Late to the Party

by Kelly Quindlen

  It was smushed with the two of us in my little sedan, but Ricky seemed perfectly at ease, even with his long legs bumping up against the dashboard. He tapped his fingers on his knees and hummed along to the Ben Howard playlist I had going through the aux cable, and his contentedness made me feel more at ease, too.

  Samuel’s party looked and sounded a lot like Ricky’s had, but I was more confident walking in this time. Cliff, Natalie, Samuel, and Terrica rushed to hug me, and before I knew it, they were pressing a drink into my hand. “Vodka LaCroix,” Terrica informed me, cheers-ing our cups together. “We’re bougie bitches like that.”

  I took a sip, and it burned like nothing I’d ever tasted before. I stuck my tongue out without meaning to.

  “People like this stuff?” I said, and Ricky laughed and wrapped an arm around my shoulders.

  “Just sip it. It’ll get better.”

  Samuel took me on a tour of the house, which was smaller than Ricky’s and mine but full of knickknacks and kitschy art that his parents were into. Terrica came with us, shooing people out of the way and twirling like Vanna White every time Samuel pointed out something new. When we got to the upstairs, Samuel pulled up short at the sight of Leo standing assertively near the banister.

  “Dude. You blocked off the entire floor?”

  Leo crossed his arms. “Yeah? I’m only letting them use the bathroom. Your parents’ and sister’s rooms are off-limits.”

  I remembered what Ricky had told me after that first party: that Leo always found the spot where people were most likely to hook up and charged them ten dollars to use it.

  “Are you fucking kidding me, man?” Samuel said. “How much have you made so far?”

  “Thirty bucks.”

  Samuel hesitated. “Fine. But I get half of what you make. And obviously we”—he gestured between Terrica and himself—“don’t have to pay.”

  “I’ll give you twenty percent.”

  “Seriously, dickhead?”

  Leo shrugged. “Dude, you know I’m gonna use the money to share more weed with y’all anyway.”

  “All right, all right,” Samuel said. “Carry on.”

  We trailed back downstairs, where Ricky, Natalie, and Cliff were hanging out in the kitchen. Samuel filled them in on Leo’s latest business venture, but I hardly listened: I was looking for Lydia, but she was nowhere to be found.

  “Hey, Natalie,” I said as quietly as I could, “where’s Lydia tonight?”

  “Oh,” Natalie said breezily, pouring more LaCroix into her cup, “she’s at the movies with her family.”

  “Her family?”

  “They go one Friday night a month, isn’t that cute? Usually it’s just her and her parents, but both her brothers are home this weekend, so it’s like a big deal. I always give her shit about it, but that’s because my parents are divorced and I’m jealous. Anyway, she’ll probably roll in around eleven with a big thing of popcorn under her arm.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “What?”

  “She loves movie theater popcorn, so she gets it to go,” Natalie said, rolling her eyes. “And then she’ll try to grab my phone with that greasy butter all over her fingers, just watch.”

  The party picked up its pace, with Samuel blasting Latin hip-hop that made my ears pound. More and more people arrived, and the shrieks of laughter grew louder, and the smell of sweat and heavy cologne was everywhere. I sipped my way through a second vodka and LaCroix, feeling more relaxed by the minute, even talking to someone I didn’t know in the bathroom line. Then Magic Dan pulled me over to show me card tricks in the family room, and Natalie had to come to my rescue by pretending she needed something from my car.

  An hour later, Tucker showed up. I didn’t realize it was him at first because I hadn’t been able to see him that night in the dark, but I got a good look at him when he came into the warm light of the kitchen. He was a lanky, awkward-looking guy—there was almost something birdlike about him—but he had a kind of easy confidence about him, too. He went right up to a group of guys I didn’t know, who bro-hugged him and handed him a beer, and within seconds it was clear he was commanding the conversation. I kept waiting for him to come talk to Ricky, but he stayed planted where he was, as if Ricky were invisible to him.

  Then I saw him looking furtively in our direction a few minutes later.

  “Tucker’s here,” I murmured to Ricky.

  Ricky didn’t take his eyes off Samuel, who was in the middle of telling a story. “I know,” he said through clenched teeth.

  I didn’t say another word about it.

  A while later I ended up in the family room, sprawled on the floor with Ricky, Samuel, Natalie, and Cliff. Samuel was telling us about his family cat, Burgermeister, who was tucked away in his room upstairs, and who was so fat they were having to track him on a diet plan. Ricky laughed hysterically into his hands as Samuel acted out Burgermeister’s attempts to climb the stairs.

  “I’ve got hiccups,” Ricky said, giggling and wiping tears from his eyes. He paused and took a breath. “Man, I think I need some water.”

  He ambled into the kitchen and didn’t come back. I was pretty sure he must have been looking for Tucker, but none of his friends seemed to notice.

  “Ha!” Natalie said, pointing across the room. “As promised, Codi.”

  I turned to look and saw Lydia heading our way, a giant tub of popcorn under her arm. She looked radiant. I wish I could explain the way she lit up the room, how she had this natural energy about her, how she stopped to chat with almost everyone she passed. When she plopped down on the family room carpet with us, she was almost breathless.

  “Here,” she said, passing off the popcorn bucket, which Cliff grabbed immediately. “What are we drinking?”

  “Vodka,” Natalie said in a Russian accent.

  “I’ll make you one,” I said, and hopped to my feet before she could tell me no.

  I mixed the drink the way I’d seen Natalie do, crossing my fingers that I got it right. When I got back to the family room, Samuel, Cliff, and Natalie were absorbed in conversation again, but Lydia looked directly at me with a grin that made my heart leap. I caught a whiff of her perfume, sweet and floral and distinctly her.

  At some point our group ended up on the deck, where we found Ricky chatting with Tucker by himself. Their energy changed the moment we walked out. Tucker looked at me with mild horror in his eyes, then looked to Ricky with an almost imperceptible question. Ricky shook his head and muttered something in hushed tones, and Tucker’s shoulders relaxed.

  Cliff and Samuel converged on Ricky and Tucker, and I knew to anyone else it must have just looked like a bunch of guys hanging out, but I could see the subtle resistance in Ricky’s and Tucker’s body language: how Ricky took a second too long to angle his hips away from Tucker, how Tucker crossed his arms over his chest, how their grins looked a little too forced.

  “Are you people-watching?” someone asked.

  I turned to find Lydia standing there with a cold beer in her hand. She held it out to me, and I took it and popped it open like a pro.

  “Nah, just waiting for you,” I said, feeling bold. “I wanted to play the star game again. What do you think of the name ‘Kris Jenner’?”

  Lydia choked with laughter, dribbling beer onto the deck. Everyone looked up as we hopped backward from the splash, Lydia still choking, me laughing and thumping her on the back. Her bare shoulders were like sparks beneath my fingertips.

  “Damn, that was embarrassing,” Lydia said, coughing between laughs, but she seemed perfectly at ease.

  “Good thing I’m not wearing sandals,” I said, shaking the beer-covered toe of my Vans.

  She rolled her eyes, but she was grinning. “It could be worse, trust me. The other day a customer sneezed scrambled eggs onto my thigh, and my manager scolded me for not telling him ‘Bless you.’”

  “My brother threw up ice-cream cake on my arm once. At my own birthday party.”

  “Seriously? You win.”
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  “Anytime my family tells the story, my dad is always like, ‘Yeah, Grant, you really take the cake for that one.’”

  “Dad jokes are simultaneously the best and worst thing in life.”

  “They really are.”

  We turned to lean against the deck railing, facing outward toward the trees. It felt like the world had shrunk to just the two of us. Her elbow bumped against mine, and my body hummed at the touch.

  “Are you having a good time?” Lydia asked.

  It was easy to be honest with her. “Actually, yeah, I am. Would you believe this is my first real party?”

  “You’re kidding,” Lydia said, but there was no judgment in her eyes, only spark.

  “Big groups of people aren’t really my thing. But I really like your friends, so it’s easy to be here with you all.”

  Lydia smiled. “They’re really awesome people. I didn’t even hang out with them until this past year.”

  “Really?” I asked, surprised.

  “Well, excluding Natalie. She and I have been friends for years. We used to hang out with a different group of girls, but then something happened and we kind of … went our separate ways. Last summer she started dating Cliff and hanging around his friends—you know, the boys—so I started hanging around with them, too, and then Samuel and Terrica started dating, and we all just kind of fit together.”

  I paused, letting the narrative sink into me. “Can I ask what happened with the other girls?”

  Lydia crossed her arms. “It was a big, stupid thing, but the gist of it was they thought they were better than Natalie and me. I’d been trying to make it work with them since freshman year, ever since it was decided that we were, like, a ‘group,’ but the truth is they acted like my frenemies more than my friends. Finally my brothers pulled me aside and were like, ‘Why are you letting your “friends” treat you like this?’ And I thought, you know, they’re right.”

  I was quiet, thinking of Maritza and JaKory. They were nothing like Lydia’s frenemies had been, but there was still a part of me that wanted to pull away from them.

  “I’m going through a lesser version of that with my two best friends,” I told her. “I love them more than anything in the world, but sometimes when I’m around them I feel like—like I’m less than the person I want to be. Then I met Ricky and the rest of you, and it was like this whole new side of me got to breathe.”

  Lydia’s eyes were on me, studying me. I felt it like a heat lamp.

  “Can I tell you about my friends?” I asked her, and in that moment I felt more vulnerable than ever.

  “Yeah,” she said, her eyes intent on mine. “Of course you can.”

  I took a long, deep breath, and then everything came spilling out, everything I loved about Maritza and JaKory even with the complicated feelings I had right now. I told her about how quirky and genuine they were, and how Maritza dressed up as Janice from Friends for Halloween one year, and how JaKory used to have a pet rabbit named Robert Frost, and how they sang me a song when I couldn’t stop crying after I sprained my wrist in PE class, and how we called ourselves JaCoMa for all of seventh grade …

  “They sound amazing, Codi,” Lydia said. “I don’t think they’re going anywhere. Maybe you need to breathe right now, but that doesn’t mean you don’t love them.”

  I swallowed. The vodka and beer were making me emotional, and I didn’t want to be emotional tonight.

  “Well, anyway…” I said, feeling self-conscious. “I’m just glad I met you and your friends.”

  Lydia looked hard at me. “You’re really cool, Codi.”

  I met her gaze. “I’m not sure that’s true.”

  “Sure it is. Everybody’s cool in their own way, once you give them the chance to show you.”

  I smiled back at her. “You think so?”

  “Yeah, don’t you think that’s how high school works? You go through it with your head up your ass, making judgments about people you don’t even know, but if you can get out of your own way and make room for the people you weren’t expecting, then everything finally clicks.” She shook her head, and the smile slipped from her face. “It takes forever to find your people, and then as soon as you do, you graduate and head to different colleges. You lose each other right when you’re getting to the good stuff.”

  I watched her for a moment, how her body went still and her eyelashes caught the glow of the porch lights.

  “I’m sorry,” I said quietly.

  She looked at me. “Don’t be. It’s just life. And hopefully”—she took a deep breath—“there will be some cool new people waiting for me at GCSU.”

  “There will be,” I told her. “You’re going to make a million new friends in college. They’ll flock to you.” I took a breath, feeling my way into something that would make her smile. “Especially if you keep bringing giant popcorn buckets to parties.”

  Her mouth twitched. It looked like she was thinking for a second, and then she turned to me and said, “I hope there’s a kernel of truth to that.”

  I shook my head, laughing. “Terrible dad joke.”

  “Completely terrible,” she agreed, her eyes bright, “but you’re laughing, aren’t you?”

  * * *

  The night went on. Samuel and Terrica talked me into a game of beer pong, which I played with Leo, who had finally retired from guarding the upstairs, and then Natalie invited me to play King’s Cup with her, Lydia, and a group of people on the family room floor. I’d never played that game before, but it was really funny, especially when people made up rules like “Everyone has to speak in a British accent” and “No pointing at anyone,” which, it turned out, was way harder than you’d think. Then I downed another beer and made some friends in the bathroom line, including the infamous Aliza Saylor, who tried to pull her thong off while we stood there talking.

  I barely saw Ricky during any of this, but when I was out in the garage, getting more beer, Tucker stepped out behind me. He stood in the doorway with his hands in his pockets, scuffing his shoe into the floor. I waited, the cold beer cans pressing against my shirt.

  “Codi,” he said, clearing his throat.

  I nodded at him. “Hi, Tucker.”

  He kept standing there, scuffing his shoe harder, and I could physically feel how uncomfortable he was.

  “I like your Hawaiian shirt,” I said, my voice carrying across the garage.

  He looked up at me. It was almost like he was checking to see if I was serious.

  “Really.” I shrugged, unable to believe this popular athlete thought I was making fun of him. “It’s a good shirt. It’s fun.”

  He cleared his throat again. “Thanks. I found it in my dad’s Goodwill pile. Thought it would get some laughs.”

  There was a beat of awkward silence where he just stood there looking at me.

  “Look, Tucker—” I began.

  “No, hold on,” he said, going still. “Please, let me try this.”

  “Okay.”

  “I didn’t mean to follow you, but, uh … I just wanted to apologize for freaking out on you a few weeks ago. I was worried you would tell someone what you saw, but he—um, Ricky—says you haven’t done that.”

  “No, I haven’t,” I said, watching his anxious face. “And I won’t.”

  “Thanks. It’s not that I’m embarrassed or whatever, but—it’s just that it’s no one else’s business, right? I’m still trying to figure things out, and I don’t want other people making judgments.”

  The beer cans were too cold; I set them on the floor and rubbed my hands into my shirt, trying to warm them. “Ricky told me you’re the best baseball player our school has.”

  “He said that?”

  “Yeah.”

  Tucker bit his lip. “Ricky exaggerates, I think.”

  I met his eyes. “No, I don’t think so.”

  He gave me a pained half smile. Then he took a few steps forward and plucked the beer cans off the floor. “Who are these for? I’ll carry them.”
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  “You don’t have to.”

  “Nah, I’m happy to. I need to look like I came out here for a reason, anyway.” He took a step toward the door and then turned back to face me. “Listen, Codi … if things don’t pan out with Ricky and me, please don’t hold it against me, okay?”

  And on that cryptic note, he opened the door and led me back into the house.

  * * *

  The party started winding down, and it was a damn good thing, because I was drunk. From what I could tell, everyone else was, too. We were sprawled out on the family room floor again, this time playing a girls-only round of King’s Cup while Cliff, Leo, and Samuel snored on the couches behind us.

  Lydia was stretched out next to me, her thigh occasionally brushing against mine, my skin buzzing wherever she touched it. Her hair kept falling over her face, and every time she pushed it back, I wondered what it would be like to kiss her.

  “New rule,” Lydia said, flinging down a king of spades. “Everyone has to be addressed as ‘bro’ instead of their name.”

  “Why, bro?” Natalie slurred.

  “Because, bro, I declared it.” She pointed at Terrica. “You’re up, bro.”

  “Bro, thank you,” Terrica said, slumping toward the card pile.

  Our voices got deeper and deeper the more we said “bro,” and it was stupid, but we were giddy and drunk and having a good time. Lydia was laughing harder than anyone. “Your turn, Codi,” she said, bumping my elbow.

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Terrica said, pointing at her. “Take a drink, bro. You said her name.”

  “What? Shit. Sorry, bro.” She looped an arm around my shoulders, and my whole belly swooped. She was mere inches from my face, and I could see her lips so clearly.

  “No sweat, bro,” I said, leaning into her arm.

  A few minutes later, I glanced into the kitchen and saw a girl standing very close to Tucker. I hadn’t seen her until now, but she was hard to miss: She kept grabbing Tucker’s arm and sweeping her hair back as she laughed.

  “Who’s that?” I asked.

  The other three looked up lazily. “Oh, that’s Bianca,” Natalie said. She burped without seeming to notice, then lowered her voice conspiratorially. “She and Tucker kinda have a thing.”