Chapter 2
No Drunk Chicks
If embarrassment were a sport, I’d already have a letterman jacket and a shoe deal.
It had been exactly one week since I kissed Hailey Dupree on what I now know was the general area of her face. I wasn’t proud of it, but I wasn’t dead either, so that counted as personal growth. I needed a win. Or at least, a non-disaster.
Greg Talbot was throwing another party. Word was circulating on actual notebook paper, folded into triangles. Lucia handed me one in homeroom.
“You’re not seriously thinking about going, are you?” she asked.
“It’s a redemption arc,” I said. “Every hero gets one. Even the ones with braces.”
Lucia raised one perfectly arched eyebrow. “You planning to kiss someone else on the forehead?”
“First of all, it was the nose. And second, I have evolved. I read an article in Teen Beat about being a real man.”
She groaned. “If this ends with you quoting Don Johnson or drinking Tab like it’s whiskey, I’m leaving you there.”
Greg’s party was already loud by the time we showed up. Bon Jovi blasting. A fog machine that someone had stolen from the drama department. Girls in denim jackets and guys in tank tops acting like extras from a ZZ Top video. It smelled like hairspray and Bartles & Jaymes wine coolers.
I wasn’t going to drink. Not because I was noble. Because I had the tolerance of a toddler, and the last time I sipped champagne at New Year’s, I threw up in my cousin’s shoes.
I was tired of being the humdrum, background weirdo. Dull. Boring. The kid people only remembered because of a bad sneeze or a tragic gym class moment. I needed a win.
Then, something unexpected happened.
I was near the hallway, pretending to care about a neon lava lamp, when Erin Sullivan — the kind of girl who had cheekbones, confidence, and a line of admirers stretching past third period — locked eyes with me. She grabbed me by the collar and yanked me into the coat closet before I could blink.
“You’re cute,” she whispered. And then her lips were on mine.
It was warm. Sudden. I tasted grape lip gloss and confusion. Her hair smelled like coconut hairspray and teenage bad decisions.
My brain tried to form a sentence. All I managed was a soft, “Um?” before she kissed me again. It wasn’t a forehead. It wasn’t a cheek. It was full-on, cinematic, over-the-credits type kissing.
Then just as suddenly, the closet door flew open. One of her friends — Tasha? Tanya? Something with a T — gasped and yanked her away.
“Seriously, Erin? With him? What are you thinking? He’s like… extra credit awkward,” she sneered, glaring at me like I was the problem in a PSA. “Get it together.”
I didn’t even know what to say. It wasn’t like I planned this. I was just…there. Existing. Like a human inconvenience.”
“Erin, what are you doing?”
Erin blinked like she’d just woken up in a new dimension. She looked at me like I was a calculus problem she forgot existed and said, “Oh,” before stumbling off with her friend.
I stood there in the vortex of fabric softener, lint, and confusion.
Later, I spotted Mandy Parsons swaying a little too much by the stereo. A few guys circled her like sharks in Members Only jackets. Something clicked. This was my moment.
I stepped forward, cleared my throat, and shouted, “NO DRUNK CHICKS!”
Everything stopped. Someone turned down the music.
“What?” a guy near the beanbag chair said.
“I mean,” I stammered, “no hitting on drunk girls. Like, as a rule. A…code. A moral code.”
The room stared at me.
Someone coughed.
A girl whispered, “Is he okay?”
“I think he started a cult,” someone else muttered.
Lucia appeared behind me, arms crossed, her face tight with something between irritation and disappointment. Her gold hoop earrings caught the light like warning signals.
“Reilly. What the hell.”
Outside, under the buzz of the bug-zapper and the hum of leftover Bon Jovi echoing through the screen door, Lucia paced like a lit fuse. Her sneakers scuffed across the loose gravel like she was warming up to fight a dragon.
“Do you even hear yourself?”
“I was trying to help! Mandy looked out of it, and those guys were being creeps.”
“So you scream your weird slogan across the room like you’re running for president of Awkward High?”
“It was supposed to be a statement!”
“Yeah, well, now you’re the guy who yells ‘no drunk chicks’ at parties. Congrats.”
I sank down onto the curb. “I just… I wanted to do the right thing. To not be one of those guys.”
Lucia sighed — the sharp kind that made your ribs ache even if the breath wasn’t yours. She sat next to me, close but not quite touching.
“I know you meant well. But doing the right thing doesn’t mean making it about you. You don’t get points for not being gross. That’s just the bare minimum.”
I nodded. “I guess I wanted people to see I was different.”
“You are. But stop yelling it at full volume. You’re still trying to prove you’re not weird. But weird is your whole brand, McGee. Lean into it.”
We sat there for a minute, watching shadows move across the lawn like ghosts from bad decisions. A drunk sophomore ran past us yelling something about Billy Idol, but the world felt quiet in that little pocket of space between us.
“You’re exhausting,” Lucia said.
“But charming.”
She snorted. “That’s debatable.”
I was still reeling. From the kiss. From the sign. From being a walking PSA for awkwardness.
Lucia didn’t say anything else — just tossed me the keys.
“You’re driving?” I asked.
She raised an eyebrow. “No, genius. I just like the jingle. Get in.”
Her car — a 1970 Dodge Challenger R/T in deep metallic blue with a racing stripe that looked like it had been dared into existence — roared to life like it was clearing its throat to curse someone out. We cruised through the Crestview back roads, the windows cracked, the stereo spitting out a mixtape that blended Run-D.M.C. and Lisa Lisa like some cosmic DJ couldn’t decide between rebellion and heartbreak.
The warm night air smelled like gravel and summer, and I slouched into the passenger seat like a kid grounded by the universe.
“So,” she said, taking a slow corner like she was auditioning for The Dukes of Hazzard, “that was a new level of awkwardness, even for you.”
“Thanks,” I muttered. “I do strive for innovation.”
“You’ve got a gift,” she replied. “Seriously. If awkward were a martial art, you’d be a black belt in flailing.”
I groaned. “I don’t even know why I try. I feel like some kind of emotional cartoon.”
She raised an eyebrow. “You’re like a cartoon character drawn by a nervous hand.”
She glanced at me, half a smirk on her lips. “Because you care. That’s your whole problem. You’re chasing approval from people who wouldn’t notice if you caught fire at the punch bowl.”
“I’m charming in a ‘slow-burning train wreck’ kind of way.”
“That you are,” she said, tapping the wheel. “But I’d still rather ride shotgun with you than any of those poser clones back there.”
And for a second, even though the night had gone sideways and my reputation was now welded to a Sharpie slogan, I felt… okay. Maybe even seen.
We rolled up to a red light at an intersection no one respectable used after dark — the kind of place where reputations and mufflers came to die. That’s when a group of guys in a jacked-up ’84 Camaro pulled up next to us, the bass rattling louder than their dignity.
“Hey PYT,” one of them called to Lucia through the open window, grinning like he thought he invented flirting. “That’s too much car for you. You sure you know what you’re doing?”
Lucia didn’t even flinch. She just raised one brow and rolled her wrist on the gearshift.
Another guy leaned forward, locking eyes with me. “Let me guess — she hangs out with you ’cause she feels sorry for you, huh? That it? Gotta have a project, right?”
Lucia shot back, “Funny. I thought your entire personality was a group project gone wrong.”
I felt my ears burn.
Lucia clicked her tongue. “You boys really wanna embarrass yourselves tonight?”
“You’re on,” the driver said, revving the Camaro like it had something to prove.
The light turned green. Lucia floored it.
The Challenger launched forward like it had something to prove, too — namely, that loud doesn’t mean fast. We smoked them halfway down the stretch and never looked back.
“Too much car for me, huh?” she said, grinning as the Camaro’s headlights shrank in the rearview.
I could only laugh, adrenaline mixing with awe.
“For the record,” she added, “I don’t feel sorry for you. I just like chaos with good company.”
Monday morning, someone had scrawled in Sharpie on my locker:
NO DRUNK CHICKS – Reilly 1986
I sighed. And then I saw Erin Sullivan walk by. My heart did a hopeful flip.
“Hey, Erin,” I said, trying to sound casual. “Crazy party, right?”
She looked at me like I was something stuck to her shoe. “Do I know you?”
“Uh, the closet? We kind of… kissed?”
She paused. Her brow furrowed. “Wait. That was you?”
I nodded.
She blinked. Then groaned. “Oh my God. I was drunk. I don’t remember any of that. Gross.
The word hit me like a chalkboard eraser to the face — sudden, soft, and weirdly dusty. I wasn’t expecting a thank-you card, but I didn’t think I’d be treated like a contagious rash.”
She turned and walked off without another word.
I just stood there, ignored like the plague and feeling twice as contagious.
Lucia appeared beside me and added underneath the Sharpie slogan:
But a decent guy, tho. – Lucia
I smiled — not the kind I wore at school, not the one I used to survive the day, but the kind that slipped out when someone sees you — really sees you — and doesn’t flinch.
Sometimes being misunderstood is the price of figuring it out.
And I’d rather be a punchline than a problem.
Later that night, we ended up at Arnie’s Diner — a place where the booths were cracked, the menus were laminated with fingerprints, and the chili fries came with more cheese than shame. Lucia slid into the booth like she owned the place, her leather jacket half off and her hoop earrings catching the light of the flickering neon.
I flopped into the booth, a total knucklehead — the kind of guy who gets kissed by accident and still manages to lose the moment.
Lucia didn’t say anything at first. She just flagged down the waitress with a nod like she’d done it a hundred times.
“Chili fries,” she said, already flipping open the menu for show. “And a Diet Coke.”
She looked at me. “You’re getting an RC, obviously.”
I blinked. “I didn’t even—”
“I know you. Chili fries and RC are your emotional reset. You go existential without sodium and syrup.”
The waitress smirked and walked off.
We sat there while a song by The Jets hummed from the jukebox and someone argued about pinball scores in the back.
“You good?” Lucia asked after a long beat.
“Not really. But the fries’ll help.”
She tapped her spoon on the table, then nodded once. “Good enough for now. We’ll get some orange slices later.”
I smiled, the kind that starts in your stomach and works its way up. And just like that, I started to feel a little better.”