Lucy drifts past right then with a lanyard around her neck, and I wheel on her like she’s going to be the weak link, and she is so, so much worse than him. She gives me a smile with nothing behind it but daylight.
“We just thought she’d have fun sitting with us,” she says, sweet as anything, and keeps walking.
They’re good. They’re so good. They did it to Blue with a puck and now they’ve done it to me with a parking spot’s worth of empty seats and there is not one single thing I can prove, and the worst part is that I’m not even mad.
I turn to Reeve. “You told your girlfriend classified information?”
“She didn’t tell G,” he says, like that’s supposed to make me feel better. “So, my sister is going completely off of the party because she heard Aspen call youbabe. She and G were already friends, if you didn’t know. There was a simple text message, and Aspen agreed to lunch earlier today.”
I gasp. “They’re taking her out to lunch?”
Benson rests a hand on my shoulder and says, “That’s how these things work, buddy. Linwood is in with the girls now.”
In with the girls now?
What the hell does that even mean?
The Hawthorne House is going by the time I get there. Music through the walls, people on the porch, somebody’s already broken something in the kitchen, and somebody else is already laughing about it. Hawthorne on a win night runs itself.
Linwood’s here. She came with the girls — of course she did, she’s theirs now, the operation works fast — and she’s in the corner of the living room with Gianna and Lucy and a drink she’s barely touched. I’m across the room with a beer I can’t get it through my head why she’s here. And why she doesn’t seem like her uptight normal self.
We haven’t talked. Not really. A hey, a good game, but that’s all. I promised her a pie on a note I left, and I’m still waiting for the recipe from Rowan.
Gianna, Mara, and Mila start dancing like it’s no one’s business. Blue looks like he wants to take Melly to a private place. Benson is saying something to Lucy and Aspen.
I think flustered is the right word for what I’m feeling. I drink my beer and let Walsh talk at me, because that’s my role at a party — I’m the guy the rest of the team unloads on when the guys I live with have hit their limit of me, which happens early and often. Walsh is mid-rant, sworn off women again, third time this semester. I’m nodding in the right places and not hearing a word of it, because across the room, Aspen is saying something to Benson and Benson is listening, and I’d give a year off my career to know what’s coming out of her mouth.
His eyes catch mine over her head. He smiles. He turns back to her.
I drink my beer.
The song changes, and the girls swarm Benson and Lucy with Gianna’s phone up. Lucy goes shy and mortified. Reeve doesn’t care, kisses her for the camera, and dips her, and Gianna and Mara lose their minds. They move on to Blue and Melly — Melly’s already in his lap, so that one shoots itself.
Then Gianna turns, scanning. Her eyes land on me. “There he is. Stan, get over here, you’ve been hiding all night.” She’s already herding, phone up, beaming. “I need one of you two. Get in, get close, oh my God, comeon—”
I push off the wall and cross to Aspen because there’s no version of this where I don’t. Gianna shoves me the last half-step, and I almost go over my own feet.
“Damn, G.”
She gets us shoulder to shoulder, lines up the shot, and that’s when Blue’s voice comes in low and evil from across the room.
“Kiss.”
I roasted him about the puck three hours ago. This is him getting even.
“Kiss! Kiss!”
And the room picks it up — fists on the table,kiss, kiss, kiss— and it splits right down a seam only some of us can see. Gianna’s chanting because she believes we’re in a real relationship. Half the room is chanting because they believe it, too. And in the kitchen doorway, Benson’s got his arms crossed and Lucy’s tucked under one of them, and neither of them is chanting. Rowan and Percy have stopped talking to Tate and Walker to watch, and none of them are chanting either.
Gianna’s got the phone up.
I look down at Aspen.
“I’m sorry about this,” I say just to her.
She looks up at me, lips parted, and she’s not half as mad as she’s got every right to be. That’s the thing that undoes me. She’s not bothered. She’s not reaching for the exit. She’s just looking at me.
“Do you do okay under peer pressure?” I ask.
