by Dahlia Adler
No, the bigger problem is that while she could find a dress of hers that worked on my smaller frame, there’s no way to get my size-five feet in any of her size-eights, and I own exactly four pairs of shoes: my holey tennis shoes, flip-flops, hand-me-down red rubber rain boots, and a pair of combat boots I’d bought from the Salvation Army with my very first paycheck. I used to have a pair of heels from Target, for cousins’ weddings and the random church visit when my dad gets in one of his phases, but then one of the heels snapped off and damn if I’m gonna pay ten bucks to restore shoes I always hated to begin with.
“I cannot believe you’re actually wearing those,” Vic says with a sigh.
“I told you I would be.” I tighten the laces on the combat boots and tie them into bows as neatly as I can. “You wanted to dress me up anyway.”
“You look like Baghdad Barbie.”
“Hey, at least the red laces are festive.”
“Sometimes I think you might actually be hopeless.” She presses her lips together and looks me up and down. “Maybe with the right makeup—”
“No makeup. I’ve told you a billion times, Vic, no makeup.”
“Just lipstick!”
“I have cherry Chapstick, thank you very much.”
“How about eyeliner?”
“You are not sticking a pencil near my eye.”
“Mascara?”
“No.”
“Ryan Gosling naked on a sheepskin rug?”
“N—obviously.”
“Damn, so close.” She walks over to the mirror in our motel room and carefully rims her eyes in liner. “So, we’re gonna have fun at this thing even if Dev continues to be weird, right?”
“Right.”
“Good. For being a trooper, maaaybe I’ll even go to class with you tomorrow.”
“You? Class? Voluntarily?” My fake gasp is probably loud enough to be heard through the thin walls. “You are just full of surprises.”
“Well, now’s a good time to prove to me that you are too.” She caps her eyeliner and whirls around. “Don’t give up too easily, Rae. I know you want to, that you probably already have in your mind, but don’t you dare. I better see a solid effort from you when it comes to this boy.”
“What’s even the point? We barely know each other, we live nowhere near each other—”
“Oh, hush. When you feel it, you feel it.” She unscrews a tube of mascara and sets to work on her lashes. “Besides, you’ve checked out a couple of the same colleges now; for all you know, you’ll end up at the same place next year. And don’t even pretend that thought hasn’t crossed your mind. You’re not that good a liar.”
Apparently not.
“You sure you don’t want some?” She screws the cap back on the mascara and holds it out to me.
I nod firmly. I’m unsettled enough by the unfamiliar setting, Dev’s weirdness, and wearing Vic’s clothes. The last thing I want is something else to throw me off my game. Unlike “Tori” and I guess “Dave,” I have no desire to be someone else in college. I just want to be me somewhere else.
Plus, I’ve tried mascara. It looks weird over my white eyelash.
She slicks on some lip gloss, smacks her lips together, and turns to me. “How do I look?”
“Perfect.” She really does. She always does. And in those tightass jeans, high heels, and low-cut tank under a blazer, all of which she’s added her own personal Vic-esque touches to, I suspect her perfection is going to send Dev’s mime friend into cardiac arrest. As ridiculous as I’m going to look in this dress and boots, standing next to Vic is only going to make me look worse. Good thing she makes it worth it.
“Why thank you, Reagan, dear.” She wipes a little gloss from her teeth and smiles. “You ready to go?”
I’m tempted to say no, but instead, I check myself out in the mirror. I do look a little like Baghdad Barbie. And apparently like Rogue, too. With a combo like that, how can I not kick ass? Dev Shah or no Dev Shah, I’m going to have a damn good time tonight.
And if not? Well, it’s a mixer centered around mocktails. If drinks can fake it, then dammit, so can I.
“Tell me again about how fun this is gonna be,” I beg Vic in a whisper as we make our way to Prentice Hall with painstaking slowness to accommodate Vic’s massive heels. I spare her my mocking because they look awesome and seriously, who the hell am I to be trashing someone else’s footwear choice right now?
“Very,” she says confidently, grabbing my arm as she wobbles just a bit. “Because if it sucks, we’ll just find the guy who’s inevitably carrying around mini bottles of vodka and make it fun.” She tightens her grip around my bare arm, taking care not to muss the red ribbon belt she’d tied around “my” dress to fix the fit and match the laces of my combat boots.
“How do you know that guy will be there?”
“Because that guy is always there.” With her free hand, she swings the door wide open, and we both point to our name badges, which couldn’t look dorkier but are required for entrance. “Do you see Dev yet?”
“I don’t see anything yet.” I stand on my tiptoes, which does all of nothing. “What are you, six feet in those things? You’re definitely gonna have to be our lookout.”
“Fair point.” She cranes her neck and scans the crowd, and I can tell she’s either spotted them or found a really hot guy because her lips widen into a sly smile. “Jackpot.” She turns to me. “Okay, now remember, play it cool, but don’t go down without a fight.”
“What does that even mean? Stop mixing messages.”
She sighs. “It means play hard-to-get but don’t be hard-to-get.”
“I don’t want to play anything. The reason I like him is because we click without any games.”
We both freeze, silent, my words hanging over us both. I like him. I don’t even remember the last time I said those words. But I can certainly guess who I said them about. Icy fingers curl around the nape of my neck and I look away from Vic.
“This was a mistake,” I mutter, wishing I’d had the forethought to bring my own mini vodka bottle. I start toward the table of drinks when suddenly a tray is thrust in my face.
“Piña colada? Strawberry daiquiri?” The bright-eyed, bushy-tailed sucker walking around with the drink tray doesn’t look as if she’ll leave until I snatch a glass, so I mumble thanks and grab a strawberry daiquiri. It’s sickeningly sweet and as soon as I take a couple of sips, I start looking around for a place to put it down.
“Hey, you.”
I freeze in place with glass in hand as Dev approaches. He’s the most dressed-up I’ve seen him yet, in khakis and a blue button-up shirt. He looks nice. Tall. Respectable. I feel even more like an idiot in my borrowed dress and mismatched footwear. “Hi.”
“Interesting outfit.”
“Wish I could say the same.”
He laughs. “Fair enough. I don’t clean up quite as nice as you do.”
“You didn’t say nice,” I point out. “You said interesting.”
“Both nice and interesting,” he amends with a nod. “The combat boots really do add a special touch.”
As much as I hate compliments, they’re a whole lot better than his neither-here-nor-there responses to me. Fitz always made sure to tell me I looked good on those rare occasions I actually put on a dress. I can practically hear him say, “You look cute, babe,” his words slightly garbled by chewing gum.
“Hey, you okay?”
I don’t even realize I’ve been spacing out until I feel Dev’s hand on my bare arm. It’s weird and unfamiliar, less calloused than Fitz’s hands used to be. Then again, Dev probably doesn’t play baseball for hours a day or spend weekends smoothing concrete.
“Yeah, I’m fine.” I take another sip of my sugary drink. “It’s just really crowded in here.”
“Claustrophobic? Agoraphobic?”
“Short.”
He cracks a smile. “Well, I’m right here. I’ll watch out for you.”
Oh yeah? Even when your
friends come back? I slip the straw between my teeth so I won’t speak the words, and chew on it instead of drinking any more. “Appreciated,” I say around the red plastic.
“Least I can do. So is that drink any good? I haven’t gotten one yet.”
I release the straw. “Actually, it’s pretty gross. Like sugar water.”
“Mmmm.” He leans forward and captures the straw in his lips, right over where my mouth used to be. It feels like we’ve just kissed secondhand, except that’s idiotic and doesn’t exist and why am I sort of turned-on right now? “Totally disgusting.” He takes the glass out of my hand, brushing my fingers as he does, and turns to set it on a table. “Better luck with piña coladas?”
I shrug. “Show me the way.”
We walk through the crowd, his hand on the small of my back as we search for glasses of frothy white concoctions with cocktail umbrellas. His touch is light, not firmly protective the way Fitz’s used to be in similar situations, but it feels impossibly hot through the fabric of the dress. His pinky is dipping dangerously close to skimming somewhere it shouldn’t. Well, probably shouldn’t. Not that I’d be terribly angry about it.
Someone bumps us from behind and tosses back an apology, but all I can think as Dev’s entire body collides lightly with mine is, Don’t step back. Stay right where you are and wrap your arms around my waist and just hold me in place, just for a minute, just like this.
He does step back, but not before steadying me by the backs of my arms and bending down so I can feel him whisper before I even hear the words, “Are you okay?”
No, my brain whispers back, deafening over the din of the room. I am definitely not okay.
VICTORIA
“So I’m probably gonna get a basketball scholarship here, and then it doesn’t really matter what I major in, right?” The guy currently fascinating me while he sips from an embarrassingly decorative neon-green drink is named either Don or John, but he’s had a piece of pineapple stuck in his teeth the entire time he’s been flirting with me and I can’t think of him as anything other than Aloha. “I figure I’ll probably do English. I mean, how hard is that, right? I speak it and whatever.”
“Right, right.” My piña colada is down to the crushed-ice dregs. It’s not particularly good, but it gives me something to do with my hands and mouth every time another one of these guys gets in my airspace. I internally ream Reagan for leaving me, even though that was obviously always the plan for whenever Dev showed up.
Whatever made him weird before is gone now; he clearly wants her pretty bad, even though I’d bet an entire car ride of listening to Courtney Love that she doesn’t see it. Whatever. I know that “any excuse to touch her” move. That used to be Andrew Hollister’s favorite move. And it worked for him; he was my first kiss.
“What about you?” Aloha asks, taking another sip of the slime-colored drink. “You majoring in Psychology? Chicks always major in Psychology.”
“Astrophysics, actually.” I smile sweetly as soon as the lie is out of my mouth. I may or may not have stolen that from Reagan. Instant conversation killer.
“Oh, uh, cool. Is that, like, with lasers and shit?”
I nod and sip simultaneously. I have no freaking clue what Astrophysics is. I’m guessing it doesn’t involve sequins.
“Awesome.”
“Yep.”
I’m working on an exit line when suddenly I feel an arm wrap around my shoulders and hear, “There you are! I brought you a drink.”
It’s Dev’s friend Jamie, the kind-of-a-jerk guy. His fingers are digging into my shoulder so hard I’d probably mash my heel into his foot if he weren’t saving me from the stupidest conversation of my life right now. I glance behind us and see that buddy number three is hanging back, probably checking out my butt. The kid might be quiet but he’s not subtle.
“Thanks so much, sweetheart.” I don’t really know what I’m supposed to do with a second drink so I just let him hold it. Then I turn back to Aloha. “It was really nice to meet you.”
He mutters something back and leaves me alone with the jerk and the horny mute. “You’re welcome.” Jerky Jamie looks seriously proud of himself.
“Yeah, thanks sooo much for saving me from the hot guy!” Okay, my sarcastic gushing might be a little mean considering he did save me, but he has total smugface right now. Not that my sarcasm dims it even the tiniest bit.
“Please, if you were so into the hot guy, you would’ve told me to fuck off.”
“There’s still time.”
He just smiles and sips the frosty blue drink that was probably never for me in the first place. “So, what’s the deal with your friend?”
“Hot guy?”
“Blondie.”
“She has a name.” I nod my head toward Horny Mute. “Does he? Or does he just stand there and stare at boobs all day? Specifically mine?”
Horny Mute blushes, and I feel sort of bad, but my sympathy drains quickly when he fails to actually lift his eyes from the scoop neck of my tank top. I hope he’s at least appreciating the asymmetrical abstract embroidery I added to the neckline with metallic thread.
“It’s a compliment,” Jerky Jamie actually has the nerve to say.
I ignore him in favor of going back to work on my piña colada, scanning the room to see if I can figure out which guy is toting around airplane-friendly bottles of Smirnoff, when suddenly, one is thrust in my face.
Of course Jerky Jamie is that guy.
He dangles the bottle in front of me, but I refuse to grab it. I don’t need alcohol to improve this party; I need better company. “Thanks, but no thanks.” I push aside the skinny red straw in my drink and down the rest, then wipe my mouth off on the back of my hand.
“Would you rather dance?” he asks as I put my glass down.
“The dance floor’s totally empty.” Ouch. The cold rush of downing all the icy liquid has gone to my head, and I squint against the brain freeze. I regret it a second later when I realize the jerk is actually laughing at me.
Reagan may have the sharp tongue but I’ve got the look of death. As I flash it at Jamie, I’m pretty sure I can see his junk shrivel up and die. Mission accomplished, I turn on my heel and head away from Dev’s creepy friends, curious as to where their leader has taken my friend.
I pull my cell phone out of my back pocket and check it for texts. There’s just one, from my mom. How’s it going with Reagan and Prince Charming?
I can’t help grinning. My mom is such a nosy gossip. Trying to see for myself, I type back. They disappeared a while ago. My super-high heels allow me to see over a lot of the crowd, but there’s no sign of them anywhere in the room. If they’re outside making out…
My phone buzzes again. Make sure you girls keep an eye on each other! And you better be having fun too, not just Reagan! Love you.
Love you too. I hit Send and then start a new text, this one to Reagan. U OK? Without waiting for a response, I slip my phone into my back pocket, knowing I’ll feel the vibration on my butt when she gets back to me. Then I glance around again for people who actually look worth mingling with at this thing. I see a small group of girls in cute outfits sipping pink drinks and flirting with a couple of decent-looking guys. Perfect. I take a step in that direction, and immediately collide with a drink tray.
“Tia Maria, that’s cold!” I jump back, just in time to hear at least two glasses go crashing to the floor. And then, as if things couldn’t get any worse, I feel a hand yanking me back by my arm and pressing napkins to my now-soaking-wet chest. Of course, the superhero team of Horny Mute and Jerky Jamie have returned.
“Are you okay?” Jamie asks, almost sounding sincere as he swipes at a blob of mockgarita on the lapel of my beautiful—and now ruined—blazer. He turns to glare at the server, who’s pushing people back away from the shattered glass, his own bright-red T-shirt miraculously spotless. “Some people need to watch where they’re going.”
“It wasn’t his fault,” I tell Jamie, though I’m not s
ure whether or not it’s true. “I’m the one who wasn’t watching. Sorry about that,” I add to the server, but he’s not really paying any attention to me.
Jamie just makes a disgusted face, and then snaps to Horny Mute, “Okay, Max, I think her tank top’s probably dry by now.”
It isn’t, but having Max paw at me isn’t really helping. At least I’ve finally got a name to put to the skeevy face. I yank the napkins from his hand, go for one last halfhearted swipe, and then give up with a sigh. This whole outfit is toast. And of course, just as I find a trash can to toss my soaking wet napkins into, my butt buzzes.
Yes! Sorry! I’m right outside with Dev. Find Jamie and Max and come hang out!
Ugh, all I want to do right now is go back to the hotel, shower this strawberry mess off, and have a little pity party for my once-awesome jacket, which I got on super sale on a family vacation in Scottsdale. I am officially over both mocktails and mingling.
“Is that Reagan?” Jamie asks, peering over my shoulder.
I almost snap that it’s none of his business, but considering she told me to find him, I guess it sort of is. It doesn’t hurt that when he’s not being a jerk, he’s not the most unattractive guy on the planet, if you like that tough-nerd kind of look, which I hadn’t known existed before right this minute. “Yeah. She says they’re outside and we should go meet them.”
He shrugs. “Cool.” He starts to walk toward the door and then pauses and shrugs off his jacket. “Here.”
He’s wearing nothing on top now but a T-shirt with a math equation on it that I refuse to even attempt to read. It’s just as well since I’d rather not notice the fact that he fills it out a lot better than I would’ve expected. Where the heck does a math nerd get pecs like that?
“Thanks, but I’m fine,” I insist. What I’d actually love is a different shirt to put on, but there’s not much he can do for me there. Frankly, I’d rather he cover back up so I can go back to ignoring his stupid body. He doesn’t protest, just slips his jacket back on. Then we walk to the door in silence with Max in tow until Jamie turns to me just before we hit the door.