Clemmie gets to know who she is every time her mother sees her.
I won’t say it out loud, cause she won’t understand, but sometimes I worry I’ll never know myself like that. And every time Evie starts to see me, it’s like I get a little hopeful that maybe I will. That she’ll see me and like it.
She’s never once liked it, not really. She tries to smooth out the edges of her discomfort, but I know I’m not really what she wanted. I was just part of the package deal.
“Come on.” Clemmie leaps up and gives me her hand, yanking me toward her even as I sit here like dead weight. “Mamí made you picadillo,” she tells me, her nose wrinkling in disgust, rolling her eyes at me.
I let her pull me to standing, a smile blooming on my face as we trek back toward their cottage. The savory aroma, with its undercurrent of sweetness, spills out into the estate the closer we get, and I let my head fall back as I breathe it in.
“You’re so easy,” Clem laughs, swinging the front door open. “It’s just stew.”
That she made for me. I don’t say it, just hum nonchalantly as I skip toward where Lucía stands, gathering bowls and singing softly, out into the garden beyond their kitchen window.
17
Andy
There’s a blanket draped across Sloane’s legs that’s also strewn across mine, only because the fire blazing in the pit is insufficient and there weren’t enough to go around. No other reason, because we—Sloane and I—are friends.
“And you’re supposed to be…?” a newly joined Princess Peach in an iridescent mask asks. My fraternity’s annual halloween party usually has stricter guidelines, but a lapse in leadership meant thatmasqueradewas all that made it onto the invitation.
“A barber,” I tell her, not bothering to clarify that I’m specifically a demon barber from Fleet Street, even when she squints at the streak of gray I impulsively added before walking over here with Ben. He’s since disappeared to God knows where, but he is not my problem.
They are not my problem tonight.
Sloane grins over at the girl, wistfully shaking her head. “A beautiful fool.” And I smile—can’t help it, but I do. She’s nothing like Daisy Buchanan and yet, I can see the ways she wishes she was.
If Sloane is careless, if she’s carefree and flighty and strong-willed, it’s because everyone’s asked her to be. That’s what I’ve seen, and I think if anyone bothered to look they’d see it, too. That Sloane’s care runs deep and wide, runs far and away, maybe. I bet it feels easier to ignore it, to act like she couldn’t care less.
Flames play in her midnight eyes as she fishes for her phone in her bag, her shoulders stilling when she reads whatever she finds there.
“Shit. I need to go,” she murmurs, flinging the blanket off, standing. “You should probably come, too.” Her gaze catches mine, all that featherlight levity dissipating, replaced by the concern I know lingers just out of sight.
My stomach sinks, like it already knows, and I follow, the two of us shoulder to shoulder even though walking one behind the other would be faster. And it shouldn’t matter that even in this—a disaster waiting a few miles down the road—she wants me by her side.
“Gen needs me. She’s at Will’s.” Her jaw twitches as she heads toward the front.
The cavernous house is hard to peer through, what with the smoke and smog machines, and I wave a hand as we make the trek to the front yard. That car—Delilah—is parked worse than I’ve ever seen on a cluster of driveway stones.
“If this is your car,” Sloane shouts to no one in particular, arms shoving air at the Corolla parked behind Delilah, “move it!” Her hands find her hips, frustration creasing adorably between her brows. “Jesus Christ,” she mutters, walking around the vehicle like she’ll find a magical key to move it herself.
“Come on. Let’s just go.”
“I literally can’t?—”
Offering her my palm, I get her to give me the keys, tellingher to trust me. Where I expect more of a fight, I find nothing but surrender. She drops into the passenger seat of her car, teeth pulling at her pink bottom lip as she pulls her bare legs up. She lets me maneuver her car over the easement, between the Corolla and a truck, without so much as a scratch.
Her eyes are closed as we veer onto the little campus streets that connect every Astor landmark. Fraternity Row. The practice gym. Churchill Hall. The Mark Maxwell Arena. The Arboretum. The Athletics Center, connected to the Newhouse Health and Wellness Center. Kellman Hall, where someone probably found the cure for polio. Black metal poles shoot toward the sky, washing the road with golden light as we race toward Will’s apartment on the opposite side of campus.
“How’d you know how to do that?”
She pulls her champagne mask up and tosses it to the floor, shaking her hair out as it whips through the wind. Nose tipped a rosy hue, she sniffs, and her hands wrap tighter around her folded up frame. I hike my knee up, keeping the wheel steady, and shrug out of my letterman, tossing it in her lap.
She inhales, looking smug. “I’m honored.”
“You were freezing.”
“Don’t be embarrassed. I like you, too,” she says, reaching over to ruffle my hair before falling back into her seat. “So what, are you secretly into street racin’? How’d you get us out of there?”
