“I can’t or you don’t want me to?” That was the first line where she actually heard the alcohol in his voice.

“Liz, are you kidding me right now?” Victoria yelled. “Who the hell are you talking to?”

“Who is that?” Brady asked.

“My roommate. She doesn’t want me to walk home.”

“You shouldn’t walk home. I’ll come get you.”

“You’re not here,” she said, drawing out the E dramatically as she wandered aimlessly down Franklin Street.

Victoria grabbed her shoulder and halted her in place. “Who are you talking to? Give me the phone. We’re not f**king walking home!”

“Chill out, Vickie,” Liz said, swatting her hand away.

Victoria dodged her easily and nimbly grabbed her phone. Liz stumbled as she tried to reach for it. She couldn’t let Victoria talk to Brady!

“Hey, who is this? You know what—it doesn’t matter. Liz is really drunk and she has to go now. She’ll call you back some other time,” Victoria said into the phone and then ended the call. Liz’s heart sank. She had just hung up on Brady in the middle of their call.

“I’m calling Lane,” Victoria said, finding his number and dialing.

Liz plopped back down on the bench and tried to keep her head from spinning. It wouldn’t stop. And she felt so out of control. All the booze seemed to be hitting her at one time and she thought that she might be sick.

There was a trash can to the side of the bench, and Liz just made it as she unloaded the contents of her stomach into the bin. She retched repeatedly until it felt as if she had nothing left in her entire body. She felt the tears spring to her eyes and she tried to swipe them away, but it made her stomach clench. She hadn’t thought that she had anything left in her, but she doubled over and puked again.

“Fuck!” she heard Victoria cry behind her.

Her friend was at her side in an instant, holding her hair back, cleaning her up the best she could, and sitting her back down on the bench. Hayden arrived not long after that and drove them back to her house. Liz had enough sense to grab her phone back from Victoria before crawling into bed. But lying down was a bad move, and soon she had her face buried in the toilet.

Hayden stayed up half the night with her as she got sick over and over until she passed out into a delirious, dehydrated, exhausted slumber.

Chapter 13

SLIP THROUGH THEIR FINGERTIPS

Liz awoke the next afternoon with a headache from hell. Her eyes were puffy, her throat was swollen, and she felt as if someone had run her over with a Mack truck. She was equal parts starving and never wanting to eat again.

Why oh why had she ever allowed herself to drink as much as she did?

Rolling over slowly in bed, she peeled her eyes open and tried to let them adjust to the light in the room. Her head spun and she wondered briefly if she was actually still drunk from last night. Moving onto her other side, Liz stared at a little slice of heaven.

A glass of water. A bottle of Gatorade. A thousand milligrams of Tylenol. And a note from Hayden letting her know that he was going to pick them up some lunch. Not that she had any intention of eating anything.

After taking the medicine, she sipped on the Gatorade, trying to drink as much as she could without feeling sick. Last night had been a very bad idea. Fuzzy memories came back to her slowly. But she didn’t remember a lot of what had happened after Massey got there.

Something.

Savannah.

Right. Savannah had shown up. That was so nice of her. She should text her a thank-you.

Liz reached for her phone and stopped just before grabbing it. “Oh no,” she whispered.

Now she remembered.

Brady.

She had texted Brady last night. And he had answered. They had talked back and forth. Had she even called him? Fuck, what had they talked about?

She snatched the phone off the nightstand and pulled up her text messages. Scrolling through them made the sickness she’d had all last night come back full force. Had she actually said those things to Brady? Had she asked him to fly to Chapel Hill to see her? Had he encouraged her?

Oh God. Oh God. Oh God. What the hell was she supposed to do?

Liz dropped the phone into her lap on the bed and covered her eyes. She was a f**king idiot. A terrible f**king idiot. She had left Brady eight long months ago. So what was she still doing obsessing over this?

Brady had been drunk and f**king with her last night. No matter what she felt or what she had felt last August . . . that part of her life was over.

And Hayden.

Oh, Hayden . . .

What if he had read the messages? What if he had seen what she had insinuated? What if he had seen how stupid she had been? She didn’t think he had, based on the merry assortment of hangover fixers on the nightstand, but God, what if he had?

Hayden was the nicest person she had ever met. He was a complete gentleman and treated her exactly the way she deserved to be treated. He loved her. And she didn’t deserve him. Not with the way she had acted last night. Not by a long shot. She knew that she had been drunk, beyond drunk, but it wasn’t an excuse. She couldn’t use that to excuse her behavior.

The reality check slapped her in the face.

She couldn’t do this to Hayden. She couldn’t allow herself to become that person. She had never in her life been that person . . . the person she had been last night. It wasn’t an acceptable manner of behavior. She couldn’t live with herself.

Hayden loved her, and maybe she didn’t love him right now, but how did she know that feeling would never flourish if she gave it a real chance? She wasn’t giving Hayden a chance, much like Brady had stifled theirs. It hadn’t been fair to her, and it certainly wasn’t fair to Hayden, who was a much better person than she was.

She never wanted Hayden to have to make the choice that she had made with Brady. She needed to pull back, reevaluate herself.

She owed Hayden a fresh start.

Liz pulled up Brady’s numbers in her phone with trembling hands. She slowly went through each of them and deleted them. She knew his work number by heart, but she doubted that one even worked anymore, so it didn’t matter. She couldn’t have pieces of Brady floating around and reminding her.

She could never take back the words she had shared with Brady last night, but she could learn from what happened. Live and learn from her mistakes.

Graduation came and went without big fanfare.

Hayden’s parents came to town for the week to celebrate and attend the ceremony. Jamie and James flew down a couple days after Hayden’s parents just in time for graduation. Hayden dressed in Carolina-blue graduation robes, and Liz wore a blue dress to match. Hayden had frowned at her bare neck and asked if she was going to wear her birthday present. She had blushed and told him it didn’t go with the outfit. She didn’t want a reminder of Brady at Hayden’s graduation. Easily appeased, Hayden left to find the rest of his class, while Liz entered Kenan Stadium with his family to watch from the bleachers. She had a hard time believing that the time had already come for Hayden to graduate, and that she would be in the same place within a year.