“Do you want the intro or not?” he asked.
“You don’t need to ask. It’s obvious that I do. I’ve been a fan of Johana for as long as I can remember. She wrote the best books of all time,” I said. His attitude amused me. Some way he had of doing someone a favor!
“Come on, then, and don’t start shrieking like a baby, please.”
Oh God… Johana smiled wide when she saw Nick coming over to say hi.
“Nick, you look amazing!” she said, giving him a hug. I was freaking out before. Now I was completely gaga.
“Thanks. You’re stunning as always. Have you seen Dad?” he asked. I analyzed each of Johana’s movements and engraved them in my memory. What I wouldn’t have given to have a camera just then.
“Yeah, I congratulated him,” she laughed. “We need more lawyers like him.”
When the chitchat was over, Nicholas turned to me.
“Johana, I’d like to introduce you to your number one fan: my stepsister Noah. I call her Freckles, though,” he said. He was laughing, but in that moment, I couldn’t care less.
“You’re the greatest. I absolutely love your books,” I said, my voice cracking. Amazing. All those years practicing these phrases in my mind to wind up saying the most cliché thing ever.
Nicholas tried not to smirk, but I could see the sarcasm in his eyes.
“Thanks,” she said and then hugged me. She hugged me!
“You want a photo?” she asked, grabbing me and pulling me over next to her.
“Man, I don’t have a camera,” I said.
“Jesus, Noah. Why do you think God invented cell phones?” said Nicholas.
I smiled, realizing how flummoxed I must be.
Johana put her arm over my shoulders, Nick aimed his iPhone, and the greatest moment of my life was thus immortalized.
“Thank you so much,” I said, still amazed I was actually looking at her.
“No problem, sweetie,” she said before smiling and walking off with a friend.
“You owe me one, little sister,” Nick said, slipping his phone in his pocket before leaning in and continuing in a whisper, “and that means keeping your mouth shut.”
I felt a shiver go up my spine when his hot breath touched my neck. I didn’t care what I was getting myself into anymore. I couldn’t stop smiling.
That was, until my phone buzzed. I opened my messages, expecting to see my photo with Johana. And that was when everything came crashing down. My heart stopped, my hands started to shake, and I felt hot all over. It couldn’t be.
It was a photo all right—a photo of Dan making out with a girl. A girl I knew better than I knew myself.
“I can’t believe it,” I said under my breath. I had a knot in my throat, and if I’d wanted to, I could have shed several years’ worth of tears I’d kept bottled up inside.
“What’s up?” I heard. I realized Nick was there, and he must have seen the photo flash across my screen.
My breathing sped up; I felt betrayed, hurt, deceived. I had to get out of there.
I pressed my phone into his chest and exited through a door to the left. I needed fresh air. I needed to be alone.
I went into the bathroom and walked over to the mirror, leaning on the counter, looking at my feet.
Take it easy…take it easy…don’t break down, not now, don’t cry, they don’t deserve it…
I looked up at my reflection. What was it that hurt more? That the first guy I’d ever loved had cheated on me or that he had done so with my best friend?
Beth… Beth!
I wanted to shout, to hit someone; I needed to do something with all that built-up rage; I needed to do something to keep from breaking into a million pieces. Right when my whole life had been turned upside down, when I was totally alone in a new city with no friends, with no one at all, where no one even cared who I was.
Son of a… I took a few deep breaths to calm down. They’d soon learn what I was capable of.
Once I had myself under control, I returned to the hall, where everyone was eating canapés and blabbing pleasantly about nonsense. No one knew how much pain I was feeling just then, how bad I wanted to shout at all those superficial people that they had no idea what it meant to actually suffer, and I wanted to shove all those glasses of champagne onto the ground and watch them break.
Champagne…good idea. I went straight to the bar.
A guy, Mexican maybe, was serving cocktails, and he turned to me as he wiped his hands with a damp towel.
“What can I offer you, ma’am?” he asked.
I laughed and said, “I’m seventeen years old, and you can’t be much older, so don’t talk to me like I’m one of these bougie bitches with a face-lift,” I said. To my surprise, he started cracking up.
“You wouldn’t say that if you didn’t know your way around here,” he said, looking at all the multimillionaires laughing it up behind me.
“Please, don’t even insinuate that I’ve got anything in common with these people. I’m here because my dumbass crazy mother decided to marry William Leister, not because this is paradise for me,” I said, draining the glass of champagne and handing it back to the bartender to refill it.
“Wait a second,” he said, looking behind him and then back at me. “You’re Nick Leister’s stepsister?”
Dear God, not another of that dickhead’s friends, please.
“I am,” I said, impatient to get served again and drown my miseries.
“I feel sorry for you,” he confessed, finally pouring the champagne. My mood was getting a little better. Anyone who hated Nick automatically had a place on the list of my favorite people in the world.
“What do you know him from, apart from his unquestioned reputation as a stuck-up asshole?”
“I don’t think you want to know,” he said, refilling my glass a second time without needing to be asked.
At that rate, I’d be drunk before midnight.
“If you’re talking about the races, I already know,” I said, realizing how much I wanted to get out of here. Was I really going to sit in that room full of people I didn’t know but hated with all my soul? Was I going to stay away from the thing I loved the most just because my mom had asked me to? Had she asked me when she’d decided to turn our lives upside down? If I hadn’t left, I’d still have a boyfriend and a best friend—or maybe I’d had to leave to find out the truth.
“I’m going to the races, and you’re taking me,” I said, and I felt that tingle in my body I got when I was doing something bad—something risky, something liberating, something that told me I wasn’t going to be the good little girl everyone expected me to be.
That night I would do whatever the hell I wanted, and if I got my revenge, too, then all the better.
10
Nick
I watched her walk off and understood nothing. Then I looked at the message under the photo.
This is what happens when you leave town. Did you really think Dan would wait forever for you?
Who the hell was Dan? And who was this bitch Kay to send a message like that?
I didn’t hesitate to open the photos on her phone. There were tons of pictures of her with some brunette chick, the same one in the other photo, I thought, and then some more with friends. And one in what looked like her old school. There I saw what I was looking for.
This so-called Dan had Noah’s face in his hands and was kissing her and she couldn’t stop laughing. I guessed she had known someone was taking their picture. So he’d cheated on her.
I turned off the screen and put her phone in my pocket. I had no idea why, but I wanted to toss it in the bottom of the ocean. Something got to me when I saw that picture of Noah kissing another guy. I suddenly wanted to punch anybody who decided to get in my way that night.