“Nooooo!! You’re leaving!?!”
For a second I was worried that pathetic banshee wail had accidentally come out of me, but then Eunice appeared on the other side of Dave, nearly tripping over an ottoman in her haste to harass him.
“Can I just tell you something?” she asked, grabbing Dave’s arm, not waiting for an answer. “I seriously never, ever talk to famous people, but you are like, so amazing. I just had to say that, or I would hate myself.”
“Wow,” Dave said, his features resetting into an unconvincing smile, like a shaken Etch A Sketch. “Um, thank you.” Lolly and Maple appeared behind Eunice trying to look casual, like they’d danced their way over by accident.
“You’re so cute!” Eunice cried. “I’ve seen Saving Nathan literally a hundred times.”
“Literally?” Ethan interjected. “You’ve literally seen it a hundred times?”
“OK, fine, like eight times,” Eunice said, shooting Ethan a withering look. “Still, that’s a lot. And I really, really love you.”
“In it,” Lolly said quickly. “She loves you in it.”
“Oh my God, what did I say?” Eunice squealed, delighted with her Freudian slip. “I’m sorry, I’m just kind of starstruck.”
“We all are,” Maple said breathlessly.
“Don’t be,” Dave said, his plastic grin starting to wear thin. “Seriously, I’m just a regular person.” He looked for an exit again, and I saw my opportunity. Dave was clearly waiting for Liv to come out and save him from his fans.
“Yup, he’s just a regular person with a curfew,” I said, taking Dave’s arm in a way that I hoped wasn’t as hungry or proprietary as the others had been. “Why don’t we go find your coat?”
“That would be awesome,” he said, glancing at me gratefully.
“Oh, sure, whatever, just leave me to the wolves!” Ethan called as we turned our backs. I hoped for his sake that one of the girls—or anyone, really—would stay and talk to him, take his mind off of Liv for a hot second. That boy was badly in need of a reality check.
“Thank you,” Dave whispered as we snaked our way across the living room, dodging sloshing drinks and expressive elbows, ducking our heads against the current of double takes. I felt electrified by the attention, by everyone’s eyes not only on Dave but on me, too. We were headed for the coats, so as far as anyone else knew, we were leaving the party . . . together.
I imagined Liv, finally emerging, stoned and bored, looking around for us, asking people where we’d gone. I could almost feel my phone buzzing against my hip as she furiously texted me. It gave me a wicked thrill.
“My pleasure,” I said as we reached the kitchen. The bottle had rolled off into a corner, but a few couples had decided to continue the game anyway, sitting on counters and wedged against cabinets, their flushed faces pressed together under the bright track lighting. My pleasure. My real pleasure would have been to push Dave back onto the pile of coats in the laundry room and find out if his lips were as soft as they looked. And I hadn’t even been drinking. We stepped through the tangle of bodies as quickly as we could.
? ? ?
Finding Dave’s nondescript jacket in the sea of winter puffer coats could have been an SAT math question, it was that difficult. Mine was the only one that wasn’t some variation on a muted shade of New York–cool black or navy.
“Red, huh?” Dave asked, pulling it out by a sleeve from the bottom of the heap. “I guess you must like to stand out.”
“I don’t have a choice.” It came out cockier than I’d meant it—I was thinking more along the lines of feeling like an outcast and a long shot, more along the lines of 1 in 1,086, but Dave smiled and raised his eyebrows.
“I believe that,” he said. I felt a tingle rush up my cheeks; I had to purse my lips to keep from grinning.
“I feel like I should apologize for everybody in there,” I said, once I composed myself. “They’re drunk. Which, I mean—that’s fine, I guess, but you should know that not everyone at our school is like that. And my friends are definitely not like that.” Except Liv, I almost added, but then bit my tongue. She hadn’t always been that way. It had only been since things with Jasper started falling apart, around Thanksgiving, that she’d started coming to school hungover, and camping out in the nurse’s office. And I gave her a pass because I had never had my heart broken. I thought maybe everyone did that.