* * *
THAT NIGHT, AIDEN and I did everything we could to drive each other crazy. Whether he realized it at the time or not, that was what was happening. He was perfectly able to meet new people and engage with them without my assistance—something that was very sexy to me.
I was proud to be arriving with him. He felt suddenly like my property. People would now attach us together and be jealous that I had already gotten the attention of the most eligible guy in school.
I had a couple of glasses of André Brut, choosing not to drink so much that I would lose my wits, but enough to loosen myself up and blame any overconfidence on the alcohol. When beer pong began, we played together, and I was delighted by the fact that I was having an “on” night, and that I seemed cool, popular and with it. Particularly once the girls around me started to drink too much. I became a standing statue of a goddess while all the others were crumbling.
Aiden at that party was the drunkest I would ever see him.
He was a little flushed and a little more flirtatious than I had expected him to be.
We were outside, and some people there were smoking a joint, but we weren’t. I remember how dark it was, and how there was a bluish light coming from the side of the house that lit us just enough. We were silhouettes. I could feel the light hitting my hair and my eyes in just the right way, and I stared up at him, smiling and teasing him. He was playful back at me.
“So do you think I’m going to fit in here at...what’s this school called?”
I laughed and took a step back and then forward again. “Winston Churchill High School?”
“Winston Churchill. That’s right. Sorry.”
“Don’t apologize.” I smiled. “You’re cute, if a little dumb.”
His expression dropped a little, but I could see that he knew I was teasing him. “I am not dumb.”
“Yes, you are.” I pushed him backward with one finger, and he stumbled just a little into the wall. I stepped back, laughing at him.
“Are you laughing at me?” he asked, stepping forward, a grin on his face, voice lowered.
I nodded and looked up at him. “Mmm-hmm.”
“Laugh at me again.” He grinned wider and took me by the waist. It tickled and I laughed even harder. He picked me up until he was holding me up with my arms locked to my thighs.
“Ahh, Aiden! Put me down!” I didn’t mean it, of course, and he knew that. I was aware of how we must look to everyone out there. We were like the two characters in the movie who were about to fall in love. I knew the girls around were jealous. I gazed down at him and bit my lip. “Put. Me—”
“I’ll put you in the pool, Brooke, I swear I will.” His accent slipped out, something I was loving.
“Don’t you dare throw me in that pool, Aiden Macmillan!”
He was still holding me effortlessly. My tank top had ridden up just enough that I knew he could see my flat stomach, still tanned from the summer. I worried for a moment about what he’d think of my belly button ring, but decided he’d think it was sexy. It was tasteful and small.
He walked over to the edge of the pool and stood right on the edge so the water was behind me.
“Aiden!”
“Ask nicely.”
“Put me down!”
He looked like he was considering it. “Hmm...that wasn’t nice enough.”
“Please? Please put me down?” I put on my best Bambi eyes and a little pout.
“You want me to put you down?”
I nodded.
He slid me down slowly, one of his hands gliding up the back of my shirt. He placed me so that the balls of my feet were barely standing on the edge of the pool. I had complete faith he wouldn’t drop me. And then he kissed me for the first time.
Natalie’s interest in him became a distant thought.
* * *
THE NEXT NIGHT, Natalie and I were eating Chinese food and watching Bar Rescue—a strange and shared guilty pleasure of ours—when she finally brought it up. We had been together for hours, and I had sensed that she was trying not to.
“You never texted me last night after you got coffee. Was it fun?”
“Um, yeah.”
She cocked her head at me knowingly. “Okay, what’s that tone?”
“What tone?”
“You sound weird. Did you ask if he knew me? I talked to him for, like, two seconds, he probably doesn’t.”
“No, he knew you.”
“Oh, God, did he say something awful?”
“No! Of course not. It’s just...well...I mean, we kind of hit it off. It was just the two of us when we got coffee...and then Alexa was having people over. I would have texted you and told you to come, but I know you don’t care about parties.”
“I would have gone to coffee, though,” she said quietly.
Shit. That’s totally what I should have done. If my intentions were really as pure as I had convinced myself that they were, I would have told her to come.
“I’m sorry, Nat—I won’t, like, date him if you don’t want.”
But we both knew it was already too late, and we both knew that she would never take such a stand.
“No, of course not! I mean, I don’t even know him. It was dumb. You guys will look totally cute together.” She gestured at the screen. “It’s the big reveal, watch. I really don’t think this show is fixed.”
I felt awful. But it was in the past now. It had happened. And all I could do now was tell myself that she wasn’t that into him, that the two of them never stood a chance and that this would definitely be worth it once he and I got together for real.
Eventually, I would forget that she had ever had any sort of interest in him at all.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Beginning of Winter Break, Senior Year, December 22
I WAS LYING on my stomach on my bed with a pillow over my head.
“This sucks,” I said, my voice muffled.
“Oh, stop it.” Natalie pulled the pillow off me. “This is such an obnoxious problem for you to be having. Poor little Brooke, accepted to too many schools.”
I groaned. “It is, though. I would gladly trade places with you and take some time to figure out what I actually want to do.”
I said it in an effort to make her feel better about the fact that she had no solid plans for the next year, but realized immediately that it probably came off as patronizing.
“Okay, stop. Let’s go through each school one by one.” She grabbed the pile of acceptance letters. “You give me the pros and cons, and I’ll write them on the back of the letters. At the end, we’ll take a look and see what we end up with. Sit up like a big girl.”
“Fin-uh.” I sat up and leaned against my headboard.
“Okay, first up, University of New Hampshire.”
“Hippies.”
“Is that a pro or a con?”
“I don’t know.”
“We aren’t playing the word association game, Brooke.”
“Okay, okay, okay. Um. I don’t know, I could, like...be all Jennifer Aniston/Kate Hudson-y there, and stop brushing my hair and rock that for a while. I can kick around in the autumn leaves, you know I love doing that.”
“It makes you feel like you’re in a commercial, I know.”
“Uh-huh. And then I’ll meet some cute boy with good bone structure hidden under a beard I’ll talk him out of.”
“Mmkay, Brooke? This isn’t really what I meant.”
“No, no, this is helping, this is helping. Cons are...hippies are gross and I hate when people bitch about the environment and carbon footprints and all that.”
She let her head fall back in exasperation, but took a deep breath and said, “Boston University.”
“I would invest in
some vintage glasses like yours...stock up on scarves and hats. It’s a really pretty city. And everyone’s supersmart there. I’m not actually sure if I’d call that a pro or con. Probably lots of pretentious guys...maybe I could date some prodigy musician from Berkeley with perfect hands and fingers. Ooh, I could go see him play at little open mics, and he would write me songs....”
“Anything else?”
“It gets really cold and my cousin goes to BU and I hate her.”
Nat sneered. “I’m actually with you on that one. Okay, UCLA.”
“Fake bitches everywhere.”
“Reasonable.”
“But! I could tan year-round, and my hair would be superblond. I could date a surfer guy.”
“Georgia Tech.”
“Ooh, I could be a Southern belle and wear pearls and become the type of person who raises an eyebrow at another person for having bad etiquette. But there’s a lot of racism there, I hear, and that’s not cool.”
She shook her head, laughing at me, and said, “University of Pennsylvania.”
“Kill myself.”
“Brooke.”
“I have no pros for that school. The only thing is that that’s where my parents want me to go.” She looked expectantly at me, like I was going to go on. “That’s it. I literally hate the idea of it. Like I legit might throw up.”
“Okay, then, Towson.”
“Blech. It’s only an hour from home. That’s a con. But Aiden will be here, and that would be nice.”
“Brooke.”
“What?”
“You cannot pick a college based on where your boyfriend is.”
“Why not? What if we get married?”
She blinked one long blink. “Brooke, it’s dumb and you know it.”
I shrugged. “I dunno.”
She set down the papers. “Yes, you do. You know where you need to go.”
“I can’t go to New York.”
“Yes, you can.”
“No, I can’t. That’s the one stupid place my parents won’t stupid pay for.”
“I know that. But I am one hundred percent sure it’ll be worth it. Fashion Institute accepted you. That is so crazy awesome I can’t even wrap my head around it. Here, I’ll do your pro-con list. It’s New York. Your dream city. It’s fashion. Your dream major. And it’s a whole three and a half hours away from your mom and dad. But! It’s only a short bus ride to see Aiden or have him come up there, if you guys stay together.”
I pouted. Of course she was right. It was where I belonged, and I knew that. “But paying for it all on my own sounds a lot less appealing than letting my parents pay.”
“Would you rather pay for your dream life, or have your parents buy you one you’re going to hate?”
I rolled my eyes. “I mean, when you put it that way...”
“That’s the only way, Brooke! Come on. This is stupid. You know I’m the sensible one of the two of us, and yet I’m telling you not to take the safe bet. And that’s because I know you, and I know what you should choose in order to be happy.”
It turned out that the decision had basically been made for me as far as my parents were concerned when I unwrapped one of my presents on Christmas, and found that I had been gifted a U of PA hoodie, which now sat in a dark corner of my closet. The rest of my winter break was tense with my parents.
I finally lost it on New Year’s Eve. The argument started about my plans for the evening, and worked its way around to college, like everything did nowadays.
“This is exactly why I’m not paying for you to go to New York,” my mother said.
“Oh, my God, this is so stupid!” I yelled at both of my parents. My dad was sitting in his usual chair, glancing at the muted Fox News behind me, and my mom was staring me dead in the eyes and looking furious, but irritatingly calm.
“Because I want to go to a party on New Year’s Eve, you won’t let me go to the college I want to go to.”
“No, Brooke, this is a symptom of the problem at hand. You would rather party than do almost anything else. You are going to go to Pennsylvania, get yourself a real degree and then decide what to do from there.”
“Fashion Merchandising is a real degree, Mom.”
She laughed, and I wanted to hit her.
“Mom, it is. Seriously. And I’m not going to party all the time in New York, it baffles me why you think that.”
“I am not allowing you to waste my money on a useless degree, in a city filled with bars and clubs and crime!”
Oh for fuck’s sake.
“You sound ridiculous right now, I hope you know that.”
She raised an eyebrow and looked blankly at me. I hated that I had inherited that look from her.
“Whatever, this is so stupid,” I said.
“I don’t know how I feel about you going into D.C. tonight, Brooke.”
Oh, good! My dad had finally decided to join the discussion. He always brings a fun, new way to say no to the conversation.
“You are kidding me.”
“No, it’s not a safe city, the roads are dangerous, people are out drinking and driving, and I—whose party is this, anyway? I’ve never heard of ‘Sam.’”
“He’s a friend of a friend, Dad—”
“Oh, that sounds really safe, Brooke.”
“A friend of a friend?” My mom piped up again.
“Yes—oh, my God. I’m going. This is stupid. Alexa’s parents got us a hotel room and everything—we’ll be safe, Jesus.”
“Don’t take that tone, Brooke Marie, and no, you are not going. I didn’t realize that you were going to a stranger’s house.”
Fury rose in my chest. This was always the problem with talking to my parents for a few sentences too long.
“Is Aiden going?” asked my mom.
It was a sore subject. Aiden and I had hardly been talking lately, and he’d gotten all pissed off about me wanting to go tonight. He wanted to stay in and watch the ball drop and order in dinner.
Natalie and her dad were watching the ball drop and staying in, too. I would never understand why Natalie—and Aiden, for that matter—would rather do that than get all dressed up and go out.
Once I had refused Aiden’s plan and insisted on going to the party, Aiden had said he didn’t care. At this point he was having a bunch of people over to his place. If that had been the original plan pitched to me, I might have considered it.
“No, he’s hanging out with other people tonight.”
“And what’s Natalie doing tonight? I’m sure she’s not partying.”
An opportunity for a lie. “She’s going, too, Dad.”
“Really,” he said.
“Yes, God, do you feel better now?”
“John okayed this?”
My dad had always respected Natalie’s dad and his opinions. “Yes,” I lied.
He looked thoughtful, but also like he knew that if he didn’t allow me to go, then I would go, anyway, but I would lie about it, not keep in touch and ultimately make things worse.
“I want you to leave sooner rather than later, then,” he said, ignoring my mom’s look. “Leave before it gets dark.”
“Okay. Thanks.” I took my lie and ran with it, right to D.C.
* * *
IT WAS A roof party at a mostly-stranger’s house. My mom had been kind of right on that. I pretty much knew that his name was Sam, and that he was a freshman at Georgetown, loaded and having a blowout. Not just anyone was invited, and Alexa and I were thrilled to be part of the few. We arrived, both of us five inches taller than normal, rocking pumps. Mine were brand new from Nordstrom, and I had spent the past three days walking around the house in them to be sure they wouldn’t blister me or cause an embarrassing stumble.
&nbs
p; As we knew it would, our entrance turned a lot of heads. We had left early, as my dad insisted, and killed time by going to a blowout hair salon for Victoria’s Secret Angels–type hair, and we looked awesome. We had heard there’d be a professional photographer, so we’d decided it was worth the forty-dollar blow dry.
We ran into other girls we knew, and once we stood together, we were a force to be reckoned with. Each of us was approached by guy after guy, but no one more than me. In that nasty, girlie way, I loved it.
But the night didn’t matter until around eleven-thirty on the roof.
I was sitting in the corner of the concrete patio on a stool, surrounded by some dumb girl and two dumb guys, basically holding court, when Reed walked up.
I have to explain Reed. Before high school, I didn’t know him. His real name was James Reed, but no one ever called him James. It didn’t really fit him. He needed something just a little more off-kilter.
When I met him in ninth grade, we barely spoke. He was a cocky little shit, and it was obvious. Our relationship was pretty much him not talking to me, or hitting on me when he did, and me rolling my eyes a lot and telling him how shitty he was.
We “hated” each other. But it was that flexible kind of hate. I was supposed to hate him because he had had sex with Natalie without any intention of dating her. But she hadn’t really wanted to date him, either. So really, there wasn’t much to hate about him. On her behalf, anyway.
If I was honest, I had always thought he was kind of hot. But I wasn’t honest with anyone about that, least of all him. I had confided it once to Natalie, who had absolutely no feelings for him anymore, and she had merely wretched and told me that it wasn’t her job to prevent me from getting herpes.
Thinking he was hot was embarrassing, and not something I could ever confess to anyone but her. Not because he was, like, butt-ugly or anything. He was not. He had pretty eyes. Really glorious, sharp cheekbones, actually. And this endearing grin that I hated because it usually meant he was being a dick, but that was just so boyish and charming it was hard not to smile back. Or if you’re me, groan exasperatedly and walk away before he caught you finding him anything but revolting.
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