Chapter 13
Michael
The air went out of the room as soon as she left. As if someone had taken the knot out of the bottom of a balloon, everything flattened.
She was nothing to me, and chasing after her was irresponsible. But I had a camera in my car with her name on it, and as I made small talk about the industry, the school, and the city, I wanted to give it to her whether she wanted it or not. Me. Hand to hand. Not my assistant or my agent or my publicist. I’d invited her to the gala to get something done, and it was getting done.
I texted her but heard nothing back. Ten minutes later, in the middle of talking up Bullets, I realized I hadn’t approved her number for incoming. Suddenly, the room felt stifling hot as the air pressed in on me. I didn’t want stupid small talk, and I didn’t want to be me for another minute. So I smiled and excused myself.
It was cold outside, but I felt better.
The smart thing to do would have been to go home and rest. Taking weeks off for Britt’s foibles might screw my life, but I didn’t have to help it along, did I? I didn’t have to ignore everything I was told by people who knew better.
“Michael?”
It was Lucy, striding out alone in her low heels.
“Hey. I was just thinking about going home,” I said.
“You should.” She took my elbow in a way that was too familiar. She’d never touch me like that if people were watching. “You look tired.”
“Thanks for helping out with Laine.”
“I never knew what happened to Little Miss Guttersnipe.”
“Don’t call her that.”
“Laine, then.”
“She’s very successful at what she does.”
“I’m not surprised. She was quite industrious.”
“You treated her like shit.”
She shrugged. “What do you want from me? I was sixteen, and she was after my man. She’s lucky she didn’t make it to prom. It would have been my mission to send her home crying.” She brushed a fleck of something off my jacket. “What’s been happening with you lately, Mister Greydon? You’re distracted. I can’t get a smile out of you. Is Gareth on your case?”
She had grey eyes that never looked warm or inviting, and it was only her voice that told me she was truly concerned. I didn’t want to lie to her, but the truth wasn’t an option.
“I like pretending nobody’s watching,” I said. “New hobby. You should try it.”
“Sorry, no. Do you want to slip out and get a bowl of soup?”
She smiled at me. Our first date had been outside a soup truck, during the short window between the dark tunnel of puberty and the oncoming train of my public life.
“I’ll take a rain check. I’m going to go home and go to bed.”
I walked her to the door and let her go back to the party by herself.
Even as I decided to make an early night of it, I walked west across the campus with my hands in my pockets. The valet was east, and I’d left my coat in the coat check, but I had no desire to brave the company to retrieve it. No. I wanted to do something else entirely. I walked on autopilot through Humanities Quad, and up the short jump of steps into the small tennis stadium. The lights were down, and the crickets’ mating calls were the only accompaniment to the traffic on San Vicente.
As if she’d heard my thoughts, Laine waited in her old seat, sitting cross-legged with her arms over the backs of the chairs on either side, face up to the sky. She was so inappropriate in her fancy dress and relaxed posture, sitting on the hard plastic seat as if it were a couch.
“Hello,” I said.
“I had a feeling you’d come.” She spoke without opening her eyes.
“You should have let me fight for you.”
She opened her eyes and turned to watch me come down the steps. “I don’t want you to fight for me.”
I sat next to her. “You robbed me of the opportunity to tell everyone to kiss my ass.”
She showed me her palms. “Wait, wait, wait. Hold on there, big guy. If you want to tell everyone to pucker up, you have exactly the platform to do it without me, okay?”
“You think it’s that easy?”
“I do. You call a press conference and everyone—”
“My agent has to and—”
“So Gene Douchearossa does it. What’s the diff—”
“He asks me first what it’s about—”
“And you just make something—”
“Everyone will know I lied and then—”
“So you want to tell people to kiss your ass, but you don’t want them to think you’re a liar?” she said with finality.
“I’m not a liar.”
“Even when you lie?”
I didn’t know what came over me. The way her eyes glinted in the moonlight. The mischief in her voice. The boldness of her argument. The dress. Those particular bleacher seats. The bleat of a car alarm from the parking lot.
But something definitely came over me.