“If they haven’t told you yet, this party is kind of the event of the year around here...bigger than Homecoming,” he said with an ugly smug grin on his face. Yeah, the odds of me going to that party were about as good as palm trees suddenly sprouting out of our lunch table.
“Is that so?” I asked with as little interest as possible. Next to Mitch, I could see Max hiding a snicker in the back of his hand.
Mitch swallowed, probably getting the hint that I wasn’t his biggest fan. But then he reached across to Addy and put his hand on her hers. I froze, watching her out of the corner of my eye as he said, “I hope you’ll come.”
She looked up at him and mouthed, “Thanks.”
Inside my head, I was practically screaming at her to slap him or put the fork in her hand to good use. She was too smart for this, wasn’t she? I wanted to believe that Addy wouldn’t fall for his smarmy tactics, but the doubt still made me seethe with jealousy.
“See you guys, then,” he said as he stood up and walked away.
Nobody said a word for a minute until Lucy straightened up and whispered, “Did anyone notice that he and Cassie aren’t sitting together at lunch?”
Like synchronized swimmers, we all turned our heads in unison looking over to where Cassie sat with a small group of friends, and she certainly had the look of a girl who was either recently dumped or knew she was about to be. Then, Mitch left the cafeteria without her on his arm which was about as clear as it got. The new couple was caput.
Now, I’m not one to care who is dating whom, and I still don’t really care about what happened between Mitch and Cassie, but I certainly couldn’t focus on my current scholarship application now. I was too busy glancing at Addy to gauge her reaction.
Finally, after a long, awkward minute of silence, she shrugged and said, “Poor girl, just couldn’t live up to all this.” The group broke out in laughs, mostly out of relief that she seemed to be taking the encounter like a champ.
“So, is it really bigger than Homecoming?” I asked after the group recovered.
“Oh yeah,” Simon mumbled beside me.
“You’ve been?”
He returned with a wide-eyed shake of his head, which somehow made me like him more.
“You can’t seriously be thinking of going?” I asked Addy.
The girls seemed to be watching her for the answer, as if they were wondering the same. “It is fun,” she shrugged. “And we always come up with a great trio costume.”
“It’s really more of a school party than Mitch’s party,” Nora added.
Next to her, Max immediately nodded in agreement.
Suddenly, I realized that this impossible crush I was forming on Addy could totally blow up in my face if she was still hung up on some local yokel who knew how to throw a party, and I didn’t take losing so well. So, it looked like I was going to that stupid party.
As I packed up my laptop and threw my apple core into the nearby trash bin, I looked down at Addy with my shaken confidence. “Fine. If you’re going, I’m going.”
Walking away, I realized that was a totally boyfriend thing to say, but I didn’t care anymore.
Addy
“If you’re going, I’m going,” Lucy said in her best Gray voice. “This could not have worked out any better. Friggin’ Gray Turner is taking you to Mitch’s party!”
“He didn’t say he was taking me,” I countered. “He said he was going.” I pulled open the door to my fridge, scouring the shelves for diet soda; heck, I would take a sparkling water if that’s all we had. I needed something bubbly that I wouldn’t have to work off in the pool later.
“Same, same,” said Lucy. “You wanted to make Mitch jealous by Halloween. This is your golden opportunity, girl.” I knew she was right. A hot costume and an even hotter date would squash Mitch’s self-confidence like a bug.
“And at his big event!” cried Nora. “Bigger than Homecoming” she mocked. “He’s gonna feel like such a tool for dumping you.”
I smiled, popping open the last of Mom’s Le Croix stash. Things were going exactly according to plan. I’d been wanting to make Mitch jealous since the first time I saw him and Cassie walking hand in hand down Main Street, but now that the opportunity was in front of me, everything felt muddled. They had been together for two months. We had been together for two years. What if he broke up with her because he realized he made a mistake? What if seeing me with Gray in the parking lot was the impetus needed to pull the already loose threads from their slowly unraveling relationship?
I was supposed to feel happy, but mostly I felt confused. Normally, I would talk to Nora and Lucy about these things but they were so excited about the party and serving Mitch his comeuppance that I couldn’t bring myself to admit I was having doubts.
Instead, I opted to distract them. “Since we are officially going to the party, we need to officially vote on a Halloween costume.”
“Ooh!” squealed Nora, “I’ve got a good one.”
“Presidential veto!” interrupted Lucy, tossing her bag on the floor and grabbing a seat at the breakfast bar. “You know the rules.”
Nora scowled. “One time. One bad choice, and I’m banned for life?” Lucy and I nodded affirmatively as Nora sunk into the stool beside her. I would feel bad for Nora but she’d sabotaged herself long ago.
Each year, we chose a costume made for three. Last year we were three blind mice, the year before that Britney Spears: past, present and future. Nora wasn’t allowed to make any suggestions because as a freshman she talked us all into going as The Three Stooges. People were still passing around pics of Lucy in a bald cap.
“I was thinking about going as the Three Little Kittens who lost their mittens,” said Lucy.
“Of course you were,” giggled Nora. Lucy always wanted to be a cute baby animal. Which was sort of funny when you thought about it. As the most popular girl in our threesome, you would think she would feel pressured to go as something a little cooler.
“I will consent to Three Little Kittens,” I agreed. “But—”
“I knew there was going to be a but,” said Lucy, shaking her head.
“But the point of attending this party is to show off my newfound hotness. You know like….just as soon as I find it.”
“Already hot,” mumbled Lucy. “But go on.”
“I want to go as the Three Sexy Kittens who lost their mittens,” I replied, shaking my shoulders up and down suggestively.
Right then, Max turned the corner from the living room to the kitchen. He had been home a whole fifteen minutes, and he had already managed to change out of his school clothes and into basketball shorts and his favorite grubby undershirt.
“You have got to be kidding me,” he said. “Can you three not be a walking cliche this year? Every girl there will be a sexy something. If you want to stand out, go as something unique. My vote is an inanimate object.” He held his hands out in front of him like he was framing us in a picture. “You guys would make an excellent basket of fruit. You be the fruit. I’ll be the basket. I can carry you around on my shoulders all night. Except you, Nora. You’ll be the banana, so I’ll have to carry you like a baby.”
Nora burst into a fit of giggles usually reserved for a crush.
“Afraid not, little brother. This Halloween we’ve got goals,” I said, jerking my head toward the other room in a not-so-subtle hint.
Max scrunched his face up in disgust “Your goal is to dress like a hoe at Mitch’s Halloween party? This is why I think your whole squad goals thing is stupid.”
“My goal is not to dress like a hoe!” I growled, growing more and more annoyed with Max’s presence.
“What is it then?” he asked, looking to Lucy and Nora for the answer. I knew neither of them would betray me, but I didn’t like how persuasive he could be. Especially with Nora. It was time for Max to make his exodus.
“Go talk to your video game friends,” I said, pushing him out of the kitchen and toward the den. When I returned, Lucy an
d Nora were already two pages deep in a Pinterest search for sexy cat costumes.
“On a scale of kitten ears to thigh-high pleather boots, how sexy are we talking?” asked Lucy, her eyebrows arched in a decidedly sinister expression.
Chapter Fifteen
Gray
Our next meet was another resounding success. Although, the fact that the other team was so small they had to max out the competition didn’t hurt. Minnesota wasn’t exactly bustling with local high school swimmers.
Of course, that had nothing to do with my heat and why I was four-tenths of a second slower than last time. It was like the more I wanted to break that record, the farther away I got.
The energy on the bus ride home was rightfully loud and elated. We were almost mid-season and easily gunning for regionals in November. Nothing had come back from my scholarship applications yet, but Griffith was pretty confident that we would have some scouts to look forward to next month.
Which meant I had a PR to break.
“Hey, Turner!” Freddy called from the front row of the bus. Addy and I both looked up from her Google search of costumes she was trying to convince me to dress up as for Mitch’s lame party. She had it narrowed down to Baywatch and surfer dude. It was abundantly clear that I would never live down the California jokes.
“What’s up?” I answered. For the most part, Freddy and the rest of the team had been a little more welcoming to me and Addy since her performance started to improve. Not that it was any excuse for their thug-ish behavior at the start of the season.
“You ever swim in a lake?” he called back. I paused, looking around at the rest of the team who all had ear-to-ear grins like they were all in on some big secret.
“That was very random,” I called back. The rest of the bus responded in laughter. They wanted me to admit that I hadn’t, but that wasn’t going to happen. Besides, I swam in the ocean...not competitively, of course, but that had to count for something. I was dying to know what he was getting at.
“You’ve never heard about the mid-season lake party,” Simon chimed in from the aisle across from me.
“No…”
“It’s a tradition. Not exactly a school-sanctioned meet...if you know what I mean.”
I’d been to plenty swim team parties in Encinitas, but something told me this one would be a little different.
“You go?” I asked.
“Yeah. They’re actually...kinda fun.” Simon seemed almost surprised that there was actually a social gathering with the rest of the team that he enjoyed, but I could see why. When he wasn’t in the pool, you would never guess that Simon was as strong of an athlete as he was. With his glasses, knowledge of astronomy, and crisply pressed attire, it was pretty plain to see that Simon was a little bit of a nerd. It was like his Clark Kent alter ego.
“Did you know about this?” I turned to Addy, but the deer-in-headlights expression on her face answered for her.
Freddy’s voice boomed over the crowd of talking students between us. “It’s next weekend at Willow’s place. We hike down to the lake behind her house for a little unofficial team race of our own. You think you’re so fast, Mr. California. Then you’re gonna love some real competition.”
I liked the sound of that. With those chunky arms and broad shoulders, I couldn’t wait to get into the water and make him eat his words.
“Sounds like fun,” I laughed back. It was good, clean competitive humor, but after our rocky start to the year, there was a thin layer of aggression lurking behind our wisecracks.
“Are you sure about that?” Addy asked. I turned to find her staring at me, her eyebrows raised and her mouth set in a firm line.
“Yeah. Why?”
“Have you ever swam in a lake before, Gray? It’s not a regulation-size swimming pool.”
“So?”
She answered with a laugh.
“What?”
From the other side, Simon snickered too. “You like a challenge, right?”
“Yeah,” I answered, nudging Addy with my elbow. “I agreed to teach this girl, didn’t I?”
“Ha. Ha.”
I couldn’t hide my smile as she aimed an angry face at me with her tongue out like a kid.
“You’re going, right?” I added as she returned to her Halloween costume shopping.
“If you’re going, I’m going,” she said, mimicking my words from the other day. The embarrassment from that was still fresh. It was totally out of reflex, and if I had taken a moment to think before blurting it out, I would have realized that it was totally out of place and not something a private lesson and carpool buddy was supposed to say.
“You’re gonna need a ride, aren’t you?” Like she could feel my humiliation, she glanced up sideways at me and gave me a crooked smile that made my brain fuzzy.
Of course I wasn’t going to tell her that my mom didn’t work next weekend and could easily lend me the car. Or that she found a bargain commuter car from a coworker that she offered to buy so that I had my own ride. And that I passed it up.
If I didn’t need a ride, then maybe Addy wouldn’t need private lessons anymore. Then, what would I do?
I leaned in to browse her screen, or at least that was the excuse for leaning in a little closer to her. Close enough to make everyone else on the bus think we were dating because for some reason, that’s what I wanted them to think. Now that her stupid ex was single again, I realized that my window of opportunity was getting slimmer. If I was going to make my move, it had to be soon. I just really hoped she felt the same way too.
Addy
I was not dressing up to impress Gray. That would be silly. He was my carpool buddy, my swim coach, and the bit of arm candy necessary to make Mitch realize what a mistake he had made. I wasn’t dressing up to impress Gray, but if he was impressed, I wouldn’t mind that so much. Every day at practice he sauntered around the pool like a swimsuit model in a Corona commercial. Half of all locker room chatter revolved around his abs. He got to be real hot all the time.
Me on the other hand, I was just a uniboob in a one piece, out there trying to show the world my worth. The super unsexy female version of the Speedo was good for competitions where you wanted to be taken seriously, or even practice when you didn’t want someone perving out on you from the sidelines, but it wasn’t exactly adding to my mission to convince the world I was a ten.
Tonight, however, was going to be a practice round for Mitch’s Halloween Party. I was breaking out the big guns.
Tightest, cutest, dark denim jeans: check.
Crisp white spaghetti strap tank top with one of those flowy scarf cardigans over top: check.
Suede ankle boots that reduced the five inch gap between me and Gray to three: check.
Even Max let out a whistle when I passed through the den to grab the brush I’d left down there that morning. He was nerding out, Xbox controller permanently fused to one hand, the other dangling in a bag of extra hot Cheetos.
“You know you are going to destroy yet another controller if you continue to eat and play at the same time.”
“It’s a sacrifice I am willing to make,” said Max, hitting pause on his game. “And why hast thou not invited your little brother to tonight’s festivities?”
“I really wanted to bring you, but it turns out this is a swim team only party.” I said, making an exaggerated pouty face.
“Ha!” he cried. “Nevermind then. You couldn’t pay me to hang out with Freddy, Willow and the rest of the aquanerds.”
I leaned over to pat Max on the shoulder. “It’s okay, Maxie. If it makes you feel better to insult the kids that left you out, you go right ahead and do it.”
Max shook my hand off his shoulder. “Very cute. Try not to forget your real friends while you’re out cavorting with the swim team. The same team that treated you like trash two weeks ago.”
I swiped the brush off the coffee table and left without responding. Of course I wasn’t forgetting my real friends. Lucy and Nora had better thing
s to do on a Friday night than practice the backstroke in the lake behind Willow’s house. At least I thought they did. I hadn’t really asked them. I had been so focused on my goal lately that hanging out with the girls had started to happen less and less.
I pushed the thought aside. We would have plenty of time to catch up after Halloween. Besides, Max didn’t know the intricate dynamic of our friendship. At least I hoped he didn’t. Lately, his phone was lighting up with Nora’s number a lot more often than I was comfortable with.
With my hair and makeup on point, I headed over to Gray’s to pick him up. Usually the smell of chlorine travelled everywhere that Gray did, but tonight when he sat down in the passenger side, there was a different smell. Something manlier, colognier. Whatever it was, it smelled amazing. I wanted to lean over and inhale him like a pot of gumbo you’ve just pulled the lid from, but I didn’t. Because that would have been weird, and I was working hard to not be so weird around Gray.
“You look good,” said Gray, as if he could sense me wanting to compliment him and decided to throw one in the mix first.
I mumbled an awkward thanks and turned the key in the ignition. It was a bonafide fact that I looked good tonight, but I liked hearing Gray say it. If he had any idea how often I thought the same about him, he would never stop blushing.
We arrived at the party a little after seven. Simon was already propped on the edge of a couch facing the big picture windows that overlooked the lake. Amy stood beside him attempting to make small talk, but I got the impression that Simon was not interested. He smiled and nodded at everything she said, but he refrained from adding to the conversation.
“You want to talk to Simon?” I asked, noticing that the rest of the room had already formed cliques neither Gray nor I had any desire to be a part of.
“Sure,” he answered with an easy smile. “I’ll get us a couple of drinks and meet you over there.”
As I made my way toward Simon and Amy, I tried to remember what it was like to go to parties with Mitch. We’d been to plenty, but somehow I always remembered the evening more for the moments shared with Lucy and Nora than I did the interaction with Mitch.
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