She looked at me and said, “Hi. I’m Clio.”
“Bailey,” I said, grinning wildly, because it was impossible not to. Clio had a warm smile, the kind that reached the corners of her eyes and made them crinkle. She just projected kindness. I could feel my shoulders relax.
“Bless you, Bailey, for getting this asshole to quit being a hermit.”
Seriously, what is the story with Charlie’s apparent hermitatude?
Charlie put his hand over Clio’s face and teasingly pushed. “Just because I have a life doesn’t mean I’m a hermit.”
“Whatever.” She reached around him and grabbed a can of Old Milwaukee off the coffee table. “Sit down and get ready to feed us the answers.”
We sat down on the couch, and Charlie leaned closer to me and said, “Just pinch my leg or something if you’re bored, and we’ll go.”
“Like this?” I asked, pinching his leg hard.
He gave his head a slow shake and said, “You are so lucky I’m a nice guy. If Eli did that, I’d drop him.”
“Wow—so macho,” I said under my breath, pulling my phone out to make sure neither of my parents had texted.
I heard Charlie laugh as Clio started telling me the rules of the game. It was like Trivial Pursuit, but made for our generation. All the questions were about things everyone was familiar with, but they hinged upon the tiniest of details.
What color robe was Jess wearing when she and Nick had their first kiss on New Girl?
Every time a team lost a point, they had to stand on the dining room table and perform a song selected by the other players. I teamed up with Clio, and everyone in the house seemed to gravitate over to the living room to get in the game.
Charlie was, apparently, a mercenary. If a team didn’t know the answer, they had the right to pay him a dollar for his help. And shockingly, he was right every single time he was called to serve. So when Clio and I were unsure about the answer to List the exact wrappings around Michael Scott’s foot after he grilled it in his Foreman, Charlie bumped his leg against mine.
I looked at him, and he gave me an obnoxious eyebrow waggle. “You might want to consider sliding a single into my rhetorical thong on this one, Glasses.”
“I’m queasy now—thanks a lot.”
“Do you have a buck, Bailey?” Clio asked me. “Because he might be right. I know Michael Scott’s got Bubble Wrap, but I can’t remember what else.”
I couldn’t. I couldn’t pay Charlie when he was looking so smug, and when he started chanting “Pay the Chuck, pay the Chuck”—and everyone joined in with him, I had to take a stand.
“We don’t need to pay the Chuck,” I said, looking at Charlie and raising my eyebrows. “Michael Scott’s foot was wrapped with clear plastic Bubble Wrap, and that is all.”
“Judges?” Charlie asked, and I did a double take at his face. He looked very pleased, so I knew I’d made a mistake.
“Bailey is right,” the blond girl with the answer card in her hand said. “It is wrapped in Bubble Wrap.”
“Boom,” I said.
“But,” she added, dropping the card and grinning. “That Bubble Wrap is held in place by clear packing tape.”
“That’s not a wrapping,” I yelled, arguing as the room exploded into laughter and noise. “Tape isn’t part of the wrapping; it’s the adhesive.”
Charlie shook his head, laughing, and said, “Why didn’t you listen to me?”
“Because I’d rather sing on a table than let you be right,” I replied.
“Get up and come on,” Clio said to me, smiling a tipsy grin. “We’re up.”
“I mean, I’m just here with Charlie,” I tried as she grabbed my arm and pulled me to my feet. “As a guest. I shouldn’t be subjected to the same—”
“Come on,” she said, pulling me toward the dining room.
“Charlie,” I said, looking back at him. “Shouldn’t you save me?”
“I tried,” he said, smiling, “but you didn’t want to dip into the proverbial G-string.”
“What song?” Clio asked, using a remote to turn on the karaoke machine after we climbed on top of the dining room table.
Everyone started yelling out suggestions, and then Charlie said, “?‘All Too Well.’ The ten-minute version.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN Charlie
Everyone cheered, and Bailey looked at me like she wanted to stab me in the face. Her eyes narrowed and her brows went down, and it occurred to me that I was 100 percent comfortable with her glaring at me.
I kind of liked it, to be honest.
Getting under her skin was my new favorite hobby.
What she didn’t get this time, however, was that I was doing her a favor by choosing that song.
The music started, and again—everyone cheered.
But then—as I’d suspected—the entire house started singing along with Clio and Bailey. It was like a Taylor yell-along that everyone was totally into.
You almost ran the red ’cause you were looking over at me.
Bailey was smiling and laughing, sharing the microphone with Clio, and I was a little impressed by the way she was rolling with it. I would’ve expected Miss Hall Monitor to be intensely nervous, but she actually looked relaxed.
“I thought you said she was a dork,” Eli said, grabbing the spot on the couch beside me. “She’s hot.”
I glanced at Eli, and he was watching her, smiling, and something about it felt wrong.
“I never said she was a dork.” I went back to watching the entertainment, and Bailey was kind of yelling now, her nose scrunched up. “Fuck the patriarchy” / Key chain on the ground. “I said she was uptight and a little nerdy.”
“Well, it works for her,” he said, and I didn’t like the way he said it. As if her looks were the most important thing about her.
What the hell was wrong with me?
Chill the fuck out. I needed to chill the fuck out. The only reason Eli’s attitude was hitting wrong was because I felt protective of Bay.
That was it.
Eli was fine.
“Yeah,” I agreed. She might’ve been hella irritating, but she did look really fucking cute, dancing around on top of the table.
It was a little disconcerting, to be honest.
Just as I was thinking that, she looked at me. Her eyes got squinty as she grinned and sang, which made me smile back, and then she screwed up the words. She sang the wrong word—never lovely jewel—loud as fuck into the microphone, and I don’t know what my face did, but it made her start laughing.
And something about it got to me.
Which was why I was laughing and singing along like a fucking chump when I shot a quick glance over my shoulder and caught the amused smiles being exchanged between Becca and Kyle as they entered the party.
Fuck me.
CHAPTER TWENTY Bailey
I was in the middle of laughing my ass off—while singing—when I saw it happen.
One minute Charlie was giving me a funny grin and singing along to “All Too Well,” and the next his face completely changed.
His smile disappeared like a door slamming shut, and his Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed. I looked back at the couple who’d just walked in behind him, and—holy crap—it was her. The gorgeous girl from the movie theater.