“Is that what we’re going for?”
“It’s what you should always be going for, babe.” He taps the doorframe twice. “Hurry up. We’re leaving in forty-five minutes. Don’t make me come back for you.”
“Cori said I had an hour!”
“You wasted fifteen minutes arguing. Clock’s ticking, Collier.”
He disappears before I can throw something at him.
I sit there for a second, holding the dress, and feel something bloom in my chest. Something unfamiliar and a little bit fragile and good.
I don’t think I’ve ever had friends like this.
Growing up, the people around me weren’t really friends. They were connections. Alliances. Girls whose parents knew my parents, who wanted invitations to the right parties, who saw me as a stepping stone to something better. I learned early how to spot the ones who wanted to be friends with Annemarie Collier, daughter of Graham and Elaine, and not with the actual person underneath all that. It made me careful. Made me keep people at arm’s length because it was easier than getting close to someone who’d eventually use me for something.
Even at Stanford, most of my friendships felt transactional in ways I didn’t want to admit. Vanessa was real, but she was the exception. Everyone else wanted something, even if they didn’t necessarily say it out loud.
Cori and Marcus don’t want anything from me. They don’t know who my family is. They don’t care that I’m running fromsomething. They just like having me around, and I like being around them, and that’s it. That’s the whole thing.
It’s only been two weeks, but they’re the closest thing to real friends I’ve had in a long time. Maybe ever, if I don’t count Vanessa.
And that realization sits in my chest—a little sad, a little hopeful, but mostly just grateful.
I stand up and look at the dress in my hands.
Tonight, I’m going to a bar with myfriends.
Myactualfriends.
I start getting dressed.
Chapter 4
ANNIE
The booth at Lucky’s is a vinyl-clad life raft in a sea of bodies, and we are clinging to it. My knees are wedged against Brett’s, my shoulder pressed into Cori’s. The air is a solid, palpable thing—thick with cigarette smoke, the yeasty smell of spilled beer, and the collective heat of a hundred bodies in a space meant for fifty. My second vodka cranberry is mostly vodka, a fact my bloodstream is starting to register with alarming clarity. I haven’t been properly drunk since a Stanford party junior year, an experience that ended with me falling asleep in a dorm bathtub while I was fully clothed and a next-day headache that felt like divine punishment.
Lucky’s is a beautiful disaster. The floors have a permanent, tacky patina. The walls are a chaotic collage of band stickers, phone numbers scrawled in pen and Sharpie, and flyers for gigs long forgotten. A flickering Budweiser sign casts a sickly neon glow over everything, turning faces into blue-and-red masks. The jukebox is pumping out Pearl Jam’s “Alive,” the bass line a physical presence in my sternum. Every few minutes, a cheer goes up from the back as someone navigates the precarious staircase to the legendary, illegal rooftop.
Cori extracts a cigarette from Marcus’s pack and lights it with a Bic produced from the mysterious depths of her bra,exhaling a plume of smoke that joins the haze hanging beneath the low ceiling. She smokes with a dancer’s grace, her fingers elegant around the filter. Smoking is a vice she wears lightly, a secret rebellion against the monastic discipline of her day job.Ballerinas and their tricks, she’d once said with a laugh that didn’t quite reach her eyes.
She is incandescent tonight, a flame in the murk. Her red hair is a cascade of pre-Raphaelite curls, a stark contrast to the severe black of her dress and her black combat boots. She’s already danced with three different guys tonight—one of them for maybe two songs before she disappeared with him toward the bathrooms. She was gone for twenty minutes. When she came back, her hair was messed up, her lipstick was smudged, and when I asked her why she just had sex with someone she didn’t even know in a bar bathroom, she just shrugged and said, “Because I wanted to, Anniecakes.” Her freedom is a tangible force, both intimidating and magnetic.
I envy that about her.
Brett passes the cigarette back to Marcus. He’s exactly as Marcus advertised: golden-boy handsome with a razor-sharp wit. His eyes are the shade of blue you see in travel brochures for tropical waters. He’s studying me now with open, friendly curiosity.
“So Annie,” Brett says, turning his attention to me. “Marcus tells me you’re new to the city.”
“Correct. I’ve been here for two weeks.”
“And? Verdict?”
“It’s hot. Loud. It smells weird. But there’s good food, so there’s that.”
“Accurate.” He grins. “So you like it?”
“I think so. Ask me again when I’m not unemployed.”
