The bartender sets an ice bucket down in front of us with a clank. He hands me two champagne flutes filled with bubbling liquid, the rims spotted with dishwashing soap. I hand one to Alison, sweat breaking out along my spine.
“To new beginnings,” Alison says.
I repeat the toast, or maybe I don’t. The bar is spinning in one direction and my head is spinning the other way.
As I bring the flute to my lips, someone jars Alison from behind. She jerks forward, and her champagne spills over my shirt.
“Watch it!” she snaps over her shoulder. Then she looks at me, her hand settling on my chest. “Shit. I’m sorry, Ethan.”
I can’t look at her. I can’t look up from my shirt.
The memory of Mia spilling red wine on me in her mother’s studio flashes before my eyes. But then the sweet smell of the champagne reaches me, and it takes me further back. Opens up a door that’s been shut in my mind for weeks.
This, I realize. This is what happened between us.
My mind is barraged by images, tastes, and smells. Champagne and Mia’s sweet violet scent. The feel of her curly hair in my hands, her soft lips kissing my jaw. My hands exploring every inch of her.
“Alison, I need some air,” I say.
It sounds like an excuse, but it’s the truth, and then I’m moving through the crowded bar and out into the street.
I need a place where I can be alone, where I can let myself remember, because it’s here. It’s all coming back to me. Mia, and what we did after we left Duke’s. Finally, I remember our first night.
Chapter 41
Mia
Q: Dancing queen, or dancing fool?
My plans to lie in bed all weekend and treat myself to a cinematic pity fest (Love Actually; Pride and Prejudice; (500) Days of Summer) are thwarted by my two best friends, who seem intent on torturing me, even though I am always sweetness and light with them, in addition to respecting their private time and their need to marinate in their own emotional juices every now and then.
Tonight’s torment: Operation Get-Mia-Off-Her-Ass-and-Out-to-the-Club. Its first stages included shoving me into a gold sequined tank and black mini, teasing my hair to ceiling-scraping heights, and loading my purse with condoms.
Yeah. No.
Its second phase, now in effect, includes the bar at Club Tonga, a drink the size of a fish bowl, and Skyler’s super subtle efforts at matchmaking—repayment for Brian, I think, which consists of slinging dudes in my direction and saying, “This is Mia. She’s hot, right?”
So far I’ve scored general—if confused—agreement, except for one gay guy who says, “Oh my God, so hot,” and tries to feel me up. An act I shut down by offering the analogy that being a dog person does not give you the right to molest cats.
Miffed, he bounces away, and Skyler gives me a sharp nudge to the ribs. “Be nice.”
“Ow. I am.” Just not nice enough to give strange men a free thrill. Sue me.
“No, you’re not. You’re putting off a stink cloud of bitchiness.”
Drink straw clamped between her perfectly veneered teeth, she watches the parade of guys, no doubt looking for further opportunities to humiliate me. Her eyes light up, and she starts to slide from her seat, gaze riveted on a slouchy actor type with a well-trained five o’clock shadow.
I jump up before she can move in for the kill. “Let’s dance.” Beth’s been on the dance floor for an hour, and suddenly that seems like a much more appealing place to be.
Lifting my drink, I push the straw aside and go for a full-on gulp. Okay, several gulps, until I drain the giant glass and thunk it back on the bar like I’ve just proved some point.
The liquor burns on the way down and then spreads a soothing heat through my belly, warming every bit of me and giving me a pleasant buzz, like my brain’s been coated in cotton candy. This might be exactly what I need.
“Come on,” I say and grab Skyler’s hand, almost pulling her out of her striped oxford kicks.
The crowd pulses around us, and I’m hit with rolling waves of body heat, Axe cologne, and fruity perfume. I feel enveloped, buoyed, and I get a sharp visceral pull to be in the middle of it, moving to the thump of the music that throbs inside my own chest, becomes part of me.
We push through the crowd, and I’m hazy, body tingling in a way that feels turned on but not. I’m hungry for the closeness of people but not one person. I want to dive into a sea of flesh and lose myself.
I push into the tight knot of bodies until I reach the center of the music and the chaos. Of course, that’s where I find Beth, shaking it hard, oblivious to the people around her. Eyes closed, she gives me an ecstatic smile, like she’s got some kind of best-friend sonar that tells her I’m close.
The base shakes the floor, which feels spongy and far away. I start to dance, and I feel my problems lifting out of me, flying up to the laser-hatched ceiling, flying up and away into the night.
No more Boomerang and Adam Blackwood.
No more competition.
No more famous mother who has seen and done things I may never get to do. And no more Nana, with her fading memories, her frantic paranoia. I’m all brightness inside, all thoughtless muscle and blood and movement. I haven’t felt this good in weeks, not since that night at Duke’s, when I met Ethan, when—
Damn it, I don’t want to think about him. I don’t want to imagine him winging around in a private plane with his ex-girlfriend. An ex-girlfriend I’m responsible for shoving back into his life.
That door is shut, I remind myself. It never really opened.
I close my eyes, lift my arms into the air, trying to grab hold of that good feeling again, to pull the music back into me.
But I can’t stop the images from coming. Ethan pushing Alison onto a bed, moving his lithe, athletic body over hers, brushing her blond hair aside to kiss her, to look at her the way he looked at me.
The thoughts and the mammoth drink catch up to me. I feel heat in my throat, and a wave of dizziness makes me stagger sideways a step. The crowd presses in on me, and my whole body feels supercharged with heat.
“I need to sit for a second,” I shout at Beth.
She pulls her red bra strap back into her halter and nods. “Want me to come with?”
“No, I’m good.”
Beth conveys my message to Skyler, but I turn away before her concerned look can reach me.
I aim myself for a narrow alcove at the far end of the club, where bodies writhe together on low sofas. Everything feels weird now, sexually intense and alien. I’m jealous of everyone. The people on the dance floor whose brains can shut down for more than ten minutes. The people on these couches, who can touch each other, be with each other, even if maybe they should do a little less of it within full view of dozens of other people.
I perch on the edge of a velvet-covered chaise, trying to ignore the noisy grinding inches away. I want another drink. Or ten. I want to do something with myself, but I can’t decide what.
Someone on the couch next to me gives a little gasp, and a cascade of fragments come to me—bits of my night with Ethan. Just dizzying, random images. Not enough to make a full picture.
His dark hair, wet and clinging to his neck, that deep groove of his collarbone and my lips there, sliding down his chest. The two of us, tangled on his sofa, giggling under the Pendleton blanket, until his tongue parted my lips, and I buried my hands in his wet hair.
The music recedes, and the memories crash inside me. I decide that what I want to escape most is myself.
Beth’s right: I’m not Sleeping Beauty. I go after what I want.
But I didn’t, and now it’s too late.
I fish out my cell phone, and its white glow goes off like a flare in this dark corner. For a long time, I stare at it. Then I scroll back through our texts, and feel myself smile.
It’s too late. I know this. And I’m drunk. But maybe I can let it go if I tell him. I don’t know what exactly, but I feel like I need to exorcise the r
egret in some way, need to let it all go, truly, so I can be free.
Mia: I wish I remembered more of that night.
That’s true, but it’s only part of it.
Mia: I’m pretty sure you rocked my world.
And I am. As sure as I am that he’s still rocking it, though I keep trying to bring it back to some steady state.
Running my finger over the touch screen, I will him to text back, to reach out from wherever he is and tell me he feels the same. Just that. I’ll be happy with just that.
I wait for a long time. My heart thumps a merciless rhythm in my chest. Bodies move around me while I sit there, as still as a stone in a river.
But a reply never comes.
So I get up, put my phone away, and head back to my friends.
Chapter 42
Ethan
Q: Champagne: special occasions only or whenever the mood strikes?
The three-mile walk from old town Fort Collins to my house is a blur. I don’t see the bars and coffee shops, the quaint streets that gradually give way to my neighborhood.
No. It’s like a movie. I’m leaving Jimmy’s, then I’m puking in a bush, then I’m stumbling into my kitchen, where I am now.
I throw on the faucet and take huge gulps from the tap until I feel like I might vomit again. Then I straighten, swipe my sleeve over my chin and stare at the darkness.
I can’t see much besides the microwave clock and the shine of stainless steel, but I feel the steadiness of these walls. My lifetime—and Chris’s—is recorded in the dented cabinets and scuffed floorboards around me.
I close my eyes, and the sour taste on my tongue sweetens until it’s champagne, the taste of Mia, and I’m back in my apartment in LA that first night I met her. We had come back there after meeting at the bar at Duke’s. For whatever reason, standing in my tiny kitchen with her, I got it in my head that we should celebrate.
“Celebrate?” Mia asks. She leans her hip against the counter and smiles. “What’s the occasion?”
“You, Curls. You’re the occasion.”
I wonder if it sounds like a line to her, but I mean it. I’ve only known her a few hours, but she’s eclipsed everything else in my world. This girl with her green eyes, her wild hair, and her gorgeous smile is amazing. Funny and smart and hot. Christ, she’s hot. She is absolutely worth celebrating.
Mia’s smile widens. “Curls, huh?”
I step toward her and reach up, twirling a strand of soft hair around my finger. “It suits you.”
Mia leans into my touch, resting her cheek against my hand, and I flash back to the cab ride here. My fingers had been buried in her hair, and she’d been halfway on my lap. We’re combustible together, every time I touch her I want more. I want her now, right now, but there’s no need to rush. I lean in and kiss her lips quickly, then duck into the refrigerator for the bottle of champagne Jason stashed in there a few weeks ago.
“You just happen to have bottles of Cristal waiting around for moments like this?”
I grin and shake my head. “My roommate, who showed up at the bar?” I unwrap the foil top and toss it in the sink, then slowly twist the cork to let pressure out of the bottle. “He just started his second year of med school, so his parents sent this to him. It’s something they do every—”
The cork slams into my palm, jerking my hand up. Champagne shoots from the bottle, arcing into the air, and dousing Mia. She lets out a squeak and lurches off the counter, curling her back like a startled cat.
“Whoops,” I say, trying not to laugh.
Her blue dress has a dark splatter line from hip to shoulder where the material is soaked. She pushes a dripping curl away from her face and straightens her back. Then she runs her tongue over her lower lip. “Tastes pretty good, actually.”
It’s the sexiest damn thing I’ve ever seen, and I have to clear my throat to find my voice. “I can’t say I’m sorry that happened.”
“You don’t seem sorry. . . . but you will be.” She lifts the bottle from my hand. “Let’s see how you like it.” She gives the bottle a shake my way.
Champagne spills onto my shirt, a cool, liquid lash against my chest that I barely feel. It’s like my body has one setting. Like it’s suddenly programmed to only feel her.
“Wasn’t that bad.” I take the bottle back and step forward. “There’s something I should probably tell you about me,” I say.
She steps back, retreating, but I keep going until I have her cornered against the counter. “I’m highly competitive. And I always finish what I start.”
“That’s actually two thi—”
Mia gasps, swallowing the rest of her words as I tip the bottle over her—over us, since we’re pressed together.
Her hands shoot up, bracing my chest as she sucks in a breath, but she doesn’t stop me as I soak every inch of her.
When the bottle is empty, I set it on the counter. “There.”
The only sound is the champagne dripping onto the floor and Mia’s quick little breaths. I don’t know where to look first. Her face is priceless, her green eyes bright. Almost glowing with shock. The curves of her body are perfectly outlined by her clinging dress, and I want to high-five myself because she’s fucking beautiful this way, shivering and wet and holding onto me like she’ll fly away if she lets go.
“Well, then,” she says finally. “We’re all wet.”
I can’t resist her anymore. I catch a glimpse of her eyes widening in surprise just before I kiss her. I want to take my time, but it’s like holding back a tidal wave. I kiss her hard, my tongue sliding against hers, her taste cool and sweet from the champagne. She makes a small needy sound and tilts her head up, giving me a better angle, giving me exactly what I wanted, like we’re connected in some primitive way, our bodies fluent in their own language.
Some part of me knows we’re drunk, both of us, but that this is real. How could it not be?
Dipping my head, I take the soft part of her ear between my teeth, pressing a gentle bite there. “You’re so sweet, Mia. So hot.”
She reacts urgently to my words, framing my face with her hands and guiding my mouth back to hers. Her body presses against me and I’m instantly hard, fighting the urge to drive into her right now.
When have I ever wanted a girl this much? Have I ever?
“You taste incredible,” I say, sucking the champagne off her warm skin. I work my way down to her collarbone, and then to her breasts. She’s soft, the weight and shape of her so fucking perfect. I can’t push her dress and bra aside enough, so I suck through the wet layers and feel her nipple tighten into a bud beneath my tongue.
“Ethan . . .” Mia grips my hair and arches her back. “That’s amazing.”
“It’s going to get better.” I glance up. Her eyes are unfocused and heavy with desire. Seeing her that way only makes me want her more. She’s like liquid fire under my hands, so responsive. “But you know what’s getting in our way, Curls?” I smooth my hand down her hip and over her thigh, finding the hem of the wet fabric. “Your dress.”
Chapter 43
Mia
Q: When was your last truly memorable night?
I fall onto my bed, drunk and spinning, trying to fix on the bright double squares of my bedroom window, which Sky’s opened so I can get some fresh air. I taste the night on my tongue—that metallic tang, like pennies, that comes right before rain. The breeze is cool and shivery and flutters along my sheet like fingers, so light, touching every bit of me.
Of course I think of Ethan, wishing for his fingers, his lips.
Remembering.
“But you know what’s getting in our way, Curls?” he says, and his hands travel along my body like he’s taking the measure of me, like he’s sculpting me to life there in his dimly lit galley kitchen. “Your dress.”
He turns me around and nudges me toward the refrigerator.
“What are you doing?” I ask, but I don’t care, not really. I just know I want him, want to taste him again, his
tongue warm and darting in my mouth, his body pressed against me again, firm and powerful and radiating with desire.
“Zipper,” he says, bending close to my ear.
I put my hands against the cool surface, and it feels so good. I should be chilled, drenched in champagne—I remember now—but I’m feverish, floating, wanting his hands on me to keep me rooted.
The zipper gently scrapes my flesh, and I feel his closeness like a palpable force, keeping me there. The soft fabric of my dress brushes against my legs, traveling over my upper thighs, my belly, my breasts, until I’m free of it, and it disappears in the shadows like it never existed.
His hands come around me and caress the sheer wet fabric of my bra, closing over my breasts with just the right firmness, everything exactly the way I like it.
And the way I realize it’s never been before, never perfect like this.
He thumbs my nipples, squeezes them, then pushes my hair out of the way so his lips can touch my shoulder, my neck, his teeth grazing me, tongue warm against my skin.
“That’s not fair,” I protest.
“What’s not?”
“You’re still dressed.”
He laughs. “For now.” His mouth against my ear, he says, “You taste like champagne. Jesus, I want more of that.”
Not as much as I want you, I think and push back against him, needing the feel of his body again. It’s more than just a perfect physical match, more than just him knowing how to touch me. It’s this feeling of being perfectly free to express every part of me, especially my longing for him.
I move my hand off the refrigerator, needing to touch him, but he traps my hand and returns it to the cool stainless steel.
“I’m right here,” he tells me, and presses against me, hard against the small of my back. “Don’t move. Stay just like that.”
His arm comes around me again, wrapping around my waist. He bends me forward just a little, pushes a leg between my legs so that I feel his rock-hard thigh, the rough texture of his jeans pushed up against me. I groan and rest my face against my arm, feeling the stickiness of the champagne, the cool vibration of the refrigerator.
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