by Mila Gray
I try to hide my disappointment. She heads inside, and I see her, through the large front window of the restaurant, smiling and waving at the chefs and other waitstaff, and feel both happy that she’s making friends and jealous that I’m not part of her world. Because you’re a capital-A asshole, the voice yells.
A part of me wants to sit out here all night, but I realize that’s perhaps not the best solution, and besides, it’s probably time I tried to go cold turkey and weaned myself off her. It is pretty damn clear she has no interest in reliving what happened between us last week. But before I can start the engine, I hear someone yell my name.
I turn around. It’s Dahlia.
“Hey,” I say, surprised to see her. “What are you doing here?”
“Meeting Didi and Jessa,” she explains. “We’re going to get dinner, and then we’re heading to a party at Emma’s.”
“Emma Rotherham’s?” I ask.
She nods, grinning ear to ear. “Yeah, she told me to bring people. You should come. What are you doing here, anyway?” she asks, and glances at the restaurant just as Zoey walks past the window. “Oh my God,” she says, turning back to me. “Are you stalking her?”
“No!” I protest. “I gave her a ride, that’s all. I was just about to leave.”
She notices something in my expression and narrows her eyes. “Did something happen between you two?” she demands. “Tell me you didn’t have sex with her.”
That’s my sister. Direct as a missile. “I didn’t have sex with her.”
“But something happened,” she states, a detective grilling a suspect.
“No, yes, kind of.”
“Which is it? Yes or no?” she demands.
“Yes.” I cringe inwardly and outwardly.
“What did you do?” she asks.
“I might have kissed her,” I admit. “Well, she kissed me, actually.”
“But you kissed her back.”
“I might have,” I admit.
“Then what happened?”
I don’t answer. I’m worried she might kick my bike over, with me on it, if I tell her.
“What happened?” she growls again.
She’s not going to let this go. “I fucked things up, just like you said I would.”
“You didn’t sleep with her and then dump her, did you?” she shrieks.
I shake my head. “But you were right. I shouldn’t have gone there. I wasn’t thinking straight.”
“You weren’t thinking with your brain is the problem,” she says, coming to lean beside me on the bike. We perch there in silence for a beat, and my eyes track back to Zoey inside the restaurant. Dahlia watches her too.
“Can you fix it?” she asks me after a minute.
I shake my head. “Don’t think so.”
Dahlia studies me for a moment, but I don’t look at her. I can’t take my eyes off Zoey.
“My God,” she says. “I haven’t seen you like this since the last time you were in love.”
That gets my attention. I spin around to face her. “What are you talking about? I’ve never been in love.”
Dahlia smirks at me. “Miss Cornwell, third grade.”
I laugh. “Okay, one time.” Miss Cornwell was my universe. Forget the twenty-year age difference.
“I had a crush on her too.” Dahlia laughs. “I think that’s when I first realized I liked girls.”
I smile and poke Dahlia with my elbow.
“Why can’t it always be that easy?” she asks.
“What?”
“Love,” she answers. “It seems so simple when you’re a kid. You think you’ll grow up and find someone to love, and that when you do, the person you love will love you right back and you’ll live happily ever after. It’s never that easy, though, is it?” She sighs and leans her head on my shoulder.
“I guess not,” I say, looking at Zoey, who is carrying a tray of drinks to a table.
Dahlia sighs again and stands up. “Come tonight. To the party,” she says.
I shake my head. “No. I have to be up early. I’ve got work. Drowning people to save.”
She gives me a pleading look. “Oh, come on. You used to party all night with me in college, then go play football. You took your finals on no sleep and you still aced them.”
I laugh under my breath. That was then. This is now. I’m definitely not a kid anymore.
ZOEY
It’s weird to think it, but this is the first party I’ve been to since I was ten and Michaela Gemballa had a murder-mystery birthday pajama party. Everyone loved it but me, because while all the other girls were going around trying to figure out who the murderer was, I was thinking about how my dad had beaten my mom half to death the week before.
The music is pounding. It’s not coming from a playlist but from an actual DJ, standing behind a booth set up beside the torch-lit pool. The palm trees in the garden are strung with fairy lights and lanterns, and beneath them there’s an actual bar—with white-shirted waiters in rolled-up sleeves tossing bottles of liquor in the air as they mix cocktails.
I’m wide-eyed with it all, having never seen a house this big in all my life. It must have at least eight bedrooms and just as many bathrooms, and the gates at the front are wrought iron and twenty feet high with an entry pad and cameras. That’s the part I envy the most. The gates and all the security.
“Do you want something to drink?” Dahlia asks me.
I shrug, unsure, and tug self-consciously at my dress, which feels way too short and too tight. Dahlia notices. “You look great,” she reassures me. “That color really suits you.”
It’s one of Emma’s dresses—a blue bodycon one with cutouts at the waist, which I would never have dared wear even a week ago and definitely wouldn’t have tonight if I’d known she was going to be here. What if she recognizes it as her old castoff? But Dahlia has already taken me upstairs and shown me Emma’s walk-in closet, which is the size of our apartment and stuffed to the rafters with clothes, and reassured me that Emma won’t notice and wouldn’t care anyway. She’s apparently very sweet; she only plays bitches on-screen.
I glance around the garden. There are hundreds of people dancing, making out, or posing for Instagram photos. I feel like an outsider—everyone is so glamorous and model beautiful and seemingly at home in this world. But then Dahlia tugs me toward the bar, and I see Jessa and Didi smiling at me and waving us over. It’s then that I realize my insecurity might just be a mind-set and that maybe I should make an effort to feel differently. This is what I wanted, after all: new friends and a new beginning. All those thoughts about my dad, and about Tristan, are thoughts I can park outside those wrought-iron gates and deal with later.
“Here,” Didi says when we reach the bar. She hands me a glass of something neon orange–colored with a paper umbrella stuck in it.
“What is it?” I ask. It looks like liquefied Cheetos.
“Just a little concoction I like to call a Didi Surprise. I had the bartender mix it.”
“What’s the surprise?” asks Jessa skeptically as Didi hands her a glass of it too.
“Just try it,” Didi says, handing the last one to Dahlia, who raises her eyebrows.
“What’s the green stuff floating at the bottom?”
“Does it have alcohol in it?” Jessa asks.
“Maybe,” Didi says with a wink. “Just a splash.”
Jessa hands her glass back.
“Why aren’t you drinking it?” Didi asks her, narrowing her eyes.
Jessa flushes, and I look between them, remembering that Jessa is pregnant. Does Didi not know? It seems by the look she’s giving Jessa, a kind of knowing wink-wink-nudge-nudge, that she does know and that the whole drink thing has been orchestrated as a way to make Jessa fess up.
“Okay, fine, I’m pregnant,” Jessa says, smiling as the secret is let out of the bag.
Didi throws her hands in the air and tips her head back laughing, then swoops Jessa into a hug. “I knew it!”
&nbs
p; “How many weeks?” asks Dahlia, who is almost as excited as Didi.
“Eighteen. We didn’t want to tell anyone, in case it came out in the press.”
“The secret is safe with me,” says Didi, who is still clapping her hands like a seal and making gleeful squeals. She hands Jessa a sparkling water and clinks her glass against it. “To babies and baby-making!” she says, then adds, “You are making me godmother, right?”
“Of course!” Jessa laughs, which only sets Didi off on another exciting round of squeals.
Didi turns to me and raises a toast to Jessa and the baby, and I clink my glass against hers and then take a sip of the Cheeto juice. It doesn’t taste anywhere near as bad as it looks, and the alcohol quickly floods my bloodstream. I take another sip and smile, feeling the knots in my shoulders ease. I hadn’t even realized how tense I was.
I know I probably shouldn’t, given I don’t have much tolerance for alcohol, but I keep taking sips, and it doesn’t take long before all the cares I’ve been carrying around evaporate almost as fast as the drink does up my straw. I look around at all the swirling colors and the laughing people and feel like Alice in Wonderland. I’ve slipped down a rabbit hole, and this drink I’m holding is like a magic potion, making me feel bigger and more confident. The drink is also in a magically refilling glass. I point this out to Dahlia, and she prizes it out of my hand, asking me how much I’ve drunk.
“I’m not sure,” I admit to her.
“She needs to enjoy herself,” argues Didi. “Let her hair down.”
Jessa, the only one of us who I think is sober, smiles at me. “Are you okay?” she asks.
I nod, grinning. “I’m so good,” I tell her.
“Let’s dance!” Didi says, pulling me toward the dance floor.
TRISTAN
When I pull up outside, the music is pounding so loudly the house is shaking on its foundations. The driveway is clogged with cars, and the front door is open, people milling around. Most people look drunk or high or both, and a few couples are practically having sex in the living room when I peer my head around the door, looking for Dahlia.
I push my way through a crowded kitchen and onto a terrace that overlooks a pool full of people. If I didn’t know I was in the midst of a party, I’d assume a shark was prowling the shallows thanks to the screams and wildly splashing limbs.
When a couple of girls make eyes at me on the terrace and ask if I have anything to smoke, I shake my head. A month ago, I would have stopped to talk to them—I’d probably have been in the pool already—but tonight I’m not interested. I try Dahlia again, but she’s not answering her phone. Where is she?
My gaze lands on someone in the middle of the dance floor. She’s a pinpoint of light, outshining everyone. She’s dancing in her own world, oblivious to everyone around her, though no one at the party could possibly be oblivious to her. Her dress clings to her like a second skin, accentuating her incredible body, athletic and lithe as a dancer. My jaw drops open as I realize it’s Zoey, and it takes me a few seconds to really comprehend it. Her hair, which is normally tied up, is down and forming a wild, curly halo around her head. It even looks like she’s wearing makeup.
I stare at her for a good two or three minutes, watching her. If everyone else is a star in a galaxy, then Zoey’s the sun. There’s something totally free about the way she moves—uninhibited and unafraid. It contrasts so completely with how she normally is that it takes my breath away to watch it, as though she’s undergone a metamorphosis.
Someone bumps her, and she stumbles, almost losing her balance and giggling. Is she drunk? I move toward her instinctively, but a guy dancing right beside her takes her arm to steady her, and she laughs at that, too. There’s both a flutter in my heart at the sight of her laughing and a kick in my stomach that someone else is making her laugh. The guy is chatting to her, eyeing her up so obviously, I want to leap across the lawn and drag him away by the neck.
He’s an actor type—sculpted and chisel-jawed as a Ken doll and wearing a blue Hawaiian shirt with the buttons strategically undone, the better to show off the chunky gold chain around his neck. He’s holding out his hand to shake hers, leaning in close to tell her something (what could he possibly have to say?), and she throws her head back and laughs some more. My hands coil into fists, and I spin on my heel. I need to get out of here. Now. Before I march over there, throw him in the pool, and see if the gold chain is heavy enough to drown him.
“Hi!”
Dahlia appears in front of me, flushed and excited, like she just took a spin on a roller coaster.
“Hey,” I mumble. “I’ve been looking for you.”
“I’m sorry to call you out so late,” she says, breathless. “My car won’t start. I think it’s the battery.”
“You couldn’t get a jump from anyone here?” I ask her, letting my irritation seep into my voice. “It’s like a Formula One lineup out front. I’m sure you could have found someone to give you a jump.”
“Yeah, I didn’t think of that,” Dahlia says nonchalantly.
Annoyed, I stalk past her. “Come on, then, let’s just do this. We might need to borrow cables. Are you sure it’s the battery?”
“No,” she says. “It might be the carbonara.”
“You mean the carburetor?”
“That’s the one,” says Dahlia.
“You’re drunk,” I tell her.
“No … Okay, maybe a little.”
“You shouldn’t be driving,” I say, annoyed with her. “I’m taking your keys.”
She rolls her eyes at me. “I wasn’t planning on driving. I’ll crash here tonight.”
“So why did you need to call me to come fix your car, then?” I say, even more annoyed with her.
She pulls a face, then shrugs. “Why don’t you come and dance?”
I pull my arm out of her grip. “I don’t want to dance,” I tell her. I don’t want to look in the direction of the dance floor, even though I’m itching to see if Ken boy is still talking to Zoey. What if they’ve moved past talking and laughing and are already making out?
“Why not?” Dahlia pushes. “You’re here now; you may as well stay and have some fun. Come on …”
The light bulb that goes on in my head is searchlight bright. “You did this on purpose,” I say, feeling outraged. “There’s nothing wrong with your car, is there?”
Dahlia gives me what she hopes is a winsome smile. “No … But I got you here, and look, Zoey is right over there.…” She gestures toward the dance floor, but I refuse to look.
“Why have you suddenly changed your mind about me and Zoey happening? Before, you couldn’t stop warning me off her!”
Dahlia scrunches up her face like she does when she knows she’s guilty of something and feels bad. “Okay, look, I’m sorry. I was wrong. I didn’t realize how much you liked her. And I didn’t know how much she obviously likes you. I shouldn’t have interfered. It wasn’t my place.”
I grind my teeth, irritated at this too-late confession. But it doesn’t even matter now. “D, I already told you … Zoey and I, it’s not happening. There’s more chance of the Pope showing up and going skinny-dipping in the pool, so if that’s all, I’m leaving.” I turn and walk off, slipping inside the house, hoping I can lose her in the mass of people.
Dahlia catches up to me as I stride across the hallway toward the front door. “Please stay,” she says.
A girl with elfin-cropped white-blond hair and large brown eyes floats down the stairs just then and intercepts us. “Are you leaving?” she asks Dahlia.
I know Emma Rotherham from posters and from movies but have never met her in the flesh. She’s beautiful. Tiny. Ethereal as a fairy.
“I’m trying to convince my brother to stay,” Dahlia says. Then she looks at me. “Tristan, meet Emma.”
Emma holds out a hand to me, and it looks like she expects me to kiss it, but I shake it. “Nice to meet you,” I say.
“Nice to meet you,” she says, emphasi
s on the you.
She’s clearly the kind of girl who’s used to being fawned over and adored, but I’m not interested in playing the role of fanboy.
“Why are you leaving?” Emma asks us. “The party hasn’t even started.”
“Things to do,” I say.
“What things?” she asks, cocking her head to one side.
“Baseball cards to alphabetize.”
Emma thinks I’m being funny, and her nose crinkles in amusement, but I’m not. When I can’t sleep, that’s what I do. I categorize my record collection and my baseball cards
“Are you leaving too?” she asks Dahlia.
Dahlia shakes her head. “No way. I’m going to be the last to leave.”
Emma smiles at her. “I hope so.” She gives her a long, meaningful stare, and my sister’s cheeks start to turn a shade reminiscent of boiled lobster.
I look between them and have another light bulb moment. Emma Rotherham is into my sister. And my sister, it seems, might also be into her.
Emma finally looks away from Dahlia. She puts her hand on my arm and turns the full wattage of her smile on me. “It was really nice to meet you, Tristan.”
“You too,” I say, but she’s not really listening. She’s too busy smiling at Dahlia.
ZOEY
Didi and Jessa want to find the bathroom, and they insist I go with them, which I’m quite happy to do because this guy with teeth so white they’re brighter than the gold chain around his neck won’t stop talking to me, and all I want to do is dance.
I used to take classes as a kid—ballet and jazz—but around eleven I stopped. My dad refused to pay for the lessons. But tonight I’m remembering just how much I used to love it and how free it made me feel.
The girls steer me inside and into the kitchen. My body is slick with sweat from dancing, my dress sticking to me like cellophane, but I don’t care. Jessa leads me toward the fridge, which she yanks open.
I gawp at the fridge’s vast interior filled with every variation of water a person could ever dream of. There are dozens of sleek glass bottles containing spring water, alkaline water, pH-balanced water, and even crystal geyser water. Jessa stares, confounded, then grabs the nearest bottle.
