Pine Cottage, 9:54 p.m.
Instead of sophisticated, as Janelle intended, the meal was muted and awkward—a pantomime of adult dining. Wine was poured. Food was passed. Everyone was too focused on not spilling something on their clothes, wishing to be free of their silly party dresses and stuffy neckties. Joe was the only one who looked remotely comfortable, snug in his worn sweater, oblivious to how much he stood out from the rest of them.
Things only loosened up after dinner, when Quincy brought out the cake, its twenty candles aflame. After blowing them out, Janelle used the same knife that had sliced her finger to cut the cake into haphazard pieces.
Then the real party began. The one they had delayed all day. Drinks were poured. Entire bottles of liquor emptied into their dwindling supply of Solo cups. Music blasted from the iPod and portable speakers Craig brought along. Beyonce. Rihanna. Timberlake. T.I. It was the same music they listened to in their dorm rooms, only now it was louder, wilder, finally unleashed.
They danced in the great room, Solo cups aloft, booze sloshing. Quincy didn’t have any alcohol. She had picked her poison and it was Diet Coke. Yet it didn’t inhibit her in the least. She danced right along with the others, twirling in the middle of the great room, surrounded by Craig and Betz and Rodney. Amy was beside her, bumping her hip, laughing.
Janelle joined the fray, lugging Quincy’s camera, taking her picture. Quincy smiled, struck a pose, did a little disco move that threw Janelle into a laughing fit. Quincy laughed, too. As the music pulsed and she danced and the room swirled, she couldn’t recall another time when she had felt this good, this free, this happy. Here she was, dancing with her catch of a boyfriend, reaching out to her best friend, the college life she had always imagined right her in front of her.
After a few more songs, they tired. Janelle refilled their cups. Amy and Betz sprawled across the great room floor. Rodney produced a bong and waved it over his head like a flag. When he took it onto the deck, Janelle, Craig and Amy surrounded him, lining up for hits.
Quincy didn’t like pot. The one time she had tried it made her cough, laugh, then cough again. Afterwards she felt wobbly and unmoored, which took away from whatever high she had experienced. While the others smoked, she stayed in the great room, sipping her Diet Coke, which she was pretty sure Janelle had splashed with rum when she wasn’t looking. Betz, the perennial lightweight was there, too, drunk on the floor after three vodka and cranberries.
“Quincy,” she said, cheap vodka stinging her breath. “You don’t have to do it.”
“Do what?”
“Fuck Craig.” Betz giggled, as if it was the first time she’d ever sworn.
“Maybe I want to.”
”Janelle wants you to,” Betz said. “Mostly because she’d rather be the one doing it.”
“You’re drunk, Betz. And talking nonsense.”
Betz was insistent. “I’m right. You know I’m right.”
She let out another giggle, one that Quincy tried hard to ignore. Yet Betz’s drunken laughter stuck with her as she went to the kitchen. There was knowledge in that laugh, hinting at something everyone but Quincy seemed to comprehend.
In the kitchen, she found Joe leaning against the counter, nursing one of the awful concoctions Janelle had made for him. His presence startled Quincy. He spent the night being so quiet that she had forgotten he was even there. The others seemed to have done the same thing, even Janelle, discarding him like a toy on Christmas afternoon.
But he was there. Watching them all through his dirt-smeared glasses, observing their eating, their drinking, their dancing. Quincy wondered what he thought of their frivolity. Had it made him happy? Jealous?
“You’re a good dancer,” he said, staring into his cup.
“Thanks?” It emerged like a question, as if Quincy didn’t quite believe him. “If you’re bored, I could take you back to your car.”
“It’s OK. It’s probably not a good idea to drive.”
“I haven’t been drinking,” Quincy said, although more and more she suspected that was a lie, thanks to Janelle. She was starting to feel the faintest trace of a buzz. “I’m sorry that Janelle roped you into staying. She can be very, um, persuasive.”
“I’m having fun,” Joe said, although he sounded like the complete opposite was true. “You’re very nice.”
Quincy thanked him again, once more adding that uncertain inflection at the end of it. An invisible question mark.
“And pretty,” Joe said, this time daring to look up from his cup. “I think you’re very pretty.”
Quincy looked at him. Really looked at him. And in doing so, she finally saw what Janelle seemed to see. He was cute, in a dorky way. Like one of those nerds in movies who blossomed once they removed their glasses. An aura of intensity swirled around his shy demeanor, making it seem like he meant every word he said.
“Thank you,” she replied, sincerely this time. Minus the question mark.
The others burst back inside just then, the pot having made them hyper and slap-happy. Rodney lifted Amy over his shoulder and carried her shrieking into the great room. Janelle and Craig leaned on each other, stoned smiles on their faces. Janelle had a thin arm wrapped around Craig’s waist, refusing to remove it even as he ambled toward Quincy. She trailed after him, arm stretching.
“Quincy!” she said. “You’re missing all the fun.”
Janelle’s face was flushed and glistening. A strand of sweat-darkened hair stuck to her temple. Her features dimmed when she noticed Joe was also in the kitchen, and she looked from him to Quincy and back again.
“There you are!” she said to Joe, greeting him like a long-lost friend. “I’ve been looking for you!”
She guided him to one of the worn easy chairs in the great room, squeezing into it with him, legs pulled up so that her knees were on his lap.
“Having a good time?” she asked.
Quincy looked away, focusing on Craig walking toward her. He, too, was drunk and high. But he wasn’t a giggly drunk, like Betz, or a hyper one, like Janelle. There was a mellowness about him, an ease with his toned body that Quincy found seductive. He pressed against her, heat leaping off his skin, and whispered, “Up for a little fun tonight?”
“Sure,” Quincy whispered back.
She felt herself being whisked toward the hall, unable to ignore the judgmental way Betz stared at her as they passed. When she turned to the great room, she noticed Janelle still squeezed into the chair and stroking Joe’s hair, only pretending to pay attention to him. In reality, her eyes were locked on Quincy’s departing form, glinting darkly with either satisfaction or jealousy.
Quincy couldn’t tell.