The first time it really stood out to me was at the next senior house party, which I’d managed to score an invite to. The party was pretty much everything I expected—a lofty McMansion belonging to some other senior, packed to the gills with people pouring out of doorways and alcoves, making out in dark, smoky corners, spilling various punches on the carpets, and clinking giant handles of liquor on the kitchen island.
Jack had squeezed my hand and smiled at me confidently as we wove through the crowds, coming to a stop in the kitchen. I watched carefully as he poured a cup of Sprite, adding a light splash of vodka and holding it out to me.
“A little more, please,” I said primly, and his eyebrows shot up in surprise.Me too, buddy.For someone who had never had vodka in their life up until that point, I was feeling pretty bold—and desperate to fit in.
“Will do.” Jack nodded appreciatively as he poured some more into the cup. “Didn’t strike you as a doubles kind of girl, Olive Austin.” He held the cup out to me as an offering, and I took a generous sip, swallowing down the carbonated burn and doing my best not to choke in front of a room full of people.
“There’s a lot you still don’t know about me,” I wheezed, blinking the tears out of my eyes before they had a chance to fall. Jack just looked impressed, nodding.
“Yeah,” he murmured, eyeing me up and down with a newfound appreciation in his expression. “I’m looking forward to finding out.”
The night was a weird push and pull that I wasn’t quite used to, where I was invited into conversations between Jack and his friends but didn’t understand the references or have anything to contribute. Eventually, some drunk guys swaying over at a Ping-Pong table challenged Jack to beer pong with his buddies, and after giving my hand a squeeze and giving me a quick kiss on the cheek with a “Just hang with Siena and Rio, okay? I’ll be right back,” I found myself on my own in a corner with two heavily made-up senior girls, eyeing me suspiciously. The taller one, who I assumed was Siena because someone called her name from across the room earlier, raised one perfectly plucked eyebrow in my direction, her shiny blond hair glistening in the strobe lights.
“Jack’s new boo?” she asked, her tone sounding like she’d tasted something sour. Next to her, Rio’s riot of dark curls shook as she snickered, bangles jangling as she (poorly) hid her laugh behind her hands.
“You’re the one we’ve seen around with him in the library, right? The one with that super-big planner?” Rio’s tone was just as rude, curling her lip in distaste. While I’d never particularly cared about what people thought of me before, somehow the way they were speaking about me—like being organized and hanging out with Jack even though I was a junior was something to beashamedof—set me off.
Even though I was younger, I wasn’t dumb. I clenched my jaw and raised my chin, a newfound determination raging hotly through me—or maybe it was just the vodka burning through my bloodstream.Jack invited you here, I reminded myself.You’re his girlfriend, and you have every right to be here.
“Yeah,” I heard myself saying, though everything soundeda million miles away with the crowded room and the thumping music and the alcohol making everything fuzzy at the edges.When did I almost get to the bottom of this cup?“I’m his…I’m his girlfriend.”
Siena’s brow arched even higher, and Rio snickered again. “Really?” she mused, perplexed. “I don’t think Jack Cameron’s ever dated a freshman before.”
White-hot rage and embarrassment blinded me temporarily, and all I could hear was the crinkle of the Solo cup as I pressed it deeper into my fist. “I’m ajunior, and Jack and I have been together for—”
“Jesus, you two,” a third voice interrupted us, and I turned to see a willowy girl with long, bright red hair down to her waist push into our semicircle. “You don’t have to be so rude to the new girl all the time. It’s a tired look.” She turned her back on Siena and Rio, who stood gaping, and flashed me a warm smile. “Ignore them. I’m Mira. Also a senior, but way less likely to bite your head off.”
I liked Mira instantly. She accepted me into the fold of her friends at the party, bringing me around and introducing me to some other seniors—all way less hostile than Siena and Rio, who were still standing in their corner whispering to each other furiously—and she even refilled my drink a few more times, eventually switching my vodka Sprite for water when it was becoming clear that the world was starting to tilt around the edges.
“So,” she said as we sat on a bench in the backyard, the cool night air kissing our skin as we watched Jack and his buddies dominate the other team in beer pong. “Is this your first time at a senior party?”
“Yeah,” I slurred, eyes struggling to follow the Ping-Pong ball as it dipped in and out of plastic cups of foamy beer. I couldn’t help but think about the first time Jack had invited me to a senior party, back when I’d turned him down because I was with Tyler. Even though I’d felt jealous in the moment when I skipped the party for our movie night, wondering what was happening there, in this particular moment I realized that maybe I wasn’t missing out on much at all.
Except for Mira, who seemed pretty okay.
Her eyes tracked my movements, and when our gazes locked, she gave me a sad smile. “It’s hard trying to fit into Jack Cameron’s world, isn’t it?”
My cheeks immediately pinkened with the embarrassment of being seen. “It’s all right. He’s…he’s really great, so it makes the rest of it worth it.”
Mira just hummed, giving me an unimpressed shrug. “If you say so. Seems exhausting, if you ask me. I heard his family’s rich and intense. Like I said, has to be tiring.”
It is sometimesis what I didn’t say, though I was surprised at how insistently the words pushed at my teeth, dying to get out.
But that was then, and this is the unfortunate now, crammed in a too-small seat on an airplane next to my ex for the next god knows how long (actually, the pilot knows how long, but the TV screen in front of me turned off and I’m too stressed right now to turn it on and check the map), so may as well let it all out, right?
“So, yeah,” I sigh into the cramped space as I finish my recap. “That’s how things have been going with me lately. Welcome to the unfortunate reality that is my life.”
Tyler’s silent next to me, mulling my words over until I getto my last sentence. When I do, his eyes snap to mine, sending a jolt of electricity down my spine that startles me.What the heck was that?
“Nothing about your life is unfortunate,” he says seriously. “I mean it, Olive. You have an amazing mom. And you do really well in school. And you’re setting yourself up for the future you want—those are all very admirable things.” It’s hard to miss the melancholy in his voice when he says it, though.
“Yeah,” I whisper, almost to myself. I’m not even sure he can hear me over the dull roaring of the plane’s engine.
Am I really setting myself up for the future I want?I wonder, keeping that one to myself. Because the future I wanted never included an unfaithful partner—or an inattentive one, either. And it seems like at the moment, that’s the situation I’m presented with.
It also didn’t include Tyler Ferris showing back up in my life, but that’s another thing that’s out of my control, even if I’m still flipping out internally about it, becausehow did that happen?
I give myself a hard mental shake. It’s better to focus on Jack—whatever’s going on there—than digging too deep into my existential crisis right now.
