I stared at her for a moment, neatly annihilated. The worst part was how readily the words had come to her, like she’d been sitting on them for a lot longer than right this minute. Thesecond-worst part was that already there was a part of me that knew she was probably right. “Fuck you, Holiday,” I managed, which admittedly wasn’t stellar as far as biting comebacks but was the best I could do under the circumstances.
“Fuck you, Michael!”
We stood there for a moment, facing off across the expensive Persian carpet. “I shouldn’t have come here,” she said finally—her voice quiet now, almost like she was talking to herself. “I shouldgo.”
That was when the lights went out.
“Shit,” we said in unison, our inflections identical. Our scowls were a matching set. It was the kind of thing we would have laughed at fifteen minutes earlier: the mind meld that she and I seemed to have sometimes, both of us thinking the same thought at the same time. Now it just made me hate her even more. It was like she was in my head, like she knew all my secrets and could clock the way my brain worked. She was too close, and I wanted space.
Still: “Where the hell are you going to go, Holiday?” I asked crankily, motioning at the boarded-up windows. “We’re both stuck here, at least for right now.”
“Fine,” Holiday said, the set of her jaw so sharp you could have used it as a bottle opener. “Then let’s just go back to pretending we’re strangers, shall we? That seemed to suit you fine all these years.”
“It did, actually.”
“Great.”
“Perfect.”
Both of us stood there for a moment, the whole situation vaguely farcical in its awkwardness. The argument demanded that one of us storm off, except for the part where there was nowhere for either one of us to go. Instead we made our way clumsily back into the den, where Jasper was lighting enough candles to create a fire hazard: warm light flickered across the walls, casting the whole room in an old-fashioned glow. “What’s up with you guys?” he asked, blowing out a match in the direction of our stony faces.
“Nothing,” Holiday and I said at once.
Jasper was just starting to reply when Mrs. Kendrick appeared in the doorway with a handful of flashlights, passing them out like full-size Hershey bars to lucky trick-or-treaters at Halloween. “You kids doing all right in here?” she asked, glancing nervously in the direction of the boarded-up window. “I have to say, I honestly didn’t think it would be this bad.”
“We’re fine,” Wells promised, not bothering to hide his cocktail. “This house is two hundred years old, right? It’s survived a lot worse.” He nodded at his brother. “Jasper’s burrito farts, for example.”
Mrs. Kendrick smiled wanly. “Dad and I are going to head upstairs, then. Be careful, will you?” She jumped as thunder cracked with such ferocity I could feel it in my teeth. “And give me a shout if the house blows away.”
Once she was gone, Jasper lifted an eyebrow. “Off to sleep the peaceful sleep of the deeply medicated,” he observed coolly. “And on that note: Who wants more punch?”
I stayed as far away from Holiday as humanly possible for the rest of the night, trying not to brood too visibly while she playedsome complicated variation of the Celebrity game with Jasper and Doc across the room. I couldn’t tell if she was laughing extra loud for my benefit or not; when I glanced in her direction, she was murmuring something to Doc, the two of them presumably commiserating about what a complete and utter douchebag I was. Let them, I thought sullenly, shuffling into the kitchen to grab a beer out of the refrigerator. They deserved each other.
“Now who hates parties?” asked a singsong voice behind me. I turned around and there was Eliza barefoot in the doorway, leaning against the jamb with a knowing smile.
I grinned back at her, my own personal dark cloud lifting at least a little. “I don’thatethem,” I corrected. “I’m just…”
“In a mood?”
“Maybe.”
“Hmm,” Eliza said, taking a speculative sip of her vodka and soda. She was wearing denim shorts and a cropped white tank top, a flat, tan strip of her stomach just visible in between. “Wonder what we could do to get you out of it.”
I gazed at her across the kitchen for a moment, desire and trepidation and uncertainty tangled up inside me like an undoable sailor’s knot.Capable of violence,Holiday had said.A Daisy Buchanan fantasy.I pushed her words out of my head. “You tell me,” I replied.
Eliza set her glass down on the kitchen counter. Held out her hand for mine.
