“Do you know how much Tristan has invested?” I ask.
Juliet shrugs again. “I don’t know, Alice. You know me. I don’t much care for how money is made, only how it’s spent.”
My heart grows heavy as a thick black cloud descends around me. Whatever this investment thing that Dylan has going, it’s not good. Tristan doesn’t have much money. Definitely not enough to lose in some Ponzi scheme.
Finally, I’m dressed. Juliet’s five-inch heels are pinching my toes and my heels are already aching even though we haven’t even left the building. I complain to Juliet.
“It’s because you don’t wear heels enough,” she says. “If you wore them at least a couple of days per week then your feet would get used to them and just go numb like other women’s feet.”
The thought of wearing heels a couple of days per week scares the shit out of me. I can make it through tonight (I think), but there’s no way I’m subjecting myself to this punishment for eight hours a day a couple of times per week!
When I look at myself in the mirror, I can’t help but admit that I do look beautiful. My hair falls around my shoulders and frames my face in waves. It minimizes my strong jaw in just the right way while, at the same time, bringing out my eyes. My eyes look about twice as big as they ever have thanks to Juliet’s expert make up and eyelash application. It requires a lot of strength to keep my eyes open, but when they are open, they look magnificent.
“Oh my God,” Tristan says when he sees me. “Alice.”
I look at him. He takes a step back and catches his breath. The sight of me has literally taken his breath away. Honestly, I didn’t know that was possible.
“You’re enchanting,” he whispers and kisses me on my cheek.
Enchanting? I was expecting cute, pretty, perhaps beautiful. But not enchanting.
I look Tristan up and down. He’s also dressed to the nines in a black tuxedo. With his tan, gorgeous hair, and twinkling eyes, he looks a little bit like James Bond. I’ve never been attracted to James Bond, didn’t really know what all the fuss was about, but suddenly I catch myself hoping that Tristan’s carrying a sleek, sexy gun and is about to assassinate some oppressive dictator.
“You’re quite handsome yourself,” I say.
Dylan looks up briefly from his Xbox game. “Well, well, well. You both clean up well,” he says.
32
Tristan led me down 116th Street to a large brownstone on the corner. Frat row in New York is a little different from other places – here, frats have brownstones. Tristan knocks on the door, but no one answers. We can hear music blasting inside, so he tries the handle. It’s open and we walk in.
Inside, the party feels like a whole different world. It’s as if college and Amsterdam Avenue and 116th Street and New York in general don’t exist at all. Instead, all that exists is this magical world where everyone’s dressed in lavish gowns, tuxedos, and masks. Ah, the masks! The masks are everywhere. Some people are wearing masks that cover their whole faces and others wear the ones that cover just the eyes. The masks are nearly as lavish as the gowns. Most are covered in feathers and beads and silk, and each one is more ornate then the next. Do these people actually go to school with me?
I’ve been to many Halloween parties, but this one seems entirely different. There’s something mystical about people wearing masks and gowns – they appear so normal and yet extraordinary.
I follow Tristan along the wall as he greets his new friends and introduces me around. Much to my surprise, all the guys are quite polite and charming. Do I dare say it? Classy. They shake my hand and tell me how beautiful I look. A few poke fun at Tristan by saying that I’m slumming it by hanging out with him. He laughs, of course, and in that laugh, I don’t hear a hint of annoyance.
While we wait for my Long Island Ice Tea and his whiskey, I look around the room and start to look at Tristan in a whole new light.
“What? Why are you looking at me like that?” he asks.
“I don’t know. It’s just not what I expected,” I say with a shrug.
“And what did you expect? Keg stands and red cups? Beer pong?”
I nod. Of course. This is a frat party. Isn’t that the reputation?
“You shouldn’t be so judgmental, Alice,” he says. He hands me my drink and takes a sip of his. I didn’t think he would take this so personally.
“I’m sorry,” I say.
“I know you’re biased against frats. I know you think they’re lame. Or just some excuse to drink all day or something. But they’re so much more.”
I nod. Maybe he’s right.
“You know, I brought you here to show you that your view of frats, it’s not the only one. They also have parties like these.”
“I know, I’m sorry. Perhaps, I was a little too quick to judge,” I finally say.
“Oh my God. Are you actually admitting fault?” he grabs his heart in shock.
“Yes, I did. I am wrong sometimes. Not often, but sometimes,” I say, rolling my eyes. “Now, let’s go dance.”
The dance floor is crowded and the music is so loud I can barely hear myself think, let alone hear anything that Tristan says. Quickly, we let go and lose ourselves in music. My dress isn’t too tight and I love the way it sparkles in the light.
Tristan sways his hips as he dances across from me. He’s an amazing dancer with a great sense of rhythm. When he was younger, his mom made him take dance classes. Those classes are one of Tristan’s deep dark secrets, but watching him dance in front of me – so effortlessly – makes me want to write his mom a thank you card.
“I’ve been meaning to talk to you about something,” I scream at the top of my lungs just as the music dies down and switches to a slow song. Everyone around us turns to look at me.
“Sorry,” I say, cracking up laughing.
I’m about to walk away from the dance floor, but Tristan stops me. He takes my hand and puts it on his shoulder. He places his hand around my waist, pulling me close.
“What are you doing?” I ask.
“Dancing,” he says as he starts to grind to the slow rhythm of Alicia Keys. He guides one of his legs in between my thighs and presses his hard body against mine. I want to pull away, but I can’t. Physically unable to. I know he’ll stop if I ask him to, but I can’t do that either. I take a moment to catch my breath. I shouldn’t be doing this because of someone else. But, suddenly, I can’t remember his name.
We dance for a while, if you can call it dancing. What it really feels like is grinding on each other in public. It reminds me of our senior prom. Tristan flew down to go to prom with me and our friends. We spent the whole night pasted to each other, grinding completly inappropriately in front of our teachers and the principal.
“What did you want to talk to me about?” he asks.
“What?” I ask. I have no idea what he’s talking about. I look up at him. We’re so close that I can smell his face. It smells like vanilla and honey. I suddenly have an overwhelming desire to lick him.
“You said you wanted to talk to me about something?” he says.
“Oh yes, I did. But we can talk about it later,” I say cautiously.
“No, now’s fine,” he whispers and pulls me closer.
“Okay,” I say with hesitation. “It’s about earlier. About what you and Dylan were talking about in the living room while we were getting ready.”
He stares at me for a moment. Slowly, disappointment creeps onto his face. Clearly this was not what he thought I was going to say.
“Sorry, we can talk about it later,” I say. The song ends, and he pulls away.
“I’m going to get another drink,” he says. “Want one?”
I follow him to the bar.
“You mean about my investment?” he asks after putting in his order. “So I’m investing with Dylan’s guy. So what?”
“So what? He promised you 15%. That’s crazy. It sounds like a Ponzi scheme.”
“Well, it’s not. Dylan’s father made $8 m
illion last year with that guy. And Dylan has invested like $20 grand.”
“Well, Dylan has money to lose. You don’t,” I say.
“Hey, who the hell do you think you are, Alice? My mom? It’s my money and I say it’s a wise investment.”
I shake my head.
“You watch way too many of those American Greed shows and you think that you know everything about investing. Well, you don’t,” Tristan says and walks away from me.
“Tristan, wait!” I say. I try to follow him, take his arm, but he brushes me away. Within a few seconds, he disappears into a sea of people.
I don’t know what just happened. But suddenly, I found myself alone at a party where I didn’t know a soul. I was just trying to help. I didn’t mean to sound like I was his mom, though, in retrospect, I know I did. Maybe I do watch too much American Greed. Maybe I have no idea what I’m talking about. Maybe Dylan’s guy makes Tristan insanely wealthy and everything will turn out fine. I wander around the party and hope that I’m wrong about this.
33
An hour passes, but I don’t see Tristan anywhere. I start to wonder if he had left and gone home and left me here at this stupid party all by myself. I wouldn’t put that past him. I text him a couple of times, and when he doesn’t respond, I decide to go to the bathroom and then go home. He clearly doesn’t want to see me.
The ball spans three floors of the brownstone and there are a few bathrooms on each floor, but they all have lines. Finally, I spot one where the line isn’t obscenely long and get in it. There are two girls ahead of me, both of whom are glued to their phones. And two other guys ahead of them. I lean against the wall and close my eyes in an effort to relax a bit. I’ve had a little too much to drink and the pounding music makes my head feel like it’s getting hit by a sledgehammer.
“So what do you think of Alice? That girl Tristan brought?” I hear someone say.
“She’s really hot,” someone else says.
I open my eyes and realize that it’s the guys ahead of me in line who are talking. They have no idea that I’m there and I creep a little closer to the girl next to me so that I can hear a little better. It’s always nice to hear things like that.
“I know, right? Like really hot!”
“I can’t believe that they used to date. Why the hell would a girl like that go out with Tristan?”
“Oh, he’s a nice guy? And pretty easy on the eyes too.”
“Oh, shut up, you faggot,” the other guy says and they both crack up laughing. Suddenly, the nice conversation that I’ve been enjoying eavesdropping on turns ugly and bigoted. I can’t believe that he actually used that word. I’m about to say something to him, but then I hear him say something else.
“I’m just glad that he listened to reason and didn’t bring that chick that he’s actually with to this place. The brothers would’ve never gone for that,” one of them says.
My heart sinks. They’re talking about Tea.
“I know! I can’t believe he’s actually with her. She must be amazing in the sack. ‘Cause that fat cow’s not good to look at.”
And that’s when I’ve heard enough.
“For your information, Tea’s a wonderful woman. Generous and kind and beautiful. And if you two can’t see that, then you’re fucking blind.”
I toss my drink in their faces and walk away.
* * *
As I search through a bed full of coats for mine, I feel tears welling up in my eyes. I hold them back until I grab my coat, wrap my scarf around my neck, and run out of the brownstone. Luckily, no one notices and no one stops me. Once I get outside, a strong gust of cool New York wind bursts open my coat and chills me to my bones. Tears are already flowing down my cheeks and I struggle in zipping up the coat without getting the material caught in the zip line. I continue to walk down 116th Street, but eventually give up on the zipper and just pull my coat closed. I don’t live far.
When I reach Broadway, I wait for the light even though it’s late and the street is deserted. I’m sobbing and tears are running down my cheeks. I can only imagine how my face looks with twelve hundred pounds of makeup on it. The foundation, all of Juliet’s careful contouring, winged liquid eyeliner, and gobs of mascara have probably combined to make some sort of puddle of cement all over my face.
As the light turns green, I suddenly pause to think about why I’m so angry. So mad. I’m furious at Tristan for not telling me the truth. For not telling me why he wanted to take me to this ridiculous masquerade ball. I’m furious at the fact that the only reason he didn’t take Tea is that his frat brothers wouldn’t approve. I’m furious at him for caring what they would think. But the tears that are streaming down my face aren’t just about Tristan. Or Tea. I would never admit it out loud, but I’m mainly crying for me. About how unfair the world is.
I was fat in middle school. I weighed close to 170 pounds in 8th grade, when I was the fattest. But I was pretty fat even before that. I was fat, about 140 pounds, in 6th grade and it just got worse the older I got. I don’t know what brought it on. All I remember was that it was this vicious cycle. I felt horrible about myself, about how fat I was, so I ate food to make myself feel better. Every night I promised myself to not eat so much the next day and every day I did. I would slip up at breakfast and then basically give up on the rest of the day out of disappointment and anger with myself.
Growing up fat was one of those things that I never talked about. My parents pretty much pretended that nothing was going on. They said that they wanted me to be healthy and encouraged me to participate in sports. But how could I? I was gigantic and embarrassed to be seen in any sort of workout clothes. This past summer, I flipped through some family albums and found the few pictures that exist of myself from middle school. Oh, how much I hated taking pictures! They felt like concrete proof of the person that I hated to admit that I was. To this day, I remember the hatred that I felt toward myself in every picture. But looking at them this past summer, I was surprised by one thing. I wasn’t as ugly as I had thought I was. I wasn’t even that fat. All of these years, I had convinced myself that I was basically the ugliest and the most disgusting girl that ever existed. But I wasn’t. I was chubby, yes, but I didn’t look horrible. And I was definitely not as big as I had thought I was.
And during all those years, Tristan and I were friends. He was pretty popular and a jock, but he still hung out with me. When we were together, I would somehow forget about how ugly I was because he made me feel beautiful and worthy. He made me laugh and he laughed at my jokes. And then, at the end of 8th grade, he kissed me.
34
Tristan had the starring role in our 8th grade play, Romeo and Juliet, and he gave an amazing performance. During the play, he got to make out with the hottest girl from our school, Natalie D’Achille, and I was certain that they would start going out soon. I’d had a crush on him for close to a year by then, but of course I was too chicken to act on it. So instead, I just remained his friend. Quiet and supportive. Always there.
At the wrap party, after the final performance of the year, Tristan and I were hanging out, drinking too much soda and laughing our heads off. We were backstage, somewhere in a dark corner with no one around and, suddenly, out of the blue, he leaned over and kissed me. I barely managed to swallow the last gulp of soda that I took before I felt his tongue in my mouth. I was naïve that I didn’t even know if people kissed with tongues yet, but I will remember the feeling that ran through my body forever. It was like little sparks of electricity went off within me, everywhere, and light bulbs were turned on where I didn’t even know light bulbs existed.
I couldn’t sleep a wink that night. Whilst the kiss played on loop around in my head, I had a revelation. An epiphany. I suddenly felt like I was worthy. Like I mattered as a person. That maybe, I wasn’t as ugly as I felt. And the next morning, I didn’t pressure myself to only eat a certain amount of calories that day and then gorge on food when I failed. I didn’t make any promises except that I sa
id that I’m going to try to eat only when I was really hungry, and only healthy food. And if I failed, I wasn’t going to chuck the whole day out of the window and eat myself full to drown my feelings. Instead, I would accept that failure is the required for success and move on. No harm done.
And after that change of attitude, everything in my life changed. I wasn’t successful every day, but never binged again. Not like I used to. And slowly, I started to lose weight. A month later, I lost five pounds. Another month later, I lost ten. And by the beginning of ninth grade, I got down to 120 pounds. I still wasn’t very thin, I was only 5’1’’ back then, but the change was amazing. I’ve never been prouder of myself. And I owed it all to Tristan. He had showed me that I was lovable and that was enough to get me started.
So why was I crying now? Why was I so upset and angry? I ask myself, walking to my building. Because he had changed. For the worse. Instead of showing Tea the same kind of love and respect, he rejected her. I don’t know if Tea knows about the ball or why he didn’t invite her, but that didn’t matter to me. What mattered was that he didn’t want to take her out of fear of what other people would think. He didn’t want to be embarrassed. He didn’t care about stuff like that when he was younger; he knew that his popularity would survive hanging out with the likes of me. And that was in middle school, for crying out loud! There’s no population on earth that’s more cruel and heartless and subject to trends than middle schoolers.
Tristan’s such an asshole! I can’t stand him, and a new reserve of tears start to flow down my face again. There’s no excuse for this. This is why he’s embarrassed to be seen with her, why he won’t say that they’re dating. My heart goes out to Tea, but mostly it goes out to my 13-year-old self.
“Alice? Alice? What’s wrong?” Simon runs up to me. He grabs me and puts his arms around me. When I look up at him, I burst out crying.
“What’s wrong? What happened?”
Auctioned to Him 7: The Contract Page 116