“Does your apology entail your lips or hers around my dick?”
Before Emery could blink in response, Noah’s fist flew into the guy’s face. There was a cracking sound and blood burst from the guy’s nose. Football players began pushing to be a part of the fight and started forcing all the intruders out the front door. Emery lost Noah in the melee, but Rachel grabbed Emery’s hand and they pushed out the door with everyone else.
“Rachel, I can’t have the police here,” she whispered.
“Oh fuck,” Rachel moaned. “I’m just full of good decisions tonight.” She straightened up, sobering quickly, and walked right into the middle of two really big men. “I need everyone who wants to get arrested tonight to raise their hand!” she yelled.
This got a ton of the guys’ attention.
“Nobody?” Rachel pulled out her phone and started taking a video of the crowd. “Then we’ll just need you fine gentlemen that requested blow jobs in exchange for some spilled popcorn to be getting the fuck out of here.”
Everyone was frozen, thinking over her words.
“No one’s moving yet,” she pointed out, “but I’ll call the cops in thirty seconds if you guys don’t move your asses.”
This got the Georgia guys moving toward the parking lot, still talking shit and calling Rachel a cock tease.
“I’m usually not a tease!” she yelled. “I just don’t like the exchange rate.”
She came back to Emery and slung her arm over her shoulders. Together, they walked inside to finish their sweet tea vodka.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
A First of Many
Emery couldn’t remember ever being so happy in her own detached bubble. In the year that had passed since she’d left Atlanta, she’d created a world that was solitary in most ways, but she wanted it that way. She was hiding, after all.
She’d gotten her graduation equivalency degree and had started attending online college courses. Her days were full of studying and her nights were full of reading, Noah, and his antics. Nothing had changed in the way of the revolving door of girls that he had in his bed, though there had been a few nights where his friends hadn’t filled the den and they’d watched movies together from their respective La-Z-Boys. He taught her how to play Grand Theft Auto. She sucked at it, but she liked hearing him laugh at her attempts to play.
Some days her face hurt from smiling so much. Other days the silence threatened to drown her.
Rachel put on music and started shaking her hips to the beat, her long tresses covering her face with each shimmy. Her tank top, which read For Fox Sake, rose and exposed a perfectly flat stomach. She lit up her joint to the beat of the song and thrust her arm in the air, shaking her hips around and dancing over to where Emery was moving to the beat on the couch.
“Happy seventeenth and nineteenth birthday to my best friend in the entire world!” Rachel yelled in a mock cheerleader voice as she handed the joint over to Emery.
“Thanks,” Emery said, taking the joint between her lips and pulling in the sweet smoke. She still felt lost, confused, and relieved, but she wasn’t numb anymore. Emily Sanders had been feeling everything she could since she left Atlanta. Sometimes she was overwhelmed with the emotions, even if it was just being comfortable.
“So everything is set up with the Facebook page, right?” Rachel asked.
“Yes. Romona Hicks is our lifeline if I have to run,” Emery recited.
“If anything happens, just leave and we’ll use that to communicate a meeting or to set up what you need,” Rachel confirmed.
Emery was pretty sure she would die without Rachel, especially if she didn’t see her on a regular basis. Rachel religiously came to see her in Nashville once a month, but Emery wished her visits were more frequent. Rachel’s dad thought she wanted to hang with her cousin. He was just happy she wasn’t getting arrested.
She and Noah lived peacefully with each other; he was busy with football, college, and his friends. Even though Emery felt pretty invisible in his life, with the exception of those rare times it was just the two of them, he was always nice (if distracted) and seemed to want to stay away from her most of the time. On those few occasions when it was just the two of them in the condo, the conversation flowed between them and they enjoyed each other. Emery was warming up to him, but there was still something uncomfortable about him. She couldn’t quite put her finger on it.
“So have you decided what you’re going to major in?” Rachel blew smoke away from Emery’s face from her perch on the couch Emery had purchased for the condo.
“No,” Emery grabbed the joint and inhaled, “but I think I want to help kids.” Like you helped me.