Page 64 of All These Beautiful Strangers
“Fat chance,” I said. “Stevie is too smart to give you a second glance, much less her virginity.”
“I like a challenge,” Leo said. “Maybe you could put in a good word for me? Wear her down a little bit?”
Something occurred to me then, and the smile slid off my face. I sat up. “Tell me you didn’t put Stevie in your stupid game.”
I’d never betrayed Leo’s confidence and told anyone about the Board of Conquests—not even Drew. But if he’d put Stevie on his board, I’d be forced to warn her. I couldn’t just sit back and let her get played.
“Relax, I was joking,” Leo said. “Though, I have to admit, putting Little Miss Priss in the game would certainly make things interesting.”
“Promise me you didn’t put any of my friends on the board,” I said, because I had to be sure.
Leo looked at me and rolled his eyes, annoyed I hadn’t found his joke as funny as he did. “I promise,” he said. “So, how’d things go with your counselor?” he asked, changing the subject.
“Really, really good,” I said in a mock-cheerful voice as I lay back down. “Apparently I’m a horrible person.”
Leo laughed.
“No, really,” I said. “She flat-out called me a narcissist.”
“You’re a Calloway,” Leo said. “We’re all narcissists. It’s, like, genetic.”
I laughed. “I guess,” I said.
Then I was silent and closed my eyes and tried to communicate like we had when we were children—the way we each used to feel what the other was feeling, even when we didn’t have the words to convey it.
I’m not a bad person, am I? I wanted to ask. We Calloways are selfish and manipulative and we have hard edges, but—but—but we’d never hurt anyone, not in any significant way, not in a way that really mattered. Right?
It was stupid, the kind of thing I was glad I didn’t have to say out loud. But also, the kind of thing I liked to think Leo might have understood if I had said it. I lay there for a moment, my eyes still closed tight, and wondered if he had heard me. Then, in the darkness, I felt him take my hand.
Sixteen
Grace Fairchild
Christmas Eve 1996
For the third night in a row, I couldn’t sleep. Teddy’s parents’ house was easily the largest house I’d ever been in, but it didn’t feel like a home. Everything was cold and polished and untouched. It didn’t feel lived in. There were fresh flowers in the vase on my armoire in the morning, and at night when I returned to my room everything was tidied—my dirty clothes washed and folded and returned to my suitcase, the minty smear of my toothpaste wiped clean from the sink, the bedspread perfectly creased and turned down by the maid. Every trace of me neatly erased. It was so different from the house where I had grown up, where we were always leaving bits of ourselves behind—the old sofa in the garage that reeked of Lonnie’s pot; the smear of fingerprints on the wall by the front door where we’d balance ourselves as we leaned down to take off our winter boots; the permanent stain on the kitchen ceiling from when Will’s volcano experiment prematurely erupted; the dimples in the baseboards from our illicit kicking the ball around indoors.
And it wasn’t just the house that felt foreign; it was the people. Eugenia had been welcoming, asking me question after question about myself. Did I ride horses? No. Ski? No. Where was my favorite place to vacation? I haven’t traveled much. In her relentless quest to find some common ground, she had only proved we had none. Teddy’s father was reserved; Olivia and her friend Porter were too self-involved to pay anyone else much attention. Margot couldn’t be bothered to remember my name—she had called me “Gaby” once, and then “Gina.” Alistair was aloof—we’d been seated next to one another at dinner and he’d barely spoken two words to me, choosing instead to engage Porter in a convoluted conversation on existentialism and art. Even Teddy was different somehow. When it was just the two of us, he was fun and easygoing. But around his family, Teddy became a caricature of himself—lazy and flippant, as if he wanted to refute any expectations they might have of him and at the same time prove he didn’t care what they thought.
I couldn’t seem to navigate the strange world I had entered into. At dinner, we were served foie gras in duck jus. I didn’t know what it was, and I was too embarrassed to ask, so I ate it. I’d never tasted anything quite like it before—it was light and buttery and melted on my tongue, a little slice of heaven. Olivia abstained from the foie gras and had a salad instead. When I asked if she was a vegetarian, she said she didn’t find the torture of animals appetizing. She explained, in excruciating detail, that the ducks were gavaged. They had a tube stuck down their throats twice a day and were force-fed corn boiled in fat until their livers grew to ten times their natural size—that was what gave the duck liver such a delicious taste and texture. When she finished, I set my fork down, horrified. I couldn’t stomach the cheese course or the dessert, a decadent chocolate soufflé.
And tomorrow morning would be the worst of all. We would open presents after brunch. I’d enlisted Teddy’s help in picking out gifts for his family. He had taken me to Barneys, where he’d done all of his shopping. We’d stood at the counter and he’d shown me the sterling silver cufflinks he’d bought for his father (half my month’s rent) and the Hermès handbag he’d picked out for his mother (half a year’s rent). I’d had to settle for thoughtful gifts instead—a coffee table book on gardening for his mother, a shaving set for his father. I dreaded sitting in front of them as they opened them tomorrow—the feigned “ohh”s and “ahh”s and thank-yous, especially in the wake of the extravagant gifts they had probably gotten me.
Deciding I could no longer lie there and stew, I threw back my bedsheets and got up. I pulled my swimsuit and goggles out of my suitcase, put the swimsuit on, and grabbed a spare towel from the bathroom. In the dark, I navigated my way through the cavernous hallways to the indoor pool Teddy had shown me after dinner.
I’d lost count of my laps when I looked up and saw that I was no longer alone. Alistair Calloway was sitting on the far edge of the pool, near the chaise lounge where I had left my towel, his pant legs rolled up, his ankles dangling in the water. He lifted his beer in greeting when he saw me notice him, and I took off my goggles and swam over to where he was.
“Fancy seeing you here,” he said.
“Couldn’t sleep,” I said, pinching my nose to get the water out.
“Room not to your liking?”
“No. I mean—yes, it’s lovely. It’s just . . . it’s like staying in a museum,” I said.
“‘Homey’ isn’t really Eugenia’s style,” Alistair said, taking a sip of his beer.
It was the deep end of the pool, so I grabbed on to the edge to keep myself up. We both fell into an awkward silence. I wondered what he was doing here—if he was having trouble sleeping too, and if he usually came to the pool by himself late at night to unwind. But he wasn’t wearing a swimsuit; he was fully dressed. Had he followed me here?
