I felt Noah’s body heat behind mine. He wasn’t going anywhere. But I could ignore him.
But a clearly tipsy Lana and an every drunker Amy were coming down the stairs as I reached the first landing. Jack was nowhere to be seen. New plan.
“You two ready to go?” I asked. Lana was wide-eyed and mouthed, “he’s right behind you” to me. Correction—Lana wasn’t tipsy. She was drunk.
“I know,” I said, “and you aren’t invisible to him. I’m sure he can see you.”
“Yup,” Noah affirmed.
“Oh no!” Lana said. “What about your cure?”
“Are you sick?” Noah asked, coming up to the landing, and looking at me intently.
“Not that kind of cure, silly,” Lana said before I could open my mouth. She was feeling no pain. She stumbled down the stairs dragging Amy behind her. “Cure for heartache.” Thanks Lana, I thought, as if I hadn’t been humiliated enough before.
“I’ll drive y’all home,” Noah said. “My truck is out front.”
“You can’t park on the street,” Lana said, poking one long fingernail into his chest. When her poke found no purchase, she began patting. “Wow, this is like marble. Amy,” Lana turned and held up their joined hands, “feel this.” At which point both girls proceeded to pat Noah’s apparently very hard chest.
He, at least, had the grace to look embarrassed by this. I had to hustle Lana out before her drunken state revealed something even more humiliating, although at this point, I wasn’t sure what that could be.
I pulled their hands down. “Come on, let’s go.”
Lana tugged back. “No, there’s another house party over on Forest. Let’s go there.”
This night was fast becoming a farce. I couldn’t shake Noah. I couldn’t get Lana to come home with me. Part of me wanted to just sit down on the floor and cry like a toddler, but I had already done that earlier today.
I let out a frustrated breath. “Where’s Jack?”
Lana and Amy turned in unison to look up the stairs. We all waited for a heartbeat but the upstairs hall remained empty. No help from that quarter.
“My big sister is at the party on Forest,” Amy offered. To the Forest party it was, then. Amy’s big sister in the sorority could watch over them.
I turned to Noah. “Guess we’re taking you up on the ride offer.”
He nodded and didn’t smile like he had won, which made the situation only slightly more acceptable. As we walked behind him, I noticed how the crowd just seemed to melt away from us, like he was Moses parting the Red Sea.
Outside, Noah stopped briefly beside the blond guy I’d seen with him in the library, who was now talking to three girls. This must be the infamous Bo Randolph. Noah didn’t introduce us, though, and instead shepherded us toward his truck sitting in the driveway of the fraternity.
I’m not sure how long the vehicle had been there, and its presence surprised me. “Are you a Delt?” Only members of the fraternity got to park in the driveway.
“No,” Noah shook his head. “Just know someone.”
He opened the passenger side doors and helped all of us into his dual cab pickup.
“There’s a lot of space in here.” I had never ridden in a pickup before and was surprised at how roomy it was. The vehicle smelled new.
“You just get this?” I asked him as he climbed into the driver’s seat.
“Smell give it away?” He honked twice to get a couple of people to move out of the driveway and then backed up.
“Hard to hide that new car smell.”
“I got it this summer. Bo told me he was done ferrying my ass around,” Noah said. I remembered Noah telling me once that they were always being counseled to not spend their entire earnings on a new car or a motorcycle or a boat when they were back on leave or just returned from deployment. Noah must have listened to them.
“So you didn’t spend all your money on new wheels the moment you separated?”
“Nope, had other plans.”
I refrained from taking the bait to ask more information, even though I was dying for it. After a few beats of silence, Noah said, “Not going to ask me about my other plans?”
“Not interested,” I lied, looking out the window. He made a couple of turns and then headed down Forest. Noah navigated the campus streets like an upperclassman and not some new transfer who had been in town only two weeks since classes started.
“You seem to know this area pretty well.”
When his answer wasn’t immediate, I knew he was going to tell me something that would make me angry again. By his sheepish tone, he knew it too.