Then I catch myself.
My laugh trails off. I rearrange my face and pull the polished smile back into place. He watches me do it — the whole small, graceless process — and his own smirk vanishes, but he doesn’t once look away.
“Sorry,” I say. “That was… sorry.”
“Don’t apologize.”
“I should get back.”
I say the words, but I do not start walking.
He’s also not walking, nor is he doing the things men usually do in narrow corridors with girls they’ve just made laugh. He isn’t leaning in or finding a reason to touch my arm. His hands are in his pockets, and he’s giving me space.
“Take care of yourself out there,” he says, quiet.
Something pulls tight in a way I can’t afford to look at too closely — and lower, there’s more of that heat I have no business feeling talking to a guy outside a bathroom while my date is waiting for me twenty feet away.
“I will,” I say.
He nods once and steps around me, his shoulder not quite brushing mine, and walks toward the men’s room. Then I’m alone in the hallway with my own breathing, so I count to five with my palms flat against the cool wall.
“Get it together, Sloane,” I say.
I walk back to the booth and find Mason has ordered another bottle of the same Barolo he likes and hasn’t bothered to ask if I do. He watches me come across the room, and he has the face of a man doing calculations.
“Took a while,” he says, when I slide back in.
“There was a line.”
“Mm.” He smiles. “Didn’t think there were that many girls in here…”
I don’t have an answer, so I reach for my wine glass, already refilled, and take too long a sip. His hand finds my thigh again under the table. It’s even higher than before, just enough to tell me that he’s chosen to keep the effort going with me.
“So where were we?” Mason says, his thumb doing the slow stroke again, creeping higher with each pass, now almost touching my panties.
He breaks into his monologue again, and I nod in the right places and take small sips of the Barolo I still do not like. The whole time, I can’t help thinking about that boy in that hallway, but I keep my face still.
Once we’re done, Mason pays and helps me into my coat. His hand finds the small of my back as he walks me out, and it doesn’t move the entire length of the dining room, right past the long table and half the hockey team.
I pointedly don’t look at Rowan, because I can’t.
Outside, under the amber glow of the Lantern’s sign, Mason pulls me in and kisses me. He is warm and practiced and confident, and I wait for the feeling — the thing that happened when I saw Rowan smile or when we talked in the hallway.
It doesn’t come.
I kiss him back anyway, because this is the choice I’m making.
He pulls away smiling, already certain this is leading to more.
I smile back, already planning to order an Uber.
And when I look through the window, I see Rowan looking at me.
six
SLOANE
I’ve spenttwo hours on this toga, and I haven’t even reached the party.
