I blinked. “You’re not?”
“She’s not,” Paul confirmed. He cleared his throat. “I’m gonna take her home. To rest.”
“You are?”
“I am.”
How drunk was I?
“Okay, then,” I said cautiously. “I’m ready to leave if you all are.”
Mal snorted. “He means they’re abandoning us so they can be alone, Brooks.”
“Alone,” I repeated. Then I gasped as the penny dropped. “To canoodle?”
“Oh my God. Drunk Brooks might be my kryptonite,” Mal told Ava in a hushed voice I wasn’t sure if he knew I could hear.
“I’m not drunk,” I protested. “I’m just a tipsy bit teeny. And I thought you were the one saying we needed to be careful and no one mattered but Ava,” I accused Paul.
“You said that?” Ava whisper-squealed. She pressed her lips together. “Paul, I’m feeling really, really unrested right now.”
“I think if all four of us walk out together, no one will know where we each end up,” Paul said excitedly. “Come on. Brooks is in no shape to say goodbyes anyway.”
“And given that he’s in this shape, where do you propose that we spend the next couple hours?” Mal demanded, following in Ava’s wake. “I’m not as drunk as Brooks, but I can’t drive.”
“Brooks could give you a scenic walking tour! Of Downtown Licking Thicket. And the high school. And the 24-Hour QuickMart at the end of the street,” Ava pleaded, once we got to the sidewalk. “Please, Mal?”
Mal cast me a sideways glance and smirked. “I’m giving you shit, Ava. Go. We’ll be fine.”
“Oh, you’re the bestest.” She gave him a hug and let Paul hurry her down the street. “And I promise, we’ll only dirty, like, one set of the sheets on your futon. Tops.”
“Wait!” Mal wailed. “Wait, you’re going to the tree house? Ava! Goddamn it.”
Once they left, the sidewalk was almost silent. I squinted at the light outside Henson’s, which seemed to break into a hundred smaller lights the longer I stared.
“Okay, so maybe I’m a little drunk,” I admitted as Mal and I started walking down the sidewalk toward the school.
“Baby, you are so drunk,” Mal said, but he fit his hand in mine and I thought if he kept calling me baby, then maybe it was fine.
“I didn’t mean the night to work out like this, you know? I forgot.”
“Forgot what?” Mal sounded amused. “How moonshine worked?”
“No. That it doesn’t matter what it says on your T-shirt. That’s why I went to New York,” I confided. “The real reason.”
Mal peered at me for a long moment. “Nope. You’re gonna have to help me make this mental jump, Drunk Brooks. Your T-shirt? What?”
“Yeah.” I paused to pull at the back of my shirt, which weirdly refused to twist itself around my body. “See? Head Licker.”
“I see.” Mal smoothed the shirt down my back, and I arched into his touch because it felt so good and… why the hell not?
“Used to say quarterback,” I told him as we resumed walking. “But it still wasn’t me.”
Mal made a thoughtful noise and wrapped his arm around my waist. He fit perfectly under my arm with his head sort of against my chest, and in a startling burst of sobriety, I remembered I was wearing my good cologne and was thankful.
“Keep going,” he prompted. “About football.”
That would’ve been easier if I remembered what I’d been saying. “Uh. Well, I started playing football when I was six ’cause Coach Cosway told my dad I had a good arm. I practiced, and I got good at it, but I didn’t like it. Not really. Not hardly at all.”
“Why?”
“Why didn’t I like it?”
“No. Why would you practice something you didn’t like?”
“To get good at it,” I repeated slowly. Pret-ty sure I wasn’t the only drunk one around here if Mal couldn’t see something that obvious. “Same reason I did math team and trained for the Lope and all the other stuff folks wanted me to do. When you’re good at things, when you fix problems, people like you, see? Otherwise, if you’re just you…”
“Yeah,” Mal whispered. “I see.”
I shrugged and took a deep breath. “There was one path for me in Licking Thicket. Or I thought so, anyway. And the whole thing made about as much sense to me as running through the woods with a bucket of milk, but I didn’t know how to fix it. So I stepped off the path entirely.”
“You loped off to New York.” He snorted.
I laughed delightedly and stopped so I could press a kiss to the top of his head. “That’s probably the least funny thing you’ve ever said.”
“And yet you’re laughing like I’m hilarious.” He grimaced. “Drunk Brooks is drunk. But is he too drunk?”
“For driving? Yes,” I said sadly.
“What about for kissing?”
The sizzle that went through my bloodstream sobered me up faster than three cups of coffee, and before Mal could blink, I had him plastered against the vinyl siding of Ladli Laghari’s tax office.