Page 10 of The Party Plot

“Florida, huh? I wouldn’t have expected that. Which part?”

“Doesn’t matter.” The place he associated the most with home, his grandma’s house, had been outside of Jacksonville. The heat was weighing on him, and for a moment it felt too familiar, tooknowing, like someone was looking over his shoulder, breathing on his neck. Why had he come back to the South in the first place? There were other places he could have gone too, plenty of rich idiots in every state in the nation.

“I didn’t see any pictures of Florida on your Instagram.” Laurel was looking at him strangely, and Casey felt a cold jolt go through his stomach. There was a spark of intelligence behind the harmless friendliness in Laurel’s eyes, and he didn’t like it.

“No. Not all of us have a palatial family estate to go home to.” The wordpalatialhardly ever found its way into his vocabulary on its own. Was he copying the way Laurel spoke? Casey had a habit of doing that. Usually it helped him connect with people, but right now, he didn’t want Laurel in his brain.

“Palatial, huh? Honestly, I’d rather be wrestling gators.”

Casey groaned internally. He was distinctly aware of the sweat gathering at his hairline. “I promise you there is no gator wrestling in my past.” That was also true. “And why were you on my Instagram, anyway?”

“I’m curious about you.”

“Don’t be. I thought we agreed nothing happened.”

Laurel shrugged. “Would it be so bad if something had?”

“I don’t know. Should we tell Denise about it?”

Laurel looked away, a muscle twitching in his neck. Just as he had thought: Laurel was hiding things. Denise must not know that he liked men.

“How was Ibiza?” Laurel asked. He pronounced it, obnoxiously,eye-bee-tha, the pink tip of his tongue flicking against his teeth, and for a second, Casey had no idea what he had said, let alone what he was talking about.

“What?”

“Ibiza.” Laurel’s voice was casual, but he was still looking at him a little too intensely. “You were there, what, last year? It’s one of my favorite places. I’m honestly surprised we didn’t run into each other. I’m there super often.”

“Right.”

“There’s this tapas bar calledEl Pavo, right off the beach. Have you been to it?”

“Yeah,” Casey lied, feeling a line of sweat drip down his cheek. “Great place.”

“I love theirsardinas.Have you had it? It’s like a spicy sardine paste on toast.”

“I don’t really eat seafood.” What was happening? Casey had the feeling that the conversation had gotten away from him, and he could see his sense of control floating off into the sky like a stray balloon. “Laurel—”

He persisted. “No? What do you eat?”

After this? Probably a whole box of donuts.He remembered Laurel hand-feeding him peanuts from the mini-bar, remembered sucking the salt off his fingers. He’d licked champagne bubbles off of his chest, too, and—a lot of other things that had seemed like a good idea in the heat of the moment. Casey cleared his throat. “I have to get back to work.”

“Sure.” Laurel clapped him on the shoulder, and Casey just barely kept himself from flinching. His hand lingered, a hot, heavy weight that Casey could feel sinking into his skin. “I’ll see you around.”

“You’re not—”

“Don’t worry, I won’t get in your way. But we’re bound to run into each other in a town as small as this. Might as well lean into it.” He squeezed his shoulder, then stepped away, and Casey only had a brief moment of relief before Laurel was straightening his bow tie. “Crooked,” he said, with a grin. “Wouldn’t want that.”

Casey’s mouth was too dry to speak. He could feel the veins pulsing in his temples.

“Talk soon,” Laurel said. It sounded like a threat.

Casey’s hands were shaking as he watched Laurel walk across the lawn, and the shaking didn’t subside once the car had pulled away, sun glinting off its windows. He waited until it was out of sight to pull his phone out of his pocket, nearly dropping it.

He could barely type, and he didn’t even know if his spelling was correct as he Googled,el pavo ibiza—math had been his strong suit in school before he’d dropped out, the orderly reliability of numbers appealing to his brain—but of course, nothing popped up. Not even when he did a larger search for famous tapas bars, or when he examined the street view of businesses along the waterfront.

Fuck, fuck, fuck.

Casey typed out a text to Jamie.Did you put me in ibiza on my instagram?They’d set several of them up a long time ago, for different purposes, different identities. He remembered joking with Jamie about what a bougie gay party planner’s Instagram would look like. Cocktails Casey didn’t drink, clubs he didn’t go to, places he hadn’t been.

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