Zane’s hips were moving in a half-hearted attempt to sway to Beyoncé. “Oh, I don’t know.”
I tipped the shot over his mouth and tapped the bottom so the Jell-O slid out in one delicious, gelatinous glob. “Bottoms up.”
“Mmm, tasty,”Mac prompted.
To our relief, Zane swallowed his mouthful of Jell-O and grinned, eyes wide with wonder. “It hurts going down, but then it’sgood.”
“How many can that table hold?” Claire strode into the room, a line of women following her like ducklings. It never failed—whenever we went to a party, other women flocked to Claire, attracted to her big personality like moths to a flame. She was a woman-magnet. If she ever wanted, she could start a cult, no problem.
Huh. It occurred to me that might be why Claire was so bothered the pre-K moms didn’t like her. She prided herself on being the sun around which every girl gang revolved.
“The more the merrier!” shouted Zane, who had apparently forgotten about his grandmother’s legacy and was now throwing his arms and legs around wildly, in an act only the most generous would label dancing.
I was distracted from the imminent threat of getting clocked by the sight of Alexis rolling into the dining room with two forties taped to her hands.
“Lex!” I called, from high atop my table-throne. “What are youdoing? You know I banned you from playing Edward Fortyhands when you were in high school.”
She spun to me. “But it looked fun. All the cool kids were doing it. And you’re not the boss of me.”
Yikes. Through the time-traveling power of alcohol, Alexis had clearly reverted back to the same age she’d been the last time she played Edward Fortyhands, when she’d come to one of my college parties and ended up sleeping in a bathtub. To get her home and past the eagle-eyed scrutiny of our mother the morning after, I’d had toWeekend at Bernie’sher, waving her arms and nodding her head at questions until I could get her safely tucked into bed. To this day, it remained one of my most impressive ventriloquist performances.
“Come on,” I said, lifting Alexis onto the table. “I need your teapot girth to form a shield between Mac and the party host.”
Indeed, Zane was now gyrating his hips pointedly in Mac’s direction.
Alexis hopped onto the table and swept her gaze over the crowd. “Oh, look!” She pointed. “It’s Ben’s girlfriend!”
I followed her finger to the corner of the living room, where a group of guys surrounded a beautiful blonde woman. Who was, sure enough, Sarah Drake. Sarah even wore another red dress, like it was her signature color: this one strapless and sequined, her hair in loose curls over her shoulder. She was Jessica Rabbit. Say what you wanted about Sarah, but you couldn’t accuse her of not having a solid lock on her brand.
I scanned the party for any sign of Ben, trying to ignore the way my heart beat extra hard at the possibility I would suddenly spot his square jaw and blue eyes in the crowd.
But there was no Ben. I swung my gaze back to Sarah, who was laughing hard at something one of the guys was saying. As I watched, she leaned forward and gripped the guy’s arm, using it for balance, laughing harder.
Excuse me?
All right, it wasn’t strictly scandalous. In fact, it was no more contact than Ben and I had on a daily basis. But it set my alarm bells ringing. What was Sarah doing here without Ben? Obviously, you didn’t need to be glued to your boyfriend’s side every moment of the day. In fact, it was perfectly reasonable for her to go to a party without him. But this was Ben we were talking about, so why would she want to? And what was up with all the guys?
The man whose arm Sarah gripped slung it over her shoulders and tugged her in the direction of the massive arch that led out of the living room. My eyebrows flew up. This was very intimate body language. I tracked the two of them as they sauntered through the arch, on their way to somewhere else. Who knew where?Outside?To abedroom?
Oh, no.
I was so busy remembering the way Ben’s face had shuttered the moment he realized I’d slept with Connor Holliday—the flashback like a punch to the chest—that I didn’t hear Mac yelling it was time to ditch the table for keg stands until it was too late. The mass exodus of Mac and Zane and Claire and Claire’s minions sent the table wobbling. And then, in a twist of fate probably no more punitive than I deserved, Alexis swung around and her teapot handle clipped me in the chest, sending me flying.
As the top of my Freddie Mercury coif lightly brushed the bottom of the chandelier, then followed gravity’s arc swiftly downward, all I could think wasHow in the world will I tell Ben?
12
Cruel and Unusual
“If you don’t pull over so I can buy breakfast tacos, I swear to God, I will roll myself out of this car. And when the cops find my body on the side of the road, they’ll know it was your fault.”
Ben shot me a skeptical look from the driver’s seat, his hands flexing over the steering wheel. “How?”
“I’ve obviously planted letters around my house implicating you in my death. I wasn’t going to embark on our competition without some insurance. This is not my first rodeo. That was actually last week.”
Ben shook his head. “You’re saying you’re still hungover fromHalloween? Three days ago?”
I groaned and rested my head against the window. “Don’t remind me. Mac got all the luck this year, and now I’m stuck facing the side effects of my advanced age. There’s a chance I can no longer party like I used to.”
