“I’m surprised you aren’t having Nadia write the essays for you,” Leda countered, and now she was unmistakably smiling. Watt felt himself smiling back, for the sake of the mirroring effect Nadia always talked about.
“Oh, I’ve tried to have her write them, but they always come out too perfect.”
“Too perfect. Now there’s an underused phrase if I’ve ever heard one. If only more things in the world were too perfect.” Leda’s dark eyes glimmered.
“I know, I don’t expect you to feel sorry for me.”
The music changed, and Leda stepped back, breaking their strange truce. “I’m thirsty,” she declared.
Watt recognized that cue from all his years of hitting on girls at bars. “Let me get you a drink,” he offered quickly.
The bartender was a Hispanic girl who looked about their age, with bangs and sharp eyes. Watt asked her for two whiskey sodas. She raised an eyebrow at the double order, but didn’t question it.
When he found Leda, she was leaning forward on a high-top table, one foot tucked behind the other. Watt stopped in his tracks, hesitating at the sight of something in her expression—something frail, and tentatively hopeful. It was as shocking and unexpected as seeing her in her underwear.
He’d thought he knew her so well, but he was starting to wonder if he understood Leda Cole at all.
When he handed her the drink, Leda gave it a slow stir, holding up the glass for inspection as if to check the amber liquid’s color. “How much alcohol do you think it would take to make us forget all the things we’ve done that we regret?” she said darkly.
Watt wondered what had prompted this change of mood. “I typically drink to make new, fun memories, not erase the ones I already have. You should try it—you might enjoy it,” he said lightly.
He’d hoped to shift the tone, make her laugh a little, but Leda just looked at him sidelong. “What about the night I came over to your place? You were definitely drinking to forget something then.”
Watt reddened at the thought of that night. He’d been drinking to forget something, all right—the fact that Avery was in love with her brother. A fact that Leda had wormed out of him when she showed up at his apartment, still in her school uniform, only to drug him and seduce him into telling her everything. “I don’t remember,” he mumbled, suddenly unable to stop replaying that moment in his head, when Leda had planted herself on his lap and kissed him.
This might be a good time, Watt, Nadia prompted.
She was right. If Leda was dwelling on the past, maybe she could be tricked into referencing Eris’s death.
He stepped forward a little so Nadia could get perfect footage, in case this worked. “I’ve been thinking lately about the roof,” he said.
Leda looked at him in sudden horror. “Why would you bring that up?” she asked, her voice a whisper.
“I just wanted to—”
“Back the hell off, Watt,” Leda snapped. She stormed away, her shoulders drawn up defensively, her movements injured and angry.
I give up, he told Nadia. How can I ever make that girl trust me? I don’t even like her!
You don’t like most people, Nadia pointed out ruthlessly.
Watt sighed and turned around, only to see that he was standing quite close to Avery Fuller.
She was as resplendent as always in a draped strapless gown. Her hair was combed back into a low twist, showing off the perfect symmetry of her face, which was currently creased in puzzlement as if she couldn’t fathom why Watt would be here, or couldn’t even remember who he was. Watt realized with a start that Avery probably hadn’t thought about him a single time since that night. God knows he hadn’t been sitting around pining after her, either—he didn’t want her anymore, now that he knew she was with her brother—but he’d at least wondered what had happened to her, whether she was okay. Yet here she was, blinking at him as if she’d forgotten his very existence.
Watt suddenly understood what Leda had meant earlier, about feeling used by the people she cared about. Had he ever meant anything to Avery, or was he just another attempt at distracting her from her feelings about her brother?
“Hi, Watt. You look great,” she said, with a smile toward his tux: which she had helped him pick out, and which he’d bought in a pathetic, misguided attempt at impressing her.
For some reason, Watt was irritated with her for bringing up the afternoon they’d gone tux shopping together. How did she expect him to reply, anyway—was he supposed to tell Avery that she looked great too? As if she didn’t already know that.
“Thanks, I guess,” he said wearily.
“What brings you here tonight?” Avery pressed, evidently still confused.
“Leda brought me.”
Avery sighed. “I’m sorry. It’s my fault. She’s trying to get back at me.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Watt was getting really sick of these highliers and their oblique statements.
Avery glanced down, fiddling with a bracelet to avoid looking at him. “She brought you here as a dig at me—because everyone remembers that I asked you to the University Club party, and now when they see you with Leda they’ll think she stole you from me,” she said miserably.
Watt was stunned. Part of him felt appalled by Avery in that moment, at how utterly self-centered her view of the world was, even as another part of him recognized that she was probably right.
“I’m sure you’re not here alone tonight either, are you?” he heard himself ask, wondering who her next victim was.
Avery looked back up at him. “I came with Cord, but we’re just friends.”
“You should probably double-check that Cord knows that,” he shot back, surprisingly angered. “Because I happened to miss that particular memo, about the real reason Avery Fuller asks a boy as her date to anything.”
She looked like she’d been slapped across the face. “Watt—”
“Forget it,” Watt said, and walked away from her. He needed a drink if he was going to keep getting further tangled in the Gordian knot of these highliers’ screwed-up lives.
AVERY
AVERY STOOD THERE in bewilderment as Watt turned angrily away. It pained her that he clearly thought so little of her. Her intentions toward Watt had always been genuine: she’d never intended to hurt him, never set out to use him, or trick him. Yet he obviously resented her for what had happened. And that last thing he’d said, about “the real reason” she asked anyone to be her date … it made her wonder if he knew the truth about her and Atlas. But how could he, unless Leda had told him?
The band struck up a new song, one of Avery’s favorites. Suddenly she wanted nothing more than to dance. She glanced around in search of a partner, and her eyes lit almost instantly on Cord. It had been Atlas’s idea that they each ask dates to this party—it might soothe their parents’ suspicions—and besides, it would help keep Avery and Atlas from talking to each other too much.