The Score (Off-Campus Book 3)

My brother and I traveled around Europe the summer after I graduated high school. France, Italy, Spain, and we finished the trip in Germany and Austria. The latter is home to a massive ice cave that Nick insisted on seeing. I’ll admit, it was pretty fucking cool. The tour only lets you walk the first mile or so, which is covered in ice. Beyond that, the interlocking chambers and endless passageways were formed of limestone. Nick and I weren’t interested in one measly mile, so badasses that we are, we broke the rules and snuck away from the tour group.

We got lost. Hopelessly fucking lost, and to this day I still remember the suffocating feeling that came over me. The echo of our voices bouncing off the impossibly high walls. The cold breeze blowing through the cave. The footsteps of the tour guide who came to our rescue—we could hear those footsteps, clear as day, but it was impossible to figure out which direction they were coming from. The echoes fucked with our ears.

That’s how I feel now. I hear Garrett talking, but I can’t see him and I can’t be sure of what he’s saying. His voice is an echo. Bouncing off the walls and off my ears and just kinda…swirling around aimlessly.

My brain still can’t comprehend the first thing he said.

Beau died.

As in, he’s dead?

Beau is dead?

Beau Maxwell?

My friend Beau Maxwell?

“…on impact.”

My head snaps up. It’s like Garrett’s words are spitballs that he’s firing at the wall, and the last two finally stick.

“What?” I ask stupidly.

His gray eyes are lined with sadness. “I said he died on impact. He didn’t suffer.”

I blink. Repeatedly. “Can you tell it to me again? What happened, I mean.”

He curses. “Goddamn it, why?”

Because I didn’t hear a word you said! I almost roar. I take a breath and say, “Because I need to hear it again.”

Garrett nods, albeit reluctantly. “Okay.”

I stagger to the counter and open the top cupboard. Good. There’s a bottle of Jack in it. I twist off the cap and take a deep swig, then join my roommates at the table. I sit next to Tuck, and the Jack Daniel’s gets passed around as Garrett starts talking again.

It’s not a very long story.

But it’s a gut-wrenching one.

Beau flew to Wisconsin this weekend for his grandmother’s birthday. I already knew this—he called me before he left. We made plans to grab beers on Tuesday night.

Last night, the Maxwells celebrated Grandma’s ninetieth at a restaurant in her small town. The roads were icy. They took two cars—Beau was with his dad. His dad was driving.

Joanna told Coach Deluca that dinner was a ton of fun.

On the drive back, Beau’s father swerved to avoid hitting a deer that darted out in front of their car.

The car hit a patch of black ice. It flew off the road, flipping over twice.

Then it slammed into a tree.

Beau’s neck snapped on impact.

His father didn’t have a scratch on ’im.

I swallow another mouthful of whiskey. It burns my throat and sets my insides on fire. My eyes are on fire too. They’re hot and stinging, and when Garrett finishes speaking, I scrape my chair back and pick up the bottle.

“Going upstairs,” I mumble.

“Dean—” It’s Tucker, his voice rippling with sorrow.

Tuck barely knew Beau. Neither did Garrett, aside from chilling with him at parties. Logan was close to him, I guess. I know he went over to Beau’s place to hang out. But me…I was one of Maxwell’s best friends. He was one of mine.

Somehow, I make it up the stairs without falling over. My hand shakes so badly I nearly drop the whiskey bottle half a dozen times before I stumble into my room. I collapse on the bed and tip the bottle, pouring a stream of amber liquid into my mouth. It splashes my neck and soaks into the collar of my shirt. I don’t care. I just drink more.

So I guess Beau’s dead.

He was twenty-three.

I drink more. And some more. And then some more, until my vision is nothing but a fuzzy gray haze.

I’m wasted now. No, I’m beyond wasted. My brain don’t work so good anymore. Hands? Working? Fuggedaboutit. I try to set the bottle on the nightstand and it crashes to the floor. For some reason, that makes me laugh.

I think time passes. Or maybe it doesn’t. Maybe it’s standing fucking still because Beau Maxwell’s neck snapped like a twig and now he’s dead. Dead. Dunzo. Dun-zo.

“Dean…?”

A voice whispers my name from far, far away. Jeez. Maybe I’m in the cave again. Maybe I never left it—how fucked up would that be? If I died in some cave in Austria but didn’t know it? If the life I’ve been leading ever since that Europe trip is really a figment of my imagination, and my dead body is actually decomposing in an ice cave right now?

“That’s fucking trippy,” I slur.

“Dean.” Warm hands cup my cheeks. There’s a soft curse. “Jesus. You’re drunk out of your mind.”

I’m bouncing. No, the mattress is. It’s shaking because someone is climbing on the bed with me, and my stomach starts to feel queasy. Nausea sticks to my throat. I swallow. I breathe deeply. I can smell the whiskey, but there’s another fragrance in the room too. Allie’s mysterious scent.

“Baby.” I feel my head moving. She’s tugging it into her lap, threading her fingers through my damp hair. I’m sweating bullets. Why is it so hot in here? “Logan just told me what happened. I…” Her hand trembles in my hair. “I’m so sorry, sweetie.”

“Broke…his neck.” My voice sounds far away, too. It doesn’t even sound like my voice, actually. Jesus, I’m so drunk. Disgustingly, pathetically, lost-in-oblivion drunk.

“I know,” Allie whispers. “And I’m so, so sorry. I know you’re hurting right now. I…” She strokes my hot forehead. “I’m here, okay? I’m here and I’m not going anywhere.”

I draw a ragged breath. “Babe,” I mumble.

“What is it?”

“I’m gonna…” I lift my head, but the simple act of doing so incites the very thing I was trying to warn her about.

The nausea spirals to the surface and I throw up on my girlfriend’s lap.

*

Allie

The memorial service for Beau is held in the football stadium. The entire team is there, along with the coaching staff, his friends, his family, hundreds of alumni, and thousands of people who probably never even met him.

One notable absence?

Dean.

Before I left the house, he was upstairs in his room, wearing a black suit and a somber expression. He told me to go on ahead with Hannah and Garrett, and that he’d meet me at the memorial.

When I get back to the house, he’s still in his room, still wearing the black suit and the somber expression. Except now he’s clutching a vodka bottle and his cheeks are flushed.

He’s drunk.

He’s been drunk every day this week. Well, either that or high. Two nights ago, I watched him smoke four joints, one after the other, before passing out on the living room couch. Logan had to haul him over his shoulder and carry him upstairs, and the two of us had stood in the doorway, looking at Dean passed out and spread-eagled on the bed. “People grieve in different ways,” Logan had mumbled.

I get that. Believe me, I get it. When I lost my mom, I went through the various stages of grief. Denial and depression mostly, until eventually I learned to accept that she was really gone. It took a while to reach that acceptance, but I got there. Dean will get there too, I know he will. But it’s been painful—no, unbearable—to watch him turn to alcohol and weed this week when he could’ve been turning to me.

“Couldn’t do it,” he mutters when he sees me in the doorway. He’d taken off his jacket and tie, and the collar of his white dress shirt is askew. His blond hair is mussed up, as if he’s been running his fingers through it repeatedly.

I enter the room with timid strides, still wearing the simple, high-necked black dress I chose for the memorial.

“Just couldn’t stomach it, baby.” It’s a whisper. Ringing with misery. “I kept picturing his parents…and Joanna…seeing their faces…” Dean sets the vodka bottle on the dresser and slowly sinks to the edge of the bed.

Taking a breath, I sit beside him and rest my head on his shoulder. “She sang.”

“What?”

“Joanna,” I say quietly. “There was a stage set up with a piano. She sang ‘Let It Be’. It was beautiful. And sad.” I blink through an onslaught of tears. “It was sad and beautiful.”

Dean makes a choked noise.

I stroke his cheek with the pads of my fingers. His skin is hot, but he doesn’t seem as inebriated as he was last night. He leans into my touch, his unsteady breaths puffing against my hand. “I couldn’t do it,” he says again.

“I know. It’s okay, sweetie.”

Is it, though? He should’ve been there, damn it. Beau’s family was there. If they were able to ‘stomach it’, then so should Dean.

The harsh recrimination sparks a flutter of guilt. Who am I to decide what someone should or shouldn’t do? People skip funerals and memorials all the time, for all sorts of reasons. Maybe they want to grieve for their loved ones in private. Maybe it’s too hard for them. Maybe they just don’t believe in funerals. It’s not my place to judge, and I force myself to remember that as I gently run my palm over Dean’s cheek.

“I can’t believe Beau is dead,” Dean says dully.

I’m momentarily startled because this is the first time he’s said Beau’s name since it happened. I’m even more startled when I tip my head and glimpse the unshed tears in Dean’s eyes. He blinks, and a couple drops spill over, sliding down to where my fingers are stroking his jaw.

His tears trigger mine, in the way yawns are said to be contagious. Suddenly we’re both crying, Dean burying his face against my breasts as his whole body shudders in silent sobs. I don’t know who kisses who first. Or who undresses who. Or how we wind up tangled together on the bed, naked, gasping, sticking our tongues in each other’s throats and frantically touching each other’s bodies. Megan told me some crazy statistic once about how eighty percent of people who were interviewed for a grief survey admitted to having sex right before, during, or directly after a funeral.

I guess it makes sense if you think about it. Celebrating life in the face of death. Needing someone to hold on to, a tangible connection to another living, breathing person.

We release simultaneous groans when he slides inside me. No condom, but we haven’t been using them since the new semester started. We both got tested before the break, and I was already on the pill.

I welcome his thick, pulsing cock into my body, arching my hips to meet his desperate thrusts. The orgasm that sweeps through me stuns me with its force. I didn’t think it was possible to feel this kind of pleasure, raw, all-consuming, when I’m so overcome with sadness.

Dean makes a deep, tortured noise as he comes, trembling violently as he pulses and spills inside me. His breathing low and shallow, he collapses on top of me, then shifts us over so my sweaty back is plastered to his sweaty chest. I feel moisture on the back of my neck. Not perspiration, but tears. All the tears he would’ve been trying to hold in if he’d gone to Beau’s memorial.

I roll toward him, wrapping my arms around his broad shoulders as he cries for the friend he lost. I don’t know how long we stay in that position, but eventually Dean goes still and falls asleep with his cheek pressed up against mine. For the first time in seven days, I feel a tiny flicker of hope. Hope that the emotional release he’d just experienced will ease some of his grief, lead him closer to the road of acceptance.

The worst thing about hope, though?

More often than not, it leads to disappointment.