Page 28 of Fun at Parties
His mouth twists. “I thought you weren’t supposed to be working.” There’s the disapproval, as usual.
“Can you just do it?” I ask tightly, and he takes my phone.
I dance for a few seconds as he records. They are possibly the most excruciating seconds of my life. I’ll post the clip tomorrow with whatever song is trending, captioned something likeReason #1 to fly solo this fall: No one gets in your way when your song comes on in the club.
“Do you want to watch it to make sure it’s good?” Nate asks charitably.
“No, thanks.” I’ve already realized the background would’ve looked better if I faced the other direction, but there’s no way I’m redoing it. “Let’s go.”
At first we stay by the pool, but Logan is just as likely to be in the swarm of bodies moving to DJ COLLIDEascope. I follow Nate as he tentatively approaches thedance floor. The crowd sucks us in, and we wind our way through the tiny gaps between couples moving to the beat, people fist-pumping, and, in one case, a tiny, freckled woman kicking off her shoes and doing what looks like an advanced-level Irish step dance with her friends egging her on.
As we get closer to the DJ booth, the crowd gets denser, and the fog rolling out of the machine makes it hard to see anyone other than the people closest to us. A guy I can’t see does that “I must full-on caress your back in order to move past you” move, and someone accidentally sloshes a drink down the front of my dress. Nate grabs my wrist so we don’t lose each other. A row of flame machines sends a blast of fire into the sky, and he jumps. He says something over his shoulder, but I can’t hear.
I tug on his shirt and holler, “What?”
He dips his head down to speak into my ear, and I feel his closeness more acutely than I feel the cold liquor soaking into my dress. His hand is still on my wrist, and my pulse pounds against his thumb. “I said let’s go back.”
When we finally reach a spot near the pool where we can breathe again, we look like we’ve survived something wild. Static electricity has wreaked havoc on Nate’s hair, and the top two buttons of his now-rumpled shirt are open. The spilled drink left a trail of wet spots that darken the front of my dress, making it look like I both have a drooling problem and peed myself. Logan and his friends are nowhere to be found.
“Let’s get a drink,” I say, and Nate nods vigorously.
We join the mass of people waiting at the bar, and an idea hits me. “Hey!” I say to the person nearest me, adark-haired woman wearing a white crochet cover-up over her one-piece. Her nose is deep in her phone. “I heard some of the guys from that showThe Beach Houseare here tonight. Have you seen them?”
She looks up at me blankly, shakes her head, and goes back to her phone.
“Nice try,” Nate says. “It was a good idea.”
It takes a while to get to the bar, so it only makes sense for each of us to get a mixed drink and a shot. I want tequila, but Nate’s sworn it off since the September Bailey turned twenty-two, when he sang karaoke in a non-karaoke bar and later threw up so hard he needed Icy Hot for his lower back the next day. He goes for whiskey.
We down our shots, and he grimaces. “Another lap?”
We continue the search, alternating a circuit around the club with a drink at the bar. Each time, the people in the throng on the dance floor are drunker and rowdier, and after each drink, my own buzz loosens me up more.
“You know, I said you were dressed for two separate occasions before, but you fit right in,” I say after our third—maybe fourth—shot. I can feel it in my blood, unwinding me.
His eyes stay level with my…nose? “So do you.”
“I wasn’t sure if you even saw what I was wearing.” I’m fishing, and I hate myself for it, but I can’t stop.
“Trust me, I saw.” This time he does look, and the booze must be getting to him too, because the unhurried way his eyes dip makes me feel like one of those drinks they light on fire. “You look like your own evil twin.”
“Is that bad?”
He sips his whiskey and Coke and wipes the corner ofhis mouth with his thumb. “No.” His darkening pupils threaten to swallow me up. “It’s not bad.”
A dangerous flutter courses through me. I think I misunderstood the way he acted in the lobby earlier, when he refused to look at me. It wasn’t because of a lack of interest. It was because oftoo muchinterest.
The bass thumps, and behind him, sparklers crackle atop bottles of champagne on their way to a table somewhere, but I’m zeroed in on the heavy way he’s looking at me. He lifts a fingertip to the hair going rogue at my left temple. “Your devil horns are out of control right now.”
His hand drops, brushing against the satin of my dress. At first it’s an accident, I think. But then it lingers, skimming the fabric on the outside of my thigh.
He’s flirting, and I like it too much. But I can’t read into it, not again. I’m chalking this one up to the power of Vegas.
“Hey,” I call to two women standing a few feet away. I realize a second too late that they’re deep in conversation, but they turn to me anyway. “Did you hear that some of the guys fromThe Beach Houseare here tonight?”
The one in the crop top’s eyes light up. “Shut up,” she says. “I love that show.”
I lean toward her. “Logan, Max, Grayson, and Will. But I haven’t seen them yet.”
