Page 55 of The Endowment Effect

Turning, she made her way to the back patio for some fresh air. Walking through the sliding glass doors, she pushed through several people dancing by the pool. At the far end of the patio, a group of juniors surrounded a chair where a boy was chugging beer through a hose while another stood on a crate, holding a funnel attached to the other end.

Everyone was chanting, “Chug, chug, chug.” Then, the kid began to spew beer, unable to see it through as the others booed his efforts.

With the intent to find some privacy, she walked closer, noticing the boy with questionable chugging skills was none other than Grant Mason, Lucas’s foster brother.

He was younger than Maisie. A freshman.

She wondered if Lucas was aware of his classmates schooling his younger brother on his beer chugging skills.

Just as she heard someone from behind her say, “Oh, shit. Santos is here,” Def Leopard began to play “Pour Some Sugar on Me” while Grant sat back in the chair, his polo shirt wet with beer and obviously trashed, despite his lackluster drinking attempt.

She smiled, as if a ripe opportunity of devilish proportions dangled before her.

Oh, she’d get Lucas Santos’s attention. Good or bad, it didn’t matter. It never did.

Then, as if validating Shelby’s accusations of her eldest daughter being possessed by the devil, she felt her body begin to sway as she approached the boys and an unsuspecting Grant. Raising her hands in the air, moving her lower body suggestively, she caught the group’s attention, as well as Grant’s, and they all clapped and hooted in mass approval, egging her on.

Someone in the crowd must have alerted Lucas to her shenanigans, as he pushed his way to the circle, watching her dance suggestively in front of Grant, twirling her fingers in his hair with one leg in between his and bending low.

Homing in on Lucas for some type of reaction, he just stood there with his fists clenched and his eyes blazing.

To move this along, she crossed her arms in front of her and grabbed the hem of her T-shirt with both hands, moving her hips side to side as she slowly pulled the garment over her head.

She wore a sports bra beneath her shirt, nothing at all seductive. Honestly, it made her boobs look weird. But to the inebriated young crowd, it was an emboldened act that went against all standards of civility silently agreed upon in the small Southern town.

The crowd went wild.

Even from a distance, she could see a muscle twitch next to Lucas’s eye, and a vein in his neck pulse as Grant instinctively reached out to touch her mesmerizing, undulating hips with his hands.

Just as she was going to pull them down with an “ah, ah, ah…” she noticed Lucas take a step forward. It was all the reaction she needed, although minuscule, to allow Grant’s hands to stay where they had landed, as she shimmied down farther, her gross uni-boob inches from his face and the boys surrounding her and Grant going, literally, batshit crazy.

Just as soon as the song moved to the chorus, she began to undulate like a pro, moving her fingers down over her bra, and then splaying them out suggestively over her torso, reaching her stomach, the tips moving just below the waistband of her jeans.

She had no idea if Grant was enjoying himself or had passed out in the chair. The only person who mattered was looking at her with undiluted hatred.

Good.

That’s what she was going for.

Wasn’t it?

As the song ended, Usher’s “Yeah” began, but Lucas had left. Her motivation for gyrating like a stripper on a bad night had left the party.

She kissed Grant on the cheek, found her shirt, and searched for Maisie.

It didn’t take long before she found her, on all fours, puking between two hedgerows.

Waiting until she was done. She helped her up. “Time to go home.”

Maisie wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. “I’m not ready to go home.”

“Come on, Maisie, don’t do this. The last time I had to carry you to the house on my back while you sang Alicia Keys, ‘If I Ain’t Got You.’”

“I never asked for your help.”

“I wasn’t going to leave you passed out and unconscious by a bonfire, your shirt covered in puke and cherry-flavored vodka. Jesus, you looked like roadkill and smelled like ass.”

“Unlike you, I have friends. They would have helped me.”

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