The party is ear-splittingly loud, but it does the trick of making my brain quiet.
Daisy’s hockey player is huge, burly, and very objectifiable in his navy blue hoodie that readsGRAY IVY—Wexley’s unofficial nickname—in tall white letters. I hang out with them for a drink while she sits on the counter as he creeps closer and closer between her thighs and she becomes increasingly giggly.
When he goes for a beer, I lean over to her. “Are you good if I roam for a bit?”
“I am so, so good,” she says as she watches him pop the top on a glass bottle with his bare hands. “He has good hands, right?”
“Sure,” I say, even though I can’t really distinguish anything other than that they are huge.
I polish off my drink and grab two cans of some sort of spiked seltzer before heading out to the backyard.
In high school, I went to a handful of parties, but I never lasted very long and usually showed up because I’d been casually invited, only to find that the person who invited me was preoccupied and had probably just extended the invitation to be polite. It was easier not to make friends, because I could live with never attempting, but a failed attempt would play over and over again in the middle of the night.
String lights hang over the backyard. It’s still loud and there are people dancing near the firepit, but simply being outside diffuses the noise. I settle on the top of a picnic table since all the stumps by the fire are full, and I’m kicking myself for not bringing a jacket. It’s that time of year when a sunny day is still warm and summer-like, but the moment the sky goes dark, everything is damp and chilly.
I don’t drink often, so once I finish off my first hard seltzer, I am feeling sufficiently buzzed.
“I didn’t take you for a hockey groupie. What do you call yourselves again? Puck bunnies?”
I peer over my shoulder. A bottle of beer hovers at Tate’s lips, and with an easy smile, he helps himself to the empty spot beside me.
“Definitely not a puck bunny,” I tell him. “Whatever the hell that is. I’m here as a wing woman. Honestly, I don’t even know whose party this is.”
“Sort of just an ice-sports-in-general party, I think.” He motionswith his beer. “I think the house is mostly hockey players, though. It would at least explain why the place smells like a jockstrap.”
“What are you doing here, then?” I ask. “Or are you a puck bunny as well?”
A dry laugh rumbles in his chest as he leans over, bumping shoulders with me. “No, no. Hockey players aren’t my type, but I do enjoy betting on their little games.”
Like most other people at Wexley, Tate has money to lose. He’s shared a pottery worktable with me since the start of the semester, and just this afternoon we put the finishing touches on our air-dry mugs. Between trying to one up each other with vulgarly shaped clay, I’ve learned that he’s prelaw and wants to specialize in patents. He’s on the lacrosse team, too, which isn’t in season until the spring, and his mom has been married four times. She’s engaged to tech-bro husband number five. Her cat, Pepper, has six toes on each paw, is famous on TikTok, and has recently signed with a pet talent manager. They have a summerhouse in Cannon Beach, so the likelihood that we have actually seen each other before is high.
I shiver through a sip of my drink, and he takes off his fleece zip-up and throws it over my shoulders.
“Thanks,” I tell him, something in my stomach sparking, and pull my arms through the sleeves. I might be curvy, but Tate is tall, so the jacket is plenty big and covers my legs at least a little. It’s so silly, but a guy giving you his jacket is the kind of thing I thought only happened in books or movies and it is impossible not to be charmed by the small act of chivalry.
He points to the people dancing on the other side of the firepit. “Dance with me.” It’s not a question, but it’s not a demand. “It’ll warm you up without going inside and subjecting yourself to the stink of jockstrap.”
Tate is already standing and pulling my hand to help me step down from the table.
The music isn’t the kind I would normally dance to even if I could dance. It’s a little slow and folksy and the couples who are dancing are swaying dangerously close with their arms wrapped around each other. It feels a little intimate, and my muscles tense with uncertainty.
Tate gives me a spin as we join the small cluster and a genuinely surprised laugh slips out of me like a hiccup as he pulls me back to him, the warmth of the fire welcoming me.
He holds one of my hands to his chest, and the other rests at his waist while he softly rubs up and down my back with his free hand.
“I feel like I need to spin you around a few times just to get you nice and toasty.”
“I think that would make me feel like a rotisserie chicken.”
He looks down at me from under his pale lashes. “You’re weird, but you’re fucking funny.”
“Is that good?” I ask.
He winks. “Very good.”
We dance for a little while, mostly in a comfortable silence interrupted by a few pieces of clever commentary from him. Again, it’s the sort of romantic moment that I didn’t really let myself imagine much past the age of fifteen. That was the year that the dream of happily ever after burst, and I realized that no one actually gets that kind of fairy tale. They just pretend they do.
Eventually he asks about my family.
