“Fuck yes,” he said. “Madison, you done this before?” She shook her head. “Do you like cinnamon?”
“I fucking love cinnamon,” she said. She was so surprised by her own words she almost clapped her hand to her mouth. Callan ceded the floor to Wyatt, who pulled a lighter from his pocket with a flourish and showed her how to light the shot on fire, how to slam your palm down over the lip of the shot glass and hold it there for a second.
“You need to wait for that suction,” Wyatt said, winking at her.
“Don’t we all, though,” Callan said, and they slapped five. She ignored the nauseous flip in her stomach. It was refreshing, even, to be feeling nausea from so many different sources. It was like standing in front of a clamoring crowd of angry people, all shouting over one another. You were absolved of all responsibility; you no longer had to listen to any of them.
Wyatt lit the shot for her, and she covered the burning liquid with her hand, feeling the sticky suction ring forming. She was learning, too, that everything went down easier once you had a few drinks down there already. She was aware of how unpleasant the shot tasted, but it was remote. The pain was far away, she would fix it later.
Chip was still looking over at them, not even pretending to ignore her. Callan reached out and pinched her skin through her dress, just above her hip bone, and within seconds Chip was up from the sunken bar, shouldering Callan away from her.
“Give it a rest,” he said, putting one hand to Madison’s arm and moving her steadily backward, away from the boys, ignoring their laughter. He put his other hand to the small of her back and they were on the stairs, up and out of the room.
HER MOUTH WAS STILL TANGY from the shots, and Chip was moving ahead of her through an unfamiliar part of the house. She was only holding his hand by two fingers, four of their fingers all locked together.
You’re not my mother, she had said to Lily in the car. Everything felt spiky, now. Every possible image applied an unwelcome pressure, as though with each errant thought she were pressing her own fingertips against fresh bruises all over her body. Lily in the car. Her father sprawled out on the floor. She walked with Chip down a darkened hallway.
She stopped near a pair of French doors that looked out over a side patio. There was an outdoor fireplace, mysteriously lit—so Zo? was right, there were still people around, wandering the house. Chip had moved away again, and she stood there, neither outside nor where she was, waiting for something to happen. So when he walked up next to her, put his hand to her shoulder and cupped it as though it were a fragile animal he was afraid to crush, it felt expected, inevitable even. She was barely even excited.
“Making a break for it?”
She smiled but said nothing, an instinct for which she later felt an absurd, awestruck gratitude.
“Everything okay?”
“I don’t want to talk about it, if that’s okay.”
“I wasn’t. I was talking about—you just seem tough. I see how you ignore, you know, Zo?’s bullshit.”
“She’s the brave one,” Madison said. “She would never have been this brave two months ago, trust me.”
She could feel Chip’s breath on her neck.
“Well,” he said, “she’s probably just trying to get a rise out of you. It’s pretty exotic, you know, for someone like her. And I think Wyatt is actually afraid of you. Which is very impressive, I have to say.”
“Sure,” she said.
“I’m serious.”
“Did he—I mean, is his costume a joke on purpose? Does Wyatt understand, you know, irony?”
She was worried she had used that wrong. They taught it in English every year, but no one ever learned it well enough not to keep making the mistake.
Chip laughed.
“All I know is, I wish I’d gotten here sooner to see his face when you saw that costume. It’s kind of endearing, when you think about it. It would never have occurred to him that it might be awkward, not until you walked in. He’s like this big idiot that can’t help bumping into things.”
“It’s not awkward.”
“No, I know. I didn’t mean it like that.”
His hands were on her waist, kneading the fabric of her dress. “Was everything okay with Amanda, earlier? She kind of Irish exited there.”
“Could we not talk anymore?” Madison said. She’d said it from somewhere purely sincere, but he swallowed and she saw that he’d taken it for a dare, an invitation.
He cradled her chin, her jaw. His other hand was on her shoulder, drawing her toward him, so that even when he was reaching for her, it felt like she was leaning into him.
Once it was happening, once they were kissing, he took his hand from her shoulder and pressed it to her hip bone, his fingers warm through the fabric of her dress, and pushed back until her entire body was flush with the door behind them.
She thought for a moment of the phantom adults somewhere in the house, that familiar clinch of panic. That reluctance to be spotted if she didn’t know she’d been spotted.
But then Chip took her bottom lip lightly between his teeth, pressed their bodies closer together, and reached for the thick silk curtains next to them. He drew a curtain around them, hiding everything but their entwined feet, and they stayed there for a few minutes, everything about him both hard and soft, pressing into her with delicious force. His hands never straying from her face and her hips so that she didn’t have to make any real decisions.
“Where’s Abbott?” Wyatt’s voice came ricocheting down the hall, the open ballroom door allowing a wedge of warm light to pierce the darkness. “He said he was getting more beers from upstairs. If he is wandering around up there, I swear to God—”
“Dude, will you give me a fucking break?” Chip yelled over his shoulder, but he’d already stepped out, and he barely looked back at her as he pinched the skin above her elbow and then broke into a jog, disappeared.
She went back to the ballroom, to the soft lights and the reflections of everyone dancing in the mirrors all around them. To the T.I. song blaring as Allie mouthed along to the lyrics, which of course Madison had never realized were all about sex, of course they were. Zo? and Wyatt had disappeared from the party and Allie crawled on top of Callan on a brocade love seat in the corner.
Madison stood near the other boys, and tried to remember to smile whenever they all laughed.
Soon Zo? was back, black makeup gathering at the corners of her eyes and her face otherwise untouched. She asked if Madison wanted a ride home, she’d called one of her housekeepers. She’d come get the car tomorrow, whatever, she didn’t want Allie harassing her about it. Allie didn’t even look up at the mention of her name. She was still coiled on top of Callan, her legs thrown across his lap, when Madison left them there, the lights still casting colored patterns on all the walls and mirrors, the music blaring.