Forget You by Jennifer Echols Page B

and his words didn't sound official and coplike. It was Doug's brother, Officer Fox. "Jesus, Doug," he said, "you probably screwed your leg up for nothing."
    "I had to get her away from the car in case it exploded," Doug snapped. "Can you shut up and go do your duty and let Mike out of the Miata before it bursts into flames? Thanks."
    "You dumbass," Officer Fox said. "Cars don't explode on impact."
    I giggled. "Doug, you're my hero." Then, hoping I hadn't offended him, I hugged him hard and whispered in his ear, "It's the thought that counts." I wasn't sure whether he laughed with me, but he did hug me back, and he never took his hands out of my hair. I laughed myself to sleep.

4
    "Zoey."
    "I'm up!" Sitting up in my bed, I blinked at the pain in my forehead and the daylight streaming through the windows.
    "Your boyfriend's here," Ashley called softly. Almost motherly, except nothing could sound truly motherly coming from a chick only seven years older than me. "You feel okay?"
    I nodded. As my brain sloshed around, the throbbing started--and I remembered the wreck. I must have hit my head after all, like Doug had said. Painkillers please! There was no prescription bottle on my nightstand. "Ashley?" I called. Too late. She was only a long, tanned leg leaving the doorway of my bedroom.
    Well, painkillers could wait. Brandon was here to see me! And I needed to get all the good out of his visit before I left for this afternoon's swim meet.
    I rolled off the bed, head splitting, eyes sticky. I'd worn my contacts to bed. I'd also worn my wet clothes to bed, I realized as the air-conditioning turned them from moist to clammy. Everything was still damp: jeans, underwear, bra, shirt. Of course my dad was hands-off as far as parenting went, and Ashley was a strange twenty-four-year-old living in my home. But I would have thought someone would figure out some way to prevent me from sinking into a coma while wearing my contacts and wet clothes.
    I staggered into my bathroom to peel the contacts off my eyeballs and brush my teeth to spare Brandon my morning breath. I stopped with my toothbrush in midstroke when I saw the strangest bruise on my forehead. Toothbrush sticking from my foamy mouth, I fumbled in a drawer for my glasses, then leaned toward the mirror for an examination. The bruise formed three sides of the outline of a rectangle: top, side, and bottom. Green at the center of the lines, it faded through brown to purple at the edges. Like my head had taken out the rearview mirror of my Bug.
    From the geometric bruise, my gaze sank to my earlobes, left and then right. I fingered the empty holes. I didn't remember removing the diamond earrings my parents had given me for my seventeenth birthday last January.
    Come to think of it, I didn't remember what I'd done between the end of the football game last night and the wreck.
    Or how I'd gotten from the wreck to my bed.
    But Brandon was waiting for me, and he knew.
    I spit toothpaste, splashed water on my face, and desperately drew my bangs over my forehead to hide the bruise. They wouldn't cooperate, cowlicking too far to one side, leaving the bruise bare. But with my panic rising about my missing night, I hardly cared about my looks. I didn't even bother to hide my glasses from Brandon. I schlepped into the living room in cold jeans and bare feet.
    Doug sat on the sofa.
    I stopped short and scanned the huge room of polished wood. Brandon wasn't here. Only Doug. And there was no way Ashley should have made this mistake, calling Doug my boyfriend. She'd hired Brandon to work at Slide with Clyde. When I'd told her last Tuesday that I was going out with him, she'd said she remembered him and even acknowledged his hotness. I wasn't making this up. I wasn't that crazy.
    Doug stared up at the vaulted glass ceiling. This feature was common in the newer beachfront houses, but it probably seemed impressive to Doug if he lived a few miles inland where the houses were less expensive, like most