I winced. “Once again, I repeat, are you sure you want to go on a first date—ablindfirst date—on your birthday? Way high pressure, Mac.”
Annie nodded in agreement, but Mac gave a curt shake of her head. “This is mythirtiethbirthday.” She paused to let the gravity wash over us, which it did. “I’m the first one into the breach. So if I want to use my birthday to go on a first date in the hopes that I won’t enter the next decade alone, youwillsupport me. You will dance. You will drink. You will make merry.”
Zoey bowed. “Aye, aye, Captain.” Which was kind of silly, since Zoey was dressed as a mermaid, not a pirate.
“Good.” Mac adjusted her hot-pink sash, which screamedSweet Sixteenin giant gold glitter letters. She’d leaned fully into her hybrid Halloween-birthday by dressing like one of those spoiled children from theMy SuperSweet 16MTV show. Her hair was heat-damage-stick-straight, and she wore one of those body-con dresses, a tiara atop her head. In fact, with Zoey dressed like a children’s cartoon and Mac dressed like an actual child, I was anxious to get them both off the streets before any Halloween pervs cruised by.
“And for what it’s worth,” Mac said, “I’m almost guaranteed to like Ted. He does amortization. I connected with him through work friends.”
Ah.Mac’s job. Tread carefully.
We glanced at each other.
“Does he work, you know,internally, and that’s how you connected with him?” Annie wore a look of innocent curiosity. “Or is amortization more of an external thing for your company?”
Mac waved. “Oh, he works at MacArthur’s with me. Just in a different department. You know how huge the place is.”
“And how would you sayamortizationcompares to your work?” Simon asked carefully. “Would you say it’s the same, or opposite, or highly related...”
Smart of Simon to get context clues.Amortizationwas a word we could google later.
Mac rolled her eyes. “You guys are hilarious. Come on. Let’s get this mescal in our bloodstream. I only have half an hour to reach the perfect level of tipsy before Ted shows.”
She charged ahead, her Sweet Sixteen sash blowing in the wind, leaving the rest of us to shrug.
“We’ll figure it out one day,” Annie promised, her voice a tad muffled under her mustache. She and I were wearing matching mustaches we’d purchased together. She’d paired hers with a thin nightdress and carried a smoking pipe—a Freudian slip. I wore a white tank top and acid-wash jeans, with a studded belt and armband. Pure Freddie Mercury, ready to rock and roll.
“Good luck hooking up tonight,” Claire said, with a pointed look at my mustache.
“Oh, please.” I hooked my arm through Annie’s and strode toward the house’s glowing lights. “Sit back and watch me catch a dick.”
“As for me,” Alexis said, waddling after us in Mac’s cast-off Mrs. Potts costume, “I’m trying to catch zero dicks tonight.”
“We can tell,” Zoey said kindly, patting her shoulder. “What with the costume barrier you’ve erected around yourself.”
“Hey, Mac did extremely well in that thing at Daisy’s wedding,” I pointed out. “In fact, Lex, it’s probably good you’re not planning to meet anyone tonight. I think if that costume saw any more action, it would probably burst into flames.”
Alexis looked down in horror at Mrs. Potts’s smiling face.
“Watch thechandelier!” cried Zane, the owner of the boxy, modern mansion. He was a very short, very distraught guy who had indeed made his youthful fortune in virtual reality tech. “Andpleasedon’t climb on the table!”
Luckily, thanks to Zoey, Beyoncé’s iconic Coachella performance was blasting from the huge TV in the living room, and it was nearly impossible to hear. I could blame my disobedience on that.
I climbed onto the table and pulled Mac up beside me, shouting, “All hail the birthday queen!” to a round of thunderous applause that left Mac beaming. Disobedience aside, Zane really should be thanking us, because in just a few hours, we’d transformed his staid, boring Halloween party into a rocking affair no one would soon forget. We’d turned the volume up to eleven, fed everyone highly potent Jell-O shots, tripped partygoers into the pool until they’d started a pool party, and yelled motivationally at people until they started dancing. That last part was a specialty of Annie’s—it required a careful mix of beratement and encouragement that was best left to a psychological professional.
“Pretty good birthday, yeah?” I shouted in Mac’s ear.
She looked across the room to where Ted was standing, watching her with a goofy grin. He’d turned out to be pretty cute, in an extremely straitlaced, finance-guy way. Most important, he hadn’t batted an eye at any of our shenanigans and had taken his shots like a champ.
“Best birthday ever!” Mac called back, with a look of anticipatory triumph on her face that told me she was definitely boning Ted tonight.
Zane made his way through the crowd. “Hello, can you please,pleasenot dance on my dining table, I inherited it from my grandma—”
“What, it’s your party and you want to get up here? Say no more.” I grabbed Zane’s arms and lifted him onto the table with Mac’s help—luckily, he was rather small and easy to lift.
Mac and I danced around him. “Isn’t this fun?” Mac called. “It’s my birthday, you know.”
“Here,” I said, leaning dangerously far across the kitchen counter to grab one of the last Jell-O shots, which I’d been hoarding. “Have this.”
