Cherry Red Summer (Emely and Elyas Book 1) (8 page)

“Uh—no,” I said.

“Why, what’s wrong?” he said as he took a step toward me, putting his hands on my hips, all cocky, and leaning much closer to my face than necessary. “What if I asked you whether we should take our dancing out to my car right now?” he whispered into my ear. I could feel his breath on my skin. Goose bumps rose on my arms and I felt my cheeks flush.

“Did I finally embarrass you?” he breathed.

I cleared my throat. “Oh, please,” I said, roughly sweeping his hands off my hips. “As far as dancing in your car goes,” I continued, returning to his offer. “It looks like you’re going to be performing solo.” I gave him a dark glare before turning my back to him.

Somehow I could still sense his grin through the back of my head, and it was driving me crazy.

God, sometimes it seemed his goal in life was to get me to lose my cool. I had no idea why, and I couldn’t tell if I was right. But
I
was the one who had plenty of reason to torment him, as payback for what he’d done back then. Who knows? Maybe Elyas needed to do it for his self-esteem, to prove he could pull it off a second time. If that’s what he was going for, he was very much going to lose.

What a freaking idiot. Hadn’t he done enough already? I could not rehash all those horrible memories, even though they were exactly the thoughts flickering through my mind now, sending my mood into a tailspin.
To hell with you, Elyas!
I stood up from the wall to look for Alex. I was not going to let Elyas ruin any more of my night.

It took me a second to find her in the crowd. I went to her. “There you are,” she said, handing me a glass.

We both returned to the bar, where we talked for a long while about unimportant things as we scanned the club. At some point, I switched from plain Coke to rum and Coke, having determined the night would be much easier to get through if I was a little buzzed.

At one point, as I waited to get another drink, I saw Domenic, and we started talking. Alex was still at my side, but she largely stayed out of the conversation.

Domenic was quite unlike his sister, Sophie, who totally ignored me. He seemed interested in talking to me. Among other things, I learned he was twenty, played soccer, and worked with his father at his family’s small business. Between his answers to all my questions, he tried to flirt with me. Since he was way less pushy than Elyas, it didn’t bug me at all. The longer I talked with him, the clearer his intentions became despite his facade of innocence. At the same time, unlike
certain other guys
, he seemed like someone who would take no for an answer. That was good because no was the answer he was guaranteed to get from me. I didn’t get a dangerous vibe from him; he was just a young guy looking to get laid.

The thing I liked best about our talk was that it seemed to rub Elyas the wrong way. He had joined our group at the bar, and from the looks he was giving Domenic, it almost seemed he was jealous. It was probably just bruising his pride that every other guy had a better chance with me than he did.

Plus, I was getting the strange feeling that Elyas and Domenic didn’t particularly like each other. There was some kind of tension beneath the looks they gave each other. I couldn’t tell if they were at odds or if it was run-of-the-mill top-dog behavior—a “Whose is bigger?” contest, in other words.

At some point Elyas must have had enough because he vanished and didn’t reappear for at least an hour. I wondered where he had gone off to, and scanned the crowd during a short pause in my conversation with Domenic. No luck at first, but then I spotted him. He wasn’t that far from us, but he appeared happy to be talking to a brunette so pretty she could give any cover model a run for her money.

Ugh,
I snorted softly. Did that boy have
nothing
else on his mind?

I shook my head and turned to find Alex next to me
—
lo and behold,
still
talking to Sebastian. My plan seemed to have worked. I had managed to include Sebastian in my conversation with Domenic, making it possible for Alex to join in discreetly
and
for me to get the lowdown on her crush. Now Alex and Sebastian had been talking to each other exclusively for more than twenty minutes.

I stirred my drink, enjoying the feeling of the ice cubes knocking against the glass. As I got lost in the moving surface of the liquid, I was struck by an idea that made me smile. I hesitated, reconsidered a few times, but then decided to make it happen. “Will you excuse me for a bit, Domenic?”

“Of course, if you promise to come back.”

I nodded, turned, and marched toward Elyas.

If I’d been sober, I would never have been brave enough to do it, but alcohol had to be good for
something
.

Wearing a wide grin, I reached my destination and stood next to Elyas. He was so caught up in his conversation with the brunette that he didn’t notice me at first. That wasn’t bad, because it gave me time to muster the courage I was going to need.

“Dearest! There you are,” I finally said loudly. As he turned toward me in surprise, I swung my arms tightly around him. Touching him felt lik
e . . .
I have no words. For the life of me I couldn’t explain why I was doing this. But there was no turning back now: I was all in! I stood on my tiptoes and gave him a big wet smacker right on the cheek.

Note to self: Remember to gargle with a couple of gallons of mouthwash when you get home.

Elyas furrowed his brow and looked at me as if he had just watched me kiss a dead frog. He obviously doubted my sanity—or his own. I gave him a big, bold smile and watched myriad expressions flutter across his face, each for only fractions of a second. Then he slowly clued in to what I was up to, but apparently still couldn’t respond.

The brunette stiffened, and her eyes passed from me back to Elyas. We hadn’t quite reached the point of “click,” yet.

So the brunette was a bimbo, to boot. God, did I always have to do everything myself? I was going to have to get out the big guns. I sighed and summoned my inner strength. I took Elyas’s hand, placed it against my stomach, and started beaming. “Can you feel him?” I squeaked. “Little Elyas is kicking for the first time!”

The brunette stared at me for a couple of seconds, her eyes big, before she finally turned on her extremely high heels. Elyas’s mouth fell open as he stared after her until she disappeared into the crowd.

He slowly turned to me. “Yo
u . . .
you’r
e . . .
you are a total bitch!”

I put my hands on my hips. “What do you mean? Am I going to have to raise our child all by myself?”

Elyas had fully transformed into a fish: his mouth opened and closed, but no sound passed his lips.

I smiled. The sight was priceless, and a wonderful sensation of satisfaction filled me. “Fine,” I said. “Toodle-oo, sweetums!” I gave him a wave and left him standing there as I made my way back to the bar.

This had, without doubt, been one of the most successful stunts of my whole life. But as good a mood as it put me in, I couldn’t completely revel in my victory. The reason was my pounding temples. Rum had the downside of going straight to my head, where it left behind only hammering pain, and in a setting like this one, droning with noise, where you could hardly understand a word anyone said, the pain quickly became unbearable. But I didn’t want to spoil Alex’s night, now that she had finally had a chance to get to know Sebastian better.

“How’s your head?” Alex asked me as we were standing at the sink in the ladies’ room a couple of hours later.

“I’m pretty sure a guy is standing on my head breaking it open with a jackhammer. I bet your brother paid him off to do it.” She snorted and stroked my arm.

“That bad? If you’ve had enough, just say so. I’ll ask Elyas to drive us home.”

“No, I don’t want that. It’s only two, and I won’t be able to stand your whining tomorrow if I tear you away from Sebastian now.”

“Sebastian,” she said with a soulful look. “He is so great! Do you know what he used to—”

“Stop!” I said, interrupting her. “Can you please tell me tomorrow? I’m not accepting any more information today—about anything.”

“Oh, of course,” she said with a pitying smile. “Sorry. It’s fine, Emely. I’ll meet up with Sebastian again sometime soon. The way you’re looking, I think we’d better head home now.”

“No, you stay,” I said. “Domenic offered to take me home. He has to get up early tomorrow and wanted to get going soon, anyway.”

Alex wasn’t exactly enthusiastic about Domenic. “Do you like that guy?” she asked. “I don’t kno
w . . .
I think he’s weird.”

“Weird how?” I asked.

“Mmm, hard to say.” She turned to the mirror and touched up her lip gloss. “He doesn’t strike me as all that nice, somehow.”

“Really? He seems really nice to me.”

“Oh, they’re all
nice
,” Alex added, returning her lip gloss to her purse. I didn’t disagree with her.

She looked at me and sighed. “I’m sorry about your head.”

“It’s my own fault. God, why do I ever drink rum?”

“Yeah, really,” she grumbled. “I don’t know, Emely. I don’t like the idea of you driving home with that guy.”

“He’s not like that. Plus, it’s the most practical solution, having him take me home.”

“If you think it’s all right,” she sighed. “But then you definitely have to text me the second you get home safe, OK?”

“Sure thing,” I said, hugging her good-bye. “You kids have fun!” I told her as our hug ended.

“I hope you feel better soon,” she said.

“I’ll be better after a good night’s sleep,” I said as I left the bathroom and found my way to Domenic.

He was at the bar, and I asked him if his offer to drive me home still stood.

“Of course.” He even seemed glad I had asked. I waited for him at the coat check while he said good-bye to a few people.

While I was waiting, someone tapped me on the shoulder, but when I turned around, no one was there.
Oh God, please don’t let me have fallen for the oldest trick in the book.

A glance to my right revealed the grin of Elyas Schwarz.

“Were you seriously planning on taking off without saying bye to me?”

I groaned. “Honestly,
yes.
And I was already optimistic I was about to pull it off.”

He smiled and looked at me with his typical hard-to-decipher expression before sticking his hands into his pockets and shrugging. “So Sunny Boy is driving you home, huh?”

I folded my arms. “Do you have a problem with that?”

“Why should I?” He shrugged. “I just felt obligated to warn you in advance.”

“Warn me in advance?” I repeated. What sort of shit was he about to pull on me now?

“You may be too naïve to notice it,” he continued, “but that guy just wants to get you into bed.”

I stared at him until I burst out laughing.
Elyas
was warning me about someone who just wanted to get me into bed? How freaking funny was that!

He apparently noticed the irony in what he said because he groaned and folded his arms. I was laughing so hard my stomach hurt, and I patted his upper arm to congratulate him on his very successful joke.

“Elyas,” I said, wiping tears from my eyes. “Sometimes you’re too much!” I’d hardly gotten the words out before another fit of laughter came over me. I just couldn’t stop laughing, and the longer I laughed, the more rankled Elyas seemed to get.

“What’s so funny?” asked Domenic when he reappeared.

“Elyas!” I said between bursts of laughter. “Need a clown for your next party? Hire Elyas!” Even the hammering in my head couldn’t dampen my amusement.

Domenic clearly had no idea what I was talking about, whereas Elyas had had enough. He spun around and disappeared back into the crowd. I couldn’t resist and called after him, laughter in my voice, “Thanks again for the tip!” But he didn’t respond.

“What’s going on?” Domenic asked, looking from Elyas back to me. I inhaled a few times and tried to calm down.

“Oh, nothing,” I said. There was a certain appeal in telling Domenic the whole thing, but I decided not to. The last thing I wanted to do was rekindle the whole peacock show between them.

“It was just an inside joke,” I explained.

That seemed to arouse his curiosity, but he apparently felt inhibited from digging into it further.

“All right. Well, if that’s settled, shall we get going?” he asked. I nodded and walked out with him. The whole thing with Elyas had cheered me up, but as far as my headache went, all the laughing hadn’t helped. In fact, the pain had gotten dramatically worse. Everything in life had its price, though, and this had definitely been worth it.

All the same, I didn’t say much during the half-hour drive home, and Domenic seemed to understand.

When he dropped me off, he handed me a slip of paper with his cell phone number on it. The blue ink formed a spidery scrawl, but I could still just make out the numerals. “If you feel like it, give me a call sometime. We could meet for coffee or whatever you like.” He smiled and I stuck the paper into my jeans pocket.

“My schedule is crammed with finals, but I’ll try.”

“That’s more than I’d hoped for,” he said, winking at me. “I’m looking forward to it.”

“See you later,” I said. “And thanks for the lift.”

“No problem,” he said, still smiling as I opened the door and climbed out. As I shuffled across the huge courtyard in front of my dorm and struggled up the steps to my room, I wondered for the umpteenth time why I’d been so dumb as to drink all that rum. The only positive to come out of it was that the next time rum was offered to me, I was determined to say, “I still can’t touch the stuff; I won’t be ready to try it again for at least ten years.”

I unlocked the door and quietly sneaked into the room. As expected, Eva was already asleep, and I knew better than to wake her. I went into the bathroom and massaged my temples in front of the mirror, wanting nothing more than to go to bed. I halfheartedly brushed my teeth, slipped off my clothes, and took a quick sponge bath. I put on a T-shirt, left the bathroom, switched off the light, and crept under the covers. As agreed, I texted Alex before setting my phone on the nightstand and finally closing my eyes.