas there. If they were able to “stomach it,” then so should Dean.

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