One Little Lie: a hate to love rom-com

by Whitney Barbetti

  “He won’t say what it said,” Keane butted in. “Just that there was a cartoon on it.”

  That seemed to satisfy Tori because she gave me an imperceptible nod—one that said, Oh, it wasn’t you.

  Like I said before, drawing was not a strong suit of mine. “Ah,” she said aloud. “Who’s an artist?”

  “Beats me,” Keane said.

  “It doesn’t matter,” Adam said curtly. “Can we not talk about it?” He gave Keane a pointed look. And that line effectively muted the rest of the car ride to the party.

  “Beer?” Tori asked as she pulled me through throngs of bodies half-heartedly dancing to music that could be barely heard above their voices.

  I scrunched up my nose and shook my head. “Wine coolers?”

  She shrugged and pulled me further into the kitchen, to the large double-wide fridge at the end of the room. She knew her way around the house, even as it was crowded with the population of our senior class. I guess when you were a frequent guest at parties like this one, you got pretty familiar with the layout.

  It was my first time at a high school party, my first time at the home of a boy when I wasn’t in the company of my parents. Despite being surrounded by people who were in my daily classes, I only knew maybe a handful of people at the party.

  Tori pushed an ice cold glass bottle into my hands, then popped the top of the wine cooler like it was second nature to her. I envied her a little. Well, not her. But her experience. Her confidence. She had it in droves. All I had to offer was a mumbled, self-conscious thanks before I took my first sip of alcohol.

  It was too sweet. That was what I thought at first, grimacing around the swallow. I was used to the artificial sweeteners of my favorite diet sodas that something as innocent as sugar-laden juice felt…heavy. This felt like sipping straight sugar. Tori, on the other hand, had downed half of hers as she smiled and waved at someone over my shoulder. I turned around, my gaze colliding with Adam Oliver. It was the first time since we got to the party that we’d seen each other—which meant it was the second time we’d made meaningful contact and … yup, he still hated me. I looked him over for a reprieve from the staring contest that I would lose anyway, spying the beer in his hands as he lifted it. Which meant I was once again making eye contact with him.

  He eyed the glass bottle in my hand and the side of his mouth quirked up in what I might almost take as a smile before his attention turned to Keane.

  “We made out last night,” Tori whispered, her breath hot on my ear. “Keane, I mean. It was hot.”

  I turned, smiling and took another sip of the liquid sugar. “That’s why you ignored my texts last night?”

  “Yeah, sorry. After the lacrosse game, under the bleachers. He’s a great kisser.” She said that not to brag, but as if in offering. “If you’re looking…” she added. The infatuation with Keane was already losing its spark.

  I laughed. Like Keane would give me a second glance, especially when I stood beside Tori. “I’m not.” I braved another sip, but that one made my stomach turn and I knew I needed to give up the bottle sooner than later. Gross. “Losing interest already?” Asking it was pointless, but it kept her talking which kept my eyes from drifting to Adam.

  “I mean, I’m not looking for a boyfriend, you know?” she said, and I believed her. “I just wanted to kiss someone. You know how it happens sometimes.”

  But I didn’t, and she knew it. “Sure.”

  She laughed, drawing the attention of a few people from our class around us. Sweat prickled my brow, partly from the oppressive heat of so many bodies around us but mostly from the unwanted attention. I had tagged along with Tori to this party hoping she could pull me out of my shell a little, show me some fun before I spent the rest of the weekend buried in a book.

  “Adam though,” Tori said. She sucked in her bottom lip as she glanced over at Adam and Keane and my head turned, staring at them with her. Thankfully, Adam was no longer trying to murder me with his eyes, his attention having turned solely to Keane. Surely, Tori couldn’t mean she wanted to make out with Adam, too?

  “Relax, Hols.” She laughed, clapping me on the back. “I know he’s yours.”

  I bristled. “He’s not mine.”

  “Okay, not in the physical sense but in the romantic sense.” She tapped my forehead. “At least in here, he’s yours. I’m not going near him with a ten foot pole.” She drained her wine cooler and set it on the surface closest to her. “But it sounded like you had competition in the car.” She raised an eyebrow.

  “Here.” I handed her my wine cooler, wanting to change the topic before the subject of the note was discussed in depth. “This is too sweet for me.”

  “Thought so. We should get you something else.”

  But I was already reconsidering the whole partying thing altogether. This wasn’t my scene. I couldn’t be blasé about partying like Tori could. She was the girl everyone talked to, and the girl who talked to everyone. She was better than most people, but didn’t think of herself that way. So when people mistook her forwardness or self-confidence as arrogance, I was quick to correct them. Tori knew who she was. She knew what she wanted. Both combined made her years beyond most of us.

  She met my eyes. “Well then, come on.”

  “Huh?” But I had barely said it before she was tugging me along once again, but this time in the direction of Keane and Adam. “Wait,” I said, pulling back.

  She whipped her head toward me. “Let’s go talk to them,” she said, placing emphasis on them because what she meant was You should talk to Adam. But this wasn’t some sappy teen movie where the girl finally gained the courage to talk to the guy she’d swooned over from afar. Yes, I swooned over Adam. But he hated me.

  “What happened to not going near him with a ten-foot pole?” I asked, both of us in a tug of war, my arm as the rope.

  “Okay, I’ll bring you to him and then I’ll pull Keane away for some more lip service.”

  I groaned and used up all my strength to yank her toward me. “No way, Tori. No. Way. You cannot abandon me.”

  Her eyes glittered mischievously, but dulled when she saw the fear in mine. “Okay, fine, we’ll just makeout in front of you so you’ll have no choice but to open your mouth and actually say something to Adam.”

  “I can’t just do that.”

  “What?” She laughed. “Talk? Sure you can. It’s easy.”

  “Tori.” My stomach churned and I pressed my free hand to it. “You saw how he looked at me. I can’t talk to him while you’re making out with Keane. I’m not you.”

  “Hey, he looked at me the same way as you. That’s just who he is.” She shrugged. “He’s like a human-sized ball of steel wool. Abrasive as fuck. You just gotta talk to him. Once he gets to know you, he’ll chill out.” She put an arm around me. “Hollis, you are smart and funny and you work harder than anyone I know. He’s gotta work for it if he deserves even a shot at talking with you. But let’s try, anyway.”

  It was hard to see myself the way Tori saw me. Adam was practically mythical for me, someone I had admired from afar but had never had the guts to talk to. Adam was musical and a deep thinker and also he looked at you like he was looking through you, finding out your contents and determining if you were worthy. And he’d clearly made up his mind about me before tonight’s party. I wasn’t convinced that Adam would ever see the things Tori saw in me. “You can’t abandon me,” I made her promise. “Seriously, you can’t.”

  “I won’t. Only if I see an opening, okay?”

  I groaned. “No. No way.”

  “Hollis.” She put a hand on my shoulder and leaned down so our foreheads touched. “We are seniors. In two months, we’re graduating. This is your chance to finally talk to the one guy you’ve ever had a lasting crush on.”

  “Ugh,” I said on a sigh.

  “Ugh all you want to me. But if I see an opening for you and Adam to get to actually have a conversation, I’m out of there.” She held up her pinky. After a m
oment’s hesitation, I looped my pinky with hers and let her pull me back through the throng of people to where Adam and Keane stood, just off the side of the dining room, near the door that led out to a deck. The door was open, letting a cool breeze ruffle my hair. When he turned, he looked at me with the eyes of someone judging me, deeming me to be someone I probably was not.

  Why, of all the guys in the room, did he make me feel compelled to prove myself? He hadn’t asked me to prove myself with words, but his eyes spoke more than his lips ever could. “Hey guys,” Tori said, bumping playfully into Keane. His cheeks pinked and he glanced sideways at Adam before smiling more fully at her.

  “Tori. See your taste in booze hasn’t improved.”

  Tori laughed and rested her head on his shoulder, looking more natural than I could ever hope to feel in this environment. “Don’t judge, mister Rocky Mountain spring water.” She clinked bottles with him. “Sure there’s any alcohol in that?”

  “Ha-ha,” Keane said and wrapped a free arm around her. Turning to me he said, “You look uncomfortable, Hollis. You okay?”

  My cheeks warmed and I hated, ferociously, that I was so terribly transparent. “This is my first time at a party,” I admitted, feeling pathetic.

  “Really?” Keane asked incredulously. “You’re a party virgin.”

  Well, there was zero doubt that my cheeks were solidly red then. “Pretty much.”

  At that admission, Adam’s eyes slanted to mine and then to my empty hand, the hard line between his eyes smoothed out. “Where’s your drink?” he asked.

  I could hardly believe he was talking to me. He had initiated it. And there wasn’t a lick of hostility in his voice, for once. He’d asked me a question and my tongue sat, thick like lead in my mouth.

  “I got her one of these.” Tori held up the wine cooler I had given her. “But they’re too sweet.”

  “Ah.” Adam looked back at me, gaze cutting right through me. “I don’t much care for them either.” After a moment’s consideration, he reached his beer toward me, a question in his dark eyes.

  I blinked so that my stare wasn’t awkward or trancelike. “Your beer?”

  “Do you want a beer?”

  I stared at it for a moment, indecisive. I knew, thanks to many after school programs, not to take a drink from someone I didn’t fully trust, but surely, since he had been drinking from the same bottle, I would be fine.

  Tori elbowed me subtly in the ribs, so I reached for the beer, my pinky brushing over Adam’s thumb as I took it from him. “Just a sip,” I told Adam, hoping the sip would wash away the heat climbing my face. In the dim lighting of the dining room, his eyes looked blacker, but not cold. Instead, his gaze felt warm. If I was someone else, someone naturally romantic like my friend Navy, I might idealize the way he looked at me with beautiful words and feeling. The best I could come up with, to describe the way he looked at me, was as if I was the only person in front of him, the only person he wanted to look at, in the entire room.

  But I wasn’t idealistic even with my romantic tendencies. I knew romance was for books, for fiction.

  I tipped the beer back and let it coat my tongue before bringing it back down. The taste, while somewhat unpleasant, didn’t churn my stomach like the wine cooler had. The bubbles reminded me of my favorite soda, and the cool the beer left on my tongue made me wish for another sip.

  But instead, I handed it back to Adam. He waited a second longer than I expected him to, and his pinky laid over the top of mine when he grasped the bottle. His eyes, the entire time, never left mine. Maybe it was my imagination, but he seemed calmer since the car ride. “Better?” he asked.

  The beer hadn’t done much to lighten my leaden tongue so I simply nodded. I wanted to talk to Adam. And I knew that having a little bit of booze might lower my inhibitions but it also might prevent me from remembering the way he looked at me, the way the light from the backyard made him glow like some kind of fallen angel.

  Wow, I thought. The romance book I stayed up late to finish last night had infected my brain. Adam was no fallen angel. He was just a guy I had lusted after for the last handful of years, or so. And if for one night—or just this moment—his eyes were on mine, that didn’t mean he was suddenly into me, too. I only needed to remember the way he’d glared at me outside of Tori’s house to humble me.

  “I’ll get you a beer,” Tori offered, nudging me again but less discreetly than before. I nodded, but regretted it immediately because seconds later, Tori and Keane were retreating back into the kitchen, their bodies disappearing among the others. Leaving Adam and me alone.

  Adam was still staring at me, unnerving me in the quiet way he was good at. “Think they’ll start dating?” he asked me.

  I was so lost in staring at him that it took a minute for it to click what he was asking me. “Tori and Keane?”

  He took my dumbly-spoken words to mean it was ridiculous. Which, it was, but my words were slow because I had barely been able to drag my attention away from him to think about anything else. “Yeah, you’re right. Tori is too flighty.”

  “She’s not flighty,” I said, almost too defensively. When Adam arched one dark brow, I elaborated. “She’s smart. She knows that high school isn’t forever and indulging in serious relationships in a temporary environment will most certainly end in disaster.”

  The side of his mouth lifted as if I had said something that was funny. “Right,” he said. “Flighty.”

  “That’s not flighty,” I argued. I checked the tone of my voice, not wanting to actually argue argue. Especially since he was finally starting to warm up to me. “She isn’t going to make promises she can’t keep. I guess I think of flighty as her leading Keane on, and I don’t think she will.”

  His smile dropped away and he looked thoughtful for a moment. “Okay, you’re right.”

  Why did that simple little statement light up like a tentative firework inside of me?

  “So what about you?” he asked.

  Again, I stared dumbly at him. “I’m not interested in Keane.”

  The smile appeared fully this time, sinking a delicious little dimple in his cheek. I was dumb struck. Adam was actually smiling at me. “I didn’t think you were. Rather, I was wondering if you shared her opinion. About relationships.”

  This conversation was making me feel stupid. Not that it was Adam’s fault—it was mine, for not being able to look at him and think clearly. “Uh…” I said. “I don’t think I’ve given it much thought.” And I hadn’t. Not only because my life was ruled by the pressures of my parents, but also because it had never been an option for me—to think about dating seriously. “I’m not someone who dates.”

  “Are you asexual?”

  “No,” I said, but it sounded unconvincing. “I’m just busy.”

  “Because of your dad.”

  Bitterness rose from my throat, but he didn’t deserve it. Not because he was right—which he was—but because it was a natural conclusion. My father’s company employed many of the parents whose kids were at that party, which was probably why I sat like the odd man out from social events. I didn’t want people to look at me and see my dad; his name or his clout or his power. But that’s what happened. People looked at me like I was the police, like I had the power to tattle on them, to have it get back to their parents. The truth was that I didn’t tell my father anything about people from school, and wouldn’t have. When I caught Jacob Coleman smoking a joint in his car after school, he looked at me in fear but my dad never knew, so his parents never heard it from me. But being the daughter to someone of power meant you had very little power yourself in the way of making and keeping friendships.

  When Jacob was eventually caught by his parents, he’d eyed me disdainfully every time we passed each other in the hallway, believing that it made more sense that I had tattled than that his parents would smell his cheap pot on his clothes and figure it out themselves.

  Rumors got around about me, and though I pretended to be unaf
fected, I wasn’t. It bothered me that I wasn’t invited to parties, that I was always a tag-along. But at the same time, the ability to be a homebody was a relief. There were no social pressures in being a homebody.

  “My parents do keep me busy,” I hedged. I couldn’t seem to figure out what to do with my hands, which wanted to fidget someway. In truth, I was dying for some caffeine, but the house was fully stocked with booze and not more innocent beverages.

  As if he could read my mind, Adam handed me his beer again after he took a pull from it himself. I hadn’t thought much about sharing his beer before, but putting my lips around the rim when his lips had just been in the same position did something funny to my thoughts, to the already unsteady beat of my heart. I took a longer pull this time. The taste was becoming more bearable and its coolness slid down my throat more comfortably.

  “It’s an acquired taste,” he said when I handed it back to him.

  “So is coffee, but I’ve never acquired it.” I licked my bottom lip, already wanting more. Adam took a sip, not taking his eyes off of me.

  “Never?” he asked.

  I shook my head. “I love caffeine. It doesn’t wake me up but it does keep me … calm, I guess.”

  Adam handed me his beer again and I took it without hesitation this time, sharing his beer like this felt completely natural. Was the beer having an effect already? It was a light beer, which I knew meant the alcohol content was less than wine would be. So, maybe it wasn’t the beer, but Adam’s company instead.

  As I tried to hand Adam his beer back, someone bumped into me from behind, sending me careening into Adam’s chest, and the beer sloshing up out of the neck and onto us. His arm came around my back, steadying me, his other hand trapped between our bodies, clutching the bottle.

  I looked up at him, close enough to see the perfect peaks of his cupid’s bow. His long, dark lashes were lowered as he stared down at me and his hand was still on my back.