Mariel broke away and took a step back. “Eris! What are you—never mind. You’re drunk,” she said, stating the obvious. “You need to get home.”
“That’s right. Let’s go home.” Eris started to pull Mariel down the stairs, but Mariel dug her heels in.
“Eris—”
“Come on. I want to see all your inktats,” she teased mercilessly, though she wouldn’t have really cared if Mariel pushed her away; she was past caring about anything. Still, this was fun, the teasing and the flush on Mariel’s cheeks and the stolen kiss. Eris loved these games. She was good at them. Play to your strengths, her dad used to say. She’d always assumed he was talking about her beauty. Everyone knew that was her greatest strength.
No. She shouldn’t be thinking about her dad anymore.
“Well … okay,” Mariel said, and laughed. “Let’s go. You are my date, after all.”
Eris nodded, feeling reckless, not caring about anything but this moment.
* * *
Eris’s head was pounding. She started to reach for the sheets she’d kicked down near her feet—and froze, blinking into the unfamiliar darkness. The bright pink contacts-clock at the corner of her vision told her it was 4:09 a.m. Next to her was the sound of quiet, steady breathing.
Slowly, carefully, Eris turned. Mariel lay sprawled alongside her, her dark hair spilling out over the flat white pillow.
Shit, shit, shit.
Eris stayed utterly still, practically holding her breath, as she pieced together the events of the night before. She remembered taking all those shots of cheap liquor at the party … kissing Mariel on the roof … then heading out together into the warm summer night, to come back here, to Mariel’s room …
Mariel shifted in her sleep, and Eris’s heart lurched in sudden panic. She needed to leave. Moving as hurriedly as she dared, she slid out of the bed and hunted for her clothes, which were strewn all over the floor. Buttoning her jeans with one hand and holding her wedges in the other, she walked barefoot out of Mariel’s room.
Eris hesitated a moment in the hallway of their apartment, disoriented—she hadn’t been paying attention when they stumbled inside a few hours ago. But then she heard muffled footsteps and a low voice, and she jumped to action. She could not be confronted by Mariel’s parents right now. In a sheer panic, she grabbed what looked like the front door, and escaped into the cheap fluorescent lighting of Baneberry Lane.
Seconds later Eris had slunk the three doors back to her apartment and was safe in her room. She didn’t even bother changing into pajamas, just curled up in her bed and squeezed her eyes shut. God, she missed their old apartment. She missed her old bed, with its soft rounded edges and aromatherapy pillows and her expensive Dreamweaver.
Tonight had been a mistake. Eris blamed all the shots she’d taken, and her bizarre mood. Thank god she’d at least woken up when she did, and saved herself the awkward morning-after conversation. And thank god none of her friends knew what she’d done tonight.
So she’d hooked up with Mariel—oh god, what was her last name? Eris winced. Well, it didn’t count and didn’t matter, she thought as she drifted restlessly back to sleep. It would be like the whole thing had never happened at all.
AVERY
LATER THAT WEEK Avery stood in the middle of her closet, skirts and dresses and tops from last season strewn around her on the floor like piles of brightly colored leaves. “To Leda,” she muttered, composing a flicker on her contacts. “Designer Day cleanout! Come over?” She started to turn her head all the way to the right, the motion she’d programmed to send messages, only to change her mind, whipping her head back around to save it as a draft. She wasn’t actually sure she wanted one-on-one time with Leda right now.
Leda still hadn’t said anything about the growing distance between them. Avery knew she should try harder, but everything between them lately felt stiff and forced. She couldn’t stop thinking about what was going on with Leda and Atlas. Had they hung out again since the date she’d managed to sabotage? Had they kissed? Avery couldn’t ask either of them about it, so she kept torturing herself by imagining them together. It was a constant source of anguish.
Besides, she thought unfairly, Leda was the one who’d started it all, by acting weird when she came back from summer break—lying to Avery about where she’d been, hiding her crush on Atlas. And Leda wasn’t exactly making a huge effort with her right now either.
Avery sighed and turned back to the clothes scattered over her pale blue carpet. She was cleaning out her closet before next week’s Designer Day, when all the best international designers would set up in boutiques throughout the Tower and reveal their next season’s collections. By now the designers all recognized Avery. A lot of them invited her into their portable privacy-coned dressing rooms, so she could actually try on the sample items they’d brought, which was way more fun than just projecting clothes onto her 3-D body scan. But it could also be embarrassing; every year at least one designer would proclaim that Avery was his or her muse, that she’d inspired the whole collection, and then she’d feel uncomfortably obligated to buy one of everything until Leda led her firmly away. That was the nice thing about shopping with Leda. She was the only person, aside from Atlas, whom Avery could trust to tell her no.
At some point Avery and Leda had started this tradition, of cleaning out their closets the week before Designer Day to make room for new purchases. It was always a fun game, trying on their old things and making fun of each other’s fashion faux pas, reminiscing about past adventures. Avery felt a pang of loss. She missed the way she and Leda had been before, back when everything was easy. They would have it again, though, she promised herself; once things between Leda and Atlas fizzled out, as surely they would.
She stepped into a flowy white-and-yellow dress she’d worn to her cousin’s wedding two years ago and tapped the smart mirror, changing her reflection so that it showed a braided updo instead of her current style, long and wavy. But not even fixing the hairstyle could save this one. “Too dated,” she said aloud, and hung the dress on her closet’s input rod, where it was swept into the donation bin.
Next she pulled on a vibrant tangerine Oscar de la Renta gown, with a long train and a bow on one hip—from last summer’s Whitney young members’ gala, if Avery remembered right. She was struggling with the zipper when a knock sounded at her door.
“Come on in, Mom,” she called out, thinking she’d heard her mom’s voice. “I need you to zip me up—”
Atlas walked through the door. “I thought you were out,” Avery stammered, holding her dress awkwardly in place.
“I was,” Atlas said simply. Avery wondered if he’d been with Leda but didn’t dare ask. “I can zip you, if you want,” he offered.
Avery turned around, shivering at the intimacy of the gesture. His hands were warm where they brushed her back.
“You look amazing,” Atlas told her as she swished back to face him, the heavy skirt dragging over the carpet. “But it still needs something.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’ve been wanting to give you this.” Atlas pulled a drawstring pouch from his pocket. Avery reached for it, her breath catching a little.
Inside was a necklace that glittered with unfamiliar stones. They looked almost like black diamonds, but each had a swirling orange streak through the middle, reminding Avery of the smoldering embers of a real wood fire.