Tori sighs and stands on tiptoes to see over the crowd, then tugs on my sleeve and says, “I’m going over there to talk to Darien for a minute, okay?”
I nod happily and survey the crowd as she gets swallowed in it. It’s hard to distinguish individual bodies among those packed into Jason Antin’s basement, but I recognize some people from my Spanish and bio classes. Airborne Toxic Event is playing loudly over the speakers mounted in the corners and there’s the persistent thump thump thump of a different bass line playing upstairs. I can hear the feet of people on the floor above and wonder for a second if they will crash through and what it would be like if they all landed on my head. I don’t find the possibility at all alarming. The monkey wrench packs quite a kick.
Jeremy leans across the bar and pulls my hands into his. His eyes are so bright blue now and the room suddenly feels so hot and it’s getting hard to breathe.
“Ready for another?” he asks.
“Ready.”
He releases my hands to begin mixing more of his potion and I catch the twitter of two girls at the end of the bar. I’m trying to concentrate on what they are saying when another voice cuts through.
“Hey, Georgia.”
I turn to see Michael, and since I’m feeling all warm and tingly I call out as if he were across the room, “Hey, Michael. Have a monkey wrench!”
“Monkey wrench?” he repeats, then glowers when Jeremy pops up from behind the bar, proffering drinks. “Oh.”
“Endicott.”
“Wrentham.”
Jeremy comes around to my side of the bar and leans in to me slightly to say, “You want to go somewhere and talk?” I can feel his breath tickle the back of my neck and I shiver happily.
“Sure!” I giggle and stumble a bit as I hop off the stool I had just landed on. Michael extends a hand to steady me but I shake it off. “I’ll see you later,” I promise him. “Tori’s here, over with Darien.”
Jeremy takes my arm and we twist through the crowd and go upstairs. We end up in the living room, which is less packed than the basement now. One couple is so entangled on the striped couch across from the one we sit on that I can’t tell who they are and my stomach drops in woozy anticipation of a similar melding with Jeremy. I vaguely hope that Tori is having fun downstairs and doesn’t come up soon and then Jeremy’s lips are on my neck and I don’t think about anything at all for once. Not even looking like Leigh did after an evening on our couch with Alistair the Sea Lamprey.
“I’m glad you came tonight,” he is whispering into my throat and I try to hold back a gasp of pleasure. Soon I am no longer aware of anything but feeling dizzy and breathless and good. His hands are in my hair and they are warm and strong and his kisses make me feel strong somehow, too, invincible. Because kissing feels really good. Kissing Jeremy feels really good. It’s effortless, unlike everything else in my life right now. But I am still aware enough—however dimly—that things are moving pretty fast here and I have barely spoken more than a few sentences to Jeremy, ever, and don’t really know him at all. I pull away to catch my breath and adjust my shirt.
“I see why you call them monkey wrenches,” I say. “I feel like I’ve been hit by one.”
“You’re sure that’s from the drink?” He leans back and his eyes are dusky now, hooded, and his voice is a bit raspy. He pulls me against him and I can feel his low laugh rumbling against my own chest. And then we’re kissing again, for a few more minutes, or hours … I lose track.
I am incapable of thinking.
Jeremy’s tongue traces a curlicue path inside my ear. He pulls back gently and I gaze at him, bleary-eyed and quite possibly panting.
“I’ll be right back,” he promises, kisses me again, and then he is gone.
When I sit up, I feel like a sock riding in a tumble dryer, and I know two things for certain:
(1) I am going to be very sick very soon, and
(2) this will completely repulse Jeremy
I stumble blindly to the hallway where people are lined up outside a white door to what I hope is the bathroom. A girl from last year’s Spanish class takes one look at me and instructs everyone to let me go in next. There’s a little grumbling, but soon they part and I burst into the bathroom and practically fall over the toilet that is mercifully waiting for me to deposit my liquid stupidity, which I do as quietly and delicately as possible. Then I make myself stand up and go to the sink and wipe my face with a damp towel without looking at my reflection. I don’t want to be confronted with what I’ve done to myself.
“Another poisoning by Jeremy,” someone laughs as I emerge and slink back to the living room.
I sit back on the couch and the room is at least spinning less violently now. If I squint, in fact, I can make it almost stop spinning. Someone has put on the Black Keys and I can feel every bass line lurch in my stomach. A couple of kids are doing the Bump or some other hip-knocking vaguely 70s-ish dance. They keep spilling their beer and laughing.
Suddenly there is another red cup in my face and Jeremy is smiling down at me.
“Oh, no,” I say, waving the cup away as I taste the last drink in my throat again. He sits next to me and pulls some hair off my neck, holds it for a moment, then lets it slide across the palm of his hand. I think that it is a beautiful hand and marvel at how good my hair looks in it.
“Let’s go back to my house,” he says. “Nobody’s home. We can bring in the new year together.”
I really want to go with Jeremy, but I am just sober enough to know that it is not the best plan to go off with a guy I barely know who has plied me with noxious liquids, no matter how beautiful he is. And mostly I just want to stop feeling like a tiny little boat tossed at sea.
“I don’t know…”
“Come on, Duchess,” he purrs and I feel his heated hand sliding down my neck and I drop my head back into the pillows of the couch and he drops on top of me.
And there is that voice again. Like the voice of God. An angry, Old Testament, I’m-about-to-smite-you God.
“Georgia, are you all right?”
Jeremy lifts himself off me enough to reveal Michael standing there and says, “She’s fine.”
“That’s not how it looks to me,” Michael snaps. “Are you okay, Georgia?”
I nod dizzily, then shake my head, and both make me feel like my stomach is going to decide that I have put too many dangerous things into it and it wants to escape. Through my mouth.
“I think I need to lie down…” I admit.
“Sure!” Jeremy enthuses. Michael pushes Jeremy’s arm off my shoulder and takes my hand, pulling me up to solid ground. I am dimly aware that people are watching now but that information dissipates in my brain as soon as it gets there.
“I’ll take you home,” he says quietly.
“Endicott, you don’t have to play rescue hero here. Georgiana’s a big girl.”
“Georgiana’s a drunk girl,” Michael corrects as he helps me get fully to my feet.
Jeremy rolls his eyes and picks up the drink I had refused. “Whatever,” he says as he watches the drink slosh around in the cup he keeps tilting left and right.
“What about Tori?” I ask Michael as he guides me through the maze of partiers.
“Trey will take her home.”
“Trey’s here? Yea!” I point to the fifth coat that Michael has pulled out of the pile on a ladder back chair by the front door and he hands it to me. But I have a hard time figuring out where the sleeves are. “How did he know she was here?”
Michael helps me wrestle into my sleeves and says, “I saw him in town. He lost his phone while he was away, and he just got back today.”
We walk out into the cold and down the steps and the sidewalk to Michael’s car. He gets in after me and pushes a button and soon my butt is no longer feeling like it’s sitting on an iceberg and I smile at this luxury technology. He pulls out his phone, texts somebody, and snaps off the radio when a blast of Bob Marley hits my ears.
“I like reg
gae!” I protest.
“Yeah?” he asks as we inch out onto the icy street. “You okay?”
“I’m fine. I mean, I feel stupid, but I’m fine…”
“Well. Accepting a drink from Jeremy Wrentham is kind of stupid, but you couldn’t know that, I guess. It’s not like somebody warned you.” He looks over at me for a long moment as we pull up in front of my neighbor’s house to sit with the motor running so I can sober up without freezing to death. I look around at the interior of the car, with its light tan leather seats, and note that there is not a speck of dust or a crumpled up chip bag or a stray drink cup anywhere. It is pathologically clean.
“You could perform surgery in here,” I remark, and Michael looks at me funny, then turns his head away but not before I can see him smirking with amusement.
A light snow is falling in big fake looking flakes like the ones in cheap movies and the soap operas my mom used to watch. The lights of the streetlamp and our porch cast shadowy gold halos.
“It’s pretty,” I say without thinking. “I hate the cold, but snow is really pretty when it first falls.”
He doesn’t say anything for awhile but it doesn’t feel that awkward. We just watch the snowfall and listen to the end of “Could You Be Loved” on the radio real low.
“Thanks for letting Trey know where Tori would be,” I say finally. “She was worried when he didn’t IM or call or anything all vacation long.”
“He was pretty frantic, not talking to her that long.”
“I knew he was still devoted,” I say. “Must be nice, having someone devoted to you…”
“No. No way, Georgia. You are not going to become a morose, weepy drunk on me. It was actually better when you thought you were funny.”
“Other people think I’m funny.”
“And so do I. Just not right now.”
We’re quiet then as I digest this and the song switches on the radio. I contemplate Michael’s finding me funny sometimes and having his car radio tuned to the Hartford reggae station. Both are surprises.
“Do you think you can go in your house now without embarrassing yourself in front of your parents?”
“Yes.”
“Good.” He opens his door. “I’ll walk you.”
We trudge through the snowy sidewalks to our porch and when I see our footsteps behind us, I stumble a little against his arm and cry, “Oh! We’ve ruined the perfect snow!”
“Can’t be helped,” he assures me and guides me up the stairs. He opens the door for me and Mom appears in the entryway, wiping her hands on a towel.
“Georgia? You’re back?”
“Yeah, Mom, Michael brought me home. Tori decided to stay because Trey’s there.”
“Oh good!” she says but she is looking at Michael uncertainly.
“Thank you for the ride,” I say to him.
“Happy New Year, Georgia,” he says with his bemused smirk.
“And Happy New Year, Michael,” I say as he waves uncertainly and closes the door behind himself.
Dad appears behind Mom, his hand on her shoulder.
“How was the party, George?”
“Okay. Too many people in one place, though… G’night!”
I start up the stairs and I can hear Mom say behind me, “I don’t like that he brought her home drunk,” but I am too weary and sick to straighten things out before morning. I’m sure once she remembers what the Endicotts have done for the Longbourne community, she’ll recognize that I’m the one to blame for my sorry state.
But before that happens, I have to figure out what it means that I seem to have rung in the New Year by being rescued by Michael Endicott and whether this was a good thing. I guess I at least know now what Michael was trying to warn me about with his cryptic talk about Jeremy and people who “use” people. I accepted the drinks–that’s true–but Jeremy concocted them and when they had the desired effect, he didn’t offer to take me home. He offered to take me back to his house. His empty house.
Instead, Michael took me home. At the risk of having me hurl all over his pristine leather seats. He showed up in Jason Antin’s living room at the right time. Because he knows Jeremy. They both went to the same prep school. And they both got expelled. And they both insist that they are nothing alike.
Which is definitely a point in Michael’s favor.
I finally sink into a troubled sleep knowing one thing: Michael Endicott is a mystery I need to solve. I’d already discovered he was a closet Rastaman, which I would never have guessed.
I wonder what other surprises lurk under that crisp Ralph Lauren collar.
Stephanie Wardrop
Stephanie Wardrop grew up in Reading, Pennsylvania where she started writing stories when she ran out of books to read. She’s always wanted to be a writer, except during the brief period of her childhood in which piracy seemed like the most enticing career option — and if she had known then that there actually were “girl” pirates way back when, things might have turned out very differently. She currently teaches writing and literature at Western New England University and lives in a town not unlike the setting of Snark with her husband, two kids, and five cats. With a book out — finally — she might be hitting the high seas any day now.
Look for THE CINDERELLA MOMENT coming from Swoon Romance this Summer.
THE CINDERELLA MOMENT
Jennifer Kloester
Chapter One
Angel knew the moment she saw it. The colour was exactly as she’d imagined—a deep midnight-blue. She ran her fingers over the velvet, catching it between her palms to test its weight. Just as she’d thought: pussycat soft, but heavy and luxuriant enough to hang perfectly.
She lifted the bolt of cloth down from the rack and carried it to the counter. The salesgirl smothered a yawn. “How much?” she asked in a bored tone.
If she only knew what it’s for, thought Angel. “I’ll need six yards.”
The girl looked at her doubtfully. “That’ll be three hundred and eighty-nine dollars.”
Please let there be enough, Angel thought, digging into her purse and placing the bills on the counter, her heart beating faster as the roll of cash gave up its twenties, tens and fives, until all that was left was a small wad of one-dollar bills.
She counted slowly: three eighty-two, three eighty-three, three eighty-four … She was five dollars short. “Maybe just under six yards.”
The girl unrolled the heavy bolt of cloth and Angel watched in quiet ecstasy as the fabric flowed in great velvet waves across the counter. It was perfect.
***
The uptown bus seemed to take forever. It was a sultry May evening and Angel’s legs prickled with sweat under the parcel of fabric on her lap. It’d be hot walking home from her stop, but she didn’t care. She’d help her mother with dinner, rush through her homework and get started on the dress. She’d have to go carefully. This dress, more than anything she had ever made, needed to be exactly right, down to the tiniest detail. And when it came time to cut the velvet—well, she’d work up to that.
It was nearly seven when she turned into Fifth Avenue and ran up the front steps of the five-storey townhouse. Inside, the marble foyer was brightly lit and she could hear voices upstairs. The hateful Margot by the sound of it, probably berating the cleaner again, unless—had Lily come home early from play rehearsal?
Angel paused for a moment, straining to hear. The first voice reached a new pitch and the answering murmur grew even softer. Definitely Margot and definitely not Lily.
It could be Clarissa. Angel hadn’t yet met Margot’s seventeen-year-old daughter, but she’d heard her. Last week, after Lily’s dad had left for South America, Lily and Clarissa had fought like cats. Afterward Lily had come down to the kitchen wing and burst into tears.
Angel and her mother had tried to comfort her, but they’d both known it wasn’t the fight that had upset Lily so much as her dad inviting Margot and Clarissa Kane to stay the whole six weeks he was away.
Lily had done
everything to convince her dad not to invite them but she hadn’t succeeded. And it was only after the fight that Angel had realized how much Philip’s decision had upset her best friend. She’d never known Lily to lose her cool like that. Sure, she had a passion for drama, but she could always hold it in when she wanted to. Trouble was, as Lily told Angel later, on that occasion she hadn’t wanted to.
In the week that followed, Lily came downstairs so often to report Clarissa’s latest iniquity that Angel suspected the older girl of deliberately trying to start another fight. So far, Lily had managed to refrain from taking the bait, but Angel doubted she’d last another five weeks without biting back.
Angel listened again. The voices were moving away; she heard footsteps, a door close and silence. She sighed with relief and crossed the foyer. As she passed the hallstand she stopped. Thrown carelessly against the antique Japanese cabinet was Clarissa’s discarded schoolbag. Books, folders, pens, an iPad, headphones and a crumpled cheerleader’s uniform spilled out across the floor beside a black-and-white Moschino jacket.
At least, it looked like one of the new Moschino designs … Angel hesitated, glanced nervously around and, satisfied she was alone, put down her parcel and picked up the jacket.
She cast a judicious eye over the cut and fabric. It was well-made and she noted with approval the even seams and well-fitted lining. The black-and-white look was very much in the Moschino style, but it wasn’t Moschino. Angel checked the label and felt a tiny shock of recognition. A flamboyant black CLARISSA told her at once who had made the jacket.
Ever since Lily had told her that Clarissa designed her own clothes and had a part-time job working for the up-and-coming New York fashion designer, Miki Merua, Angel had felt a guilty fascination for her best friend’s archenemy. Anything to do with fashion was an irresistible lure for Angel and (despite Lily’s regular catalogue of Clarissa’s vices) she found it hard to believe that anyone who brought their own dressmaker’s dummy and sewing machine to the house could possibly be as bad as Lily made out.
Charm and Consequence Page 5
