Page 4 of Mad Girl

(Even though you totally did.)

Anyway.

Back to the night we met.

While all those stuffy people milled around my house, droning on about politics and stock portfolios and other equally boring shit, I sat on the stairs with Bree and Tinsley, blissfully unaware of your existence.

For a few more minutes, anyway.

“You’ll never guess who I saw while grabbing an iced latte this morning,” Tinsley said, scrolling through her phone. But she didn’t give us a chance to guess. She rarely did. “Willoughby Asher.”

“I’ll never understand what everyone sees in him,” Bree said, flicking her blonde hair over one shoulder.

Tinsley scoffed at this. “He’s one of the hottest guys in our whole school.”

“There’s more to a person than what they look like, Tinz,” singsonged Bree.

“Exactly. And have you met the other guys at our school? Willoughby’s the only hot one who’s genuinely nice.” Tinsley pondered this, tugging at one of her dark corkscrew curls. “Which, I have to admit, is a turnoff for me. Strangely, I’m more attracted to the assholes.”

“Probably because in ninety-nine percent of the smut and fan fiction you read, the heroes are all assholes,” I pointed out.

Smirking, Tinsley tapped a finger against her full, pink-glossed lips. “Touché.”

And that was it, Casey. The final before moment.

Before I ever knew that someone like you had been put on this planet expressly, it would turn out, to undo me.

Because that’s when I glanced downstairs, and there you were, striding into the entry hall with Michael and Sienna, all three of you smiling the way people do when they’ve just finished laughing—pearly whites on full display—only your smile faded while theirs remained. Michael walked ahead and Sienna hung back, still clinging to your arm. Odd, I thought, because she was Michael’s girlfriend. But with her claws sinking into your black coat, she easily could’ve been mistaken for yours.

Even from fifteen feet in the air, you rendered me speechless. Dark hair, dark clothes, the kind of chiseled jaw Greek sculptors carved into marble gods. A hero straight out of one of Tinsley’s romance novels—tall, magnetic, tragically hot. No wings or sword, just the kind of beautiful that changed girls forever. Changed me the moment you smiled.

I didn’t realize I’d stopped breathing until Tinsley gasped for air herself and poked me in the shoulder.

“Oh. My. God,” she said, taking the words right out of my head. “That must be him—the friend. The one I told you about earlier.”

“Who is he?” I asked, wedging my face between two mahogany spindles.

Tinsley didn’t answer, but I didn’t dare tear my eyes away from you—the beautiful boy standing in my house, currently pressing his cheek to Politician Barbie’s cheek—to see why.

“Oh, right. You were reading. Of course you didn’t hear me,” Tinsley said, sounding only vaguely annoyed. “Like I said earlier, I overheard Libby telling your dad about this new friend of Michael’s while I grabbed our drinks from the fridge. She mentioned the friend was handsome, but—good God, Libby—that is not handsome. That is devastating and soul-crushing. That is perfection personified and everything right in this world.”

“Who is he?” I repeated when she stopped talking—even though Tinsley had, in fact, described you perfectly—because apparently those were the only three words in the English language my brain could process: Who is he?

I needed to know.

“His name’s Casey,” Bree said, leaning over my lap for a peek. “Michael introduced us weeks ago when he stopped by the house.”

“Casey.” I liked the feel of your name in my mouth, the easy way it rolled off my tongue. I whispered it next. For fun. “Casey.”

“You met him weeks ago?” Tinsley asked. “And you never thought to mention this guy?”

Bree shrugged against my shoulder.

Down in the entry hall, our housemaid, Henriette, asked to take your coat. You blinked at her, startled by the request, before shrugging out of your topcoat and handing it over, revealing the dark blue suit and dress shirt you wore underneath. You readjusted your sleeves, pulling them taut. And then, like everyone else who had ever walked through my front door, your gaze immediately traveled up the spiral staircase—to the sunburst-like pattern that formed the great domed skylight more than four floors up. From where you stood, the sunburst bore down on you like a giant eye pressed to a hole in the ceiling. Like God himself, peering inside and pinning you in place.

But the trouble with your line of vision was your gaze eventually had to travel back down the staircase, and when it did, you spotted me, my face still wedged between the mahogany spindles like I was a little kid up past her bedtime, snooping around on the stairs, spying on the grown-ups’ party. I jerked back so quickly my elbow jabbed Bree in the chest. She might’ve said “Ow” but I couldn’t be sure, because you were still looking at me, and I couldn’t move, let alone focus on the voices buzzing in my ear.

Your eyes locked on mine and wouldn’t let go, setting off an explosion of foreign sensations in my body. Cheeks burning. Chest crackling. Heart skipping, too fast. I had to look away.