“Funny,” I say. “I was just thinking the exact same thing.”
A few minutes later a bellhop comes in pushing a rolling silver cart bearing two cheeseburgers, an oversized bottle of champagne in a silver bucket, and a giant slice of chocolate cake. The waiter stops pushing the cart near the couch, opens the champagne, and pours two glasses. He looks at Sean’s black Converse and his floppy skater hair, at my cutoff shorts and black tank top. He shakes his head slightly, to no one. Sean signs the bill. He leaves a minute later and Sean and I are alone again.
He sits down on one end of the leather couch, and I sit on the other. Sean hands me a glass. I’ve only had champagne once before, at Amanda’s house, when her parents had a party and Eric stole a bottle for us. Eric and Amanda drank most of it and I only had a little sip.
“To being understood,” Sean says. We clink and I feel a little fluttering in my stomach. The champagne is very cold. I feel like I’m impersonating a much older and more sophisticated person by drinking it. A second later, my glass is empty.
Sean’s is, too. He leans back on the couch and picks up the bottle. “Glasses are for pussies,” he says. He lifts it to his lips and takes a long swig. He’s staring at me, smiling a little, like he’s challenging me. He passes the bottle back, never breaking eye contact.
“To not being pussies,” I say. And I raise the bottle up like I’m toasting and Sean gives a fist bump. I take a gulp and pass it back to him. And we just do this for a while; pass the bottle back and forth and back and forth until finally, all the champagne is almost gone. Sean leans back against the couch and stares at me, really stares.
“What?” I say. I raise my hands up to my face.
Sean reaches out and gently pulls my hand away. “I’m just looking at you,” he says. And he smiles so sweetly that I don’t even blush this time. I just close my eyes for a second and just think how even though there are hard things and scary things in the world, there are also really nice things, like drinking expensive champagne in a fancy hotel room with a guy you’re developing a huge crush on. A guy who maybe, just maybe, could have a crush on you, too.
But then suddenly, I remember something and pop my eyes open. And the champagne has dissolved my filter, so I just open my mouth and say it.
“Do you have a girlfriend?”
He puts the bottle down and stares at me. “What made you ask that?” I’m instantly sorry I did. “Oh, wait, because of what Amanda was talking about on the phone?” He pauses. “Yeah, I wondered when you were going to bring that up.”
“You heard that?” I say. “Oh God.”
“Your speaker volume is up really high,” Sean says, smiling.
“I’m so sorry,” I say. “Amanda’s just…”
“Don’t even worry about it,” Sean says, waving his hand. “Stories tend to get screwed up when they get passed from person to person, and I don’t give a shit what those people think, anyway, but the short version is that there was a girl and I loved her and I knew she loved me.” He looks down. “But things were really complicated and we couldn’t be together, and I tried to fix it so that we could be. But it didn’t work.” Sean frowns for a second, just for a second. Then he looks away. “I think when you find someone you really love, you have to do everything you can to make it work. Because all that shit people say about how love is really the only thing that’s important, it’s cheesy but it’s also true. Only sometimes love makes people do crazy things. And sometimes, no matter what you do, a relationship can’t work. Especially when one of the people in it isn’t even trying.”
Sean gets this really sad look on his face then, and on instinct, I just reach out and put my hand on his knee.
“Whoever that girl was, she made a mistake.”
“You’re a sweetie,” he says. And our eyes meet and I feel my face getting hot, so I take my hand off his knee and grab a fork off the table in front of us and stick it in the slice of cake.
I hear a low hum coming from across the room and I realize that my phone is vibrating again. Oh no. The phone. My conversation with Brad.
“Does that mean you can hear everything that someone on the other end of the phone is saying?” My arm is out in front of me, a bite of cake balanced on top of the silver tines.
“Yup,” Sean says. And then he waggles his eyebrows and winks.
Sean heard Brad making those jokes about the two of us together and he heard me totally going along with them. Oh God.