If I'm Being Honest(5)

“No, I would not,” I reply shortly. I could explain if I wanted to. For months I’ve had a list of reasons to break my no-dating rule for Andrew. He makes me laugh. He’s objectively gorgeous. We’re both runners. He’s committed. He’s proven he has goals and works hard. I don’t want to die a virgin.

“It’s because he’s new blood, isn’t it?” she goes on, ignoring me. “He’s new to the popular crowd. He just made varsity soccer, he’s the only guy here who hasn’t dated every blonde within reach—he’s exciting. And you haven’t had enough time with him yet to know he’s as lame as every other guy.”

“I’ve known Andrew for years,” I fire back. “I’d know if he was lame. Like I know with Jason.” I cut her a pointed look, which she brushes off. “Andrew’s . . . different.”

“How different?” Elle presses, her voice heavy with skepticism.

I don’t reply right away, because I’m remembering a rainy afternoon in December of junior year. We were in my bedroom because our moms were having dinner downstairs, but we couldn’t go for a run with buckets pouring from the sky. We’d been working on homework, and I was panicking about a group project on which I’d been paired with none other than Abby Fleischman, who’d unacceptably decided dressing in a ridiculous costume and going to a comic book convention was a worthwhile use of her weekend. Which it obviously wasn’t, and we’d gotten nothing done on the project. I was five minutes into a world-class rant about Abby’s objectionable life choices when Andrew glanced up from his history textbook.

“People are starving, Cameron,” he said dryly. “You’ll survive.”

I blinked, too thrown to be angry, and burst out laughing. And then Andrew was laughing, and the panic in my chest eased. I noticed he was cute when he laughed. I noticed the dimple in his right cheek. I noticed the way his eyes lit up, and the whole room with them.

“We work. We just do,” I tell Elle.

She doesn’t reply. “If I’m going to finish your lipstick,” she says after a moment, “you’ll have to stop smiling like an idiot.”

I can’t help it. I smile wider.

Elle flicks my nose in return. “Okay.” She steps back to scrutinize her work. “You’re ready.”

Every memory of Andrew and me dances through my head—every conversation, every run, every laugh. Every private, perfect moment. Why was I nervous? Tonight isn’t about looking perfect or saying the perfect flirtatious thing. It’s about him and me.

“I am,” I say, not bothering to check my reflection in the mirror. Andrew knows me better than everyone except my closest friends. All I need is to be myself.





Three



I TAKE A DEEP BREATH AND PLUNGE back into the club.

The crowd is a battle. There’s a football player grinding on a petite redhead in my way. I send him a withering glare, and he backs off, looking chagrined. Nimbly I dodge Sara Marco and Ben Nguyen halfway to third base. When I’m nearly to the lounge, an elbow hurtles perilously close to my face.

Jerking away instinctively, I round on the idiot responsible—and my eyes widen.

Paige Rosenfeld is drunk. She sways sloppily over the shorter girls, her badly dyed red hair a sweaty mess. She’s dancing with the composure of an alcohol-fueled teenage giraffe. Her ugly yellow body-con dress reveals curves I didn’t know she had. She usually comes to school covered in the frills and lace of her obviously and inexplicably homemade garments. I watch her almost spill a nearby girl’s drink, her eyes not registering me.

I kind of can’t believe she’s here. Paige Rosenfeld isn’t exactly a member of the rather wide circle that comes to Beaumont parties. I didn’t think dancing, fun, or human contact was her thing. She’s on scholarship to Beaumont, not that being one of the school’s few scholarship kids is a barrier to popularity. It’s that she has a new terrible hairstyle every month, she wears incomprehensible clothes, she listens to droning, depressing music, and—probably worst—she’s the older sister of Barfy Brendan, the kid who throughout middle school threw up in the cafeteria, on the bus, and on his classmates too often to be well liked. I started calling him BB, for Barfy Brendan, and it sort of caught on. I don’t know why Paige is even here.

I have my answer when Jeff Mitchel walks onto the dance floor carrying two drinks. Both of which nearly spill on everyone within a five-foot radius when Paige spots him and flings herself at him.

I try not to gag too obviously. Two Jeff Mitchel encounters in one day? I must be cursed. Why Paige, who openly denigrates our classmates’ BMWs and Birkin bags, would have any interest in Jeff is beyond me. If I cared even a little bit, I might try to figure it out. But I don’t.

Out of the corner of my eye, I catch Andrew heading toward the club’s open-air terrace. Leaving Paige to the hookup she’ll inevitably regret, I follow him. The terrace runs the length of the club, with modern chairs and patio heaters and an outdoor bar interrupting the view of the city. Over the commotion inside, I hear horns honking and the hum of traffic from Hollywood Boulevard.

I find my eyes drawn to the glittering skyline of downtown Los Angeles. The cluster of skyscrapers, the parallel lines of white and red headlights streaming in from the freeways. The colors contrast beautifully, the brilliant lights against the black night sky.