I didn’t tell Melody about the party because I she’d be against the idea. It was my last chance to celebrate New Year’s Eve with my high school friends before we all left for whatever life held in store for us. We’d be in the basement of the shop, away from the distillery and barrels, and everything would be fine. “Nothing is going to happen,” I assured her. “Please, just let me have this last hurrah before college.”
“I don’t know, Journey,” Melody continued.
“What if I said I would invite Brett Pearson? Would that change your mind?” I waggled my eyebrows, knowing Melody would do just about anything to see the youngest of the Pearson brothers.
We were standing in front of the full wall-length mirror that hung above a row of four sinks. Melody pulled her lip gloss out of her back pocket and pressed the color-stained wand to her lips over her dry lips, stalling. “Fine,” she said.
“Fine, as in, you’ll be happy to enjoy the party and won’t tell Dad?” If there was anything I was good at, it was covering my bases. Plus, Melody and I got through life by blackmailing each other. If there was something in it for one of us, the other got a piece too, or we both got nothing.
“Fine, I’ll go to your stupid party,” she said, her cheeks blushing more than she likely wished. “Plus, it’s probably better if he’s invited. If he found out about the party, he or his brother could tell their dad, and it would definitely get back to our dad.”
I fixed a stray hair that had fallen loose from my messy braid. She had a good point. Our dad and the Pearsons’ dad were not only close friends but collaborated with their businesses. Dad ran the bourbon shop and the distillery, and Mr. Pearson supplied the smoked barrels for the use of storing the bourbon. Their town doesn’t have any restaurants or places to hang out, so all the kids from Loftboro would usually truck over to Lakebridge, anyway. They could easily find out about the party. Our schools were sports rivals, but it didn’t get in the way of our commingling.
“See, you’re smart and pretty,” I told her, poking my fingertip against her nose. “Do you have Brett’s number?”
Melody pressed her thumbnail between her top and bottom teeth. “Yes, but don’t ask me how I got it, okay?”
“Whatever, I don’t have time for that story right now. Third period starts in two minutes.” I took my phone out of my pocket and wait for Melody to spout off the digits.
“You should probably invite Brett and Brody. You can’t really invite one without the other, right?” Melody continues. “Plus, it won’t look so obvious that way.”
I rolled my eyes because Brody never showed up to anything anyway, but she had a point.
It took me a minute to compose the text message that would show up by an unknown number, but I managed to do so with a minute left to spare before the bell rang.
Me:Hey, this is Journey Quinn. Someone gave me your number. You and your brother are invited to a New Year’s Eve Party at The Barrel House. Doors open at seven. Parents don’t know.
I never received a response to the text message, so we had to wait and see if Melody would snag a New Year’s kiss with the boy she wouldn’t say a word too. Brett was also the boy she used to talk to non-stop about at every get-together our families had, but it all stopped when she realized she had feelings for him.
Despite a lack of response from the Pearsons’, Melody was in on the party and as excited as I was.
The next week and a half flew with Christmas and random family parties, but we spent every free minute we had putting together decorations and collecting snack items we hid in the back of my junky two-door, green Neon.
We entered The Bourbon House a half-hour after Dad closed the shop for the day, making sure to use the back door. We kept the door cracked to give the guests easy access to the closest basement stairwell. We had exactly ninety minutes to prepare the party, which we pulled off nicely.
“When will Adam be here?” Melody asked while hanging up the last Happy New Year streamer.
I shrugged, hoping to avoid questions about Adam. “I don’t know.”
“Um—okay. Maybe you haven’t noticed, but you haven’t spent any time with Adam since school break started, and I don’t remember the last time you two have gone this long without seeing each other. So, why wouldn’t you know what time he’d be here for the New Year’s Party?”
I huffed and poured another bag of chips into a bowl. “I broke up with Adam a few days before school got out.” Melody has asked about him a few times since then, but I’ve brushed the topic under the rug. “I wasn’t ready to talk about it. I’m leaving for New Hampshire in less than a year, Mel. There was no use in prolonging the inevitable.”
Melody freezes in her path of stacking napkins. Shock fills her face. “Wait, you’re like madly in love with the guy, though. You’ve been friends since Kindergarten. What are you even saying right now? I thought you would run off and get married this summer, which would be dumb, but still.” Her never-ending comments reminded me of the reason I kept the information to myself for as long as I had.
“No, and it doesn’t matter. He’s going to college in California. It wouldn’t work. It is what it is.”
“I’m so sorry you’re going through this,” she continued.
“I want to think about something else tonight and enjoy the party, okay?” I swept my hands together to brush away the crumbs, and the unwanted thoughts, then took a look around the space and called the job done.
“Of course. A distraction is the best medicine for a broken heart,” Melody muttered beneath her breath as she passed by.
Seven o’clock on the dot was not the time I expected anyone to show up. Fashionably late was a thing, especially in our town. Therefore, the two who weren’t from our town showed up first—the Pearson brothers. I was surprised either one of them came, never mind both.
“Ladies, whose amazing idea was this?” Brody was the first one to descend the stairs, holding his hands up as if a king had just arrived. He had always been the cocky one, the attention hog, the loudest of the two, and the one who got in trouble the most.
I turned to see where Melody went, but I should have figured she would disappear the second Brett arrived. It was the first rule of flirting from her favorite magazine article:How to Never Date the Guy You Like.
