Page 52 of Before Now

She swaps the two matching flasks she retrieved back and forth before she wiggles them for me to pick. I reach, but she pulls them away, giving me a look.

“Trick or treat,” I say through my teeth.

A smug smile appears on her shimmery black lips, and I grab one of the flasks. We tap them together and drink. My entire face feels the lemon vodka. My eyes water, and I breathe through my mouth, loathing whoever gave her this idea. Her lips twitch. The Fireball truly is atreatcompared to thetrickflask I’ve gotten twice in a row.

“I feel warm again.” She snags my flask and tucks it in my boot, then she slips the other in hers.

I head back toward the midway before someone notices us.

“Now,” she says, catching up, “do we bail? I mean, there’s not shit to do other than that house party that chick in your class is throwing. Oh.” Sage grasps my arm, right over the bandage, and I flinch. She doesn’t notice, though, releasing me just as fast. “If we go, you can show me which football players you’ve banged.”

“I have never once said I’ve banged a football player.”

“Right, because you don’t tell me the juicy shit—as we’ve discussed. Regardless, lame party or stay.” She links her arm through my other one. “Those are the only two options.”

“I might have a third,” a deep voice says from behind us.

We both stop, me calmly and Sage stumbling. Then we both smile, hers a little manic and mine wide because Miles and I successfully pulled off his surprise visit. As soon as she turns around, she launches herself at him.

He catches her with a grunt and grins at me over her shoulder. “Hey, Rem.”

Once her feet hit the ground, she pushes her hands into his sandy hair and drags his face down to hers.

“Hi, Miles. How was your flight?” I ask.

“Good,” he mumbles with a thumbs-up beside Sage’s head.

She detaches, and he swipes over his mouth in case her black lipstick transferred while she spins on me. “You bitch. Is this why you whined about girls only tonight when I wanted to call him?”

I shrug, not admitting to anything. Now that I know it works, I might need to use it again in the future.

“This is hot.” Miles thumbs her bottom lip and then glances over to me. “Pretty swirls, Remi. Very slutty fairy.”

“The face paint mask was necessary.” Sage slides her arms into the front of his jacket,not cold. “Nothing else was going to cover the black eye she’s rocking.”

His brows pull in, gaze jerking to me. “Who the fuck gave you a black eye?”

Before I can even open my mouth to lie, Sage answers, “She got it having wild car sex.”

I force a laugh, his eyes still on me, and I shake my head. “I got elbowed by a girl in gym, but that’s boring, so…”

One side of his mouth lifts, but the undercurrent’s sad. Like Miles knows I don’t take gym class.

The look vanishes a second later, and he shrugs off his coat and drapes it over Sage. “Let’s take a lap, and then we’ll get out of here.”

She latches onto my hand and cuddles against his side, and we wander the midway with her as if the exchange never happened.

But I want it that way.

When Sage and I were nine, my mom went to rehab. I lived with my dad full-time until she came back. I have no idea how long she stayed clean, but I got a real mom for a few weeks. Sage didn’t understand why I was so sad after she relapsed. If rehab fixed everything, I just needed to tell my mom to go again. It was simple. After she smiled and hugged me, so excited we solved the problem, I stopped telling her the bad if I could help it.

Sometimes I wish she’d see it, though. Like tonight when I told her I got elbowed in my nonexistent gym class. We were on the floor in my room by the mirror, pillows against the door. She gave apsshhand accused me of not sharing thejuicy shit. I stared at her while she painted a picture about hot car sex, simultaneously painting swirls of black and silver and teal on my face, burying the truth I desperately wished she would notice.

Except Sage doesn’t even know what to look for.

The worst thing in her life is dealing with a long-distance relationship with a boyfriend who adores her. Mr. and Mrs. Teller love her, praise her, and support her. They’ve been happily married since they graduated college and have a fund for Sage’s tuition set up—whatever she decides to do with her life. Her mom gets tipsy on wine once a week at her book club. Her dad still drags her to father-daughter dances. She lives in a stable home. A safe one. My best friend gets to not know the bad because she doesn’t have to survive it.

I want it all to stay simple for her for as long as possible before the world inevitably turns on her.

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