In the end, it didn’t matter how long I sat in the car. My birthday came and went.
Stone never showed up.
It’s for the best—I know that. Even as he could touch between my legs and feel the wetness there, I knew he could gaze into my eyes and sense my secret worries about my father.
Could I lie to him? I don’t know. I wouldn’t want to try.
Three hours and a hundred photos later, I’m riding in the back of a huge limo next to Liam, across from Randall Wainwright and Kitty, one of the gorgeous Shaffer twins. They’re nice enough, but kind of drunk, and Kitty managed to make me feel terrible about my dress by not saying a word.
Randall cranks Lil Peep.
Liam slings an arm around me and hands over a polished silver flask.
“No, thanks,” I say. “I haven’t eaten.”
“But look, it says drink me,” he protests.
I smile. “Where does it say that?”
He grins and changes his voice, like the flask is talking, blond hair flopping over his forehead. “Drink me, Brooke!”
I roll my eyes. Liam can be seriously silly sometimes, though I don’t really know him that well. Liam and Randall go to the boys’ school down the block from our girls’ school, but in the upper grades, we share activities like band and theater and choir, and we do all our dances together.
“Drink me, drink me!” he repeats. Randall and Kitty are laughing.
I snort and take the flask. “I think you’re the Mad Hatter, that’s what I think.” I take a fake sip.
“Oh, come on,” Liam says.
I take a good swig this time. The liquid burns my throat.
Liam takes the flask back and drinks. Randall cranks the tunes.
Kitty shows me her nails, with tiny loops on the ends of them. “Amazing,” I say.
We get a booth at Bel Canto. Liam and Randall have fake IDs. They order two whiskey sours each and then give them to us when the waiter leaves.
We get puffed pastry appetizers, and Randall is laughing about band kids. It’s a five-course meal, the kind you order as a set. It’s delicious and probably worth an entire car payment for most folks.
I have just that one drink—I don’t like to drink the way some kids do.
Liam is actually really nice. He likes me, and he’s always trying to make me laugh. He gives me the cherry out of every drink he orders, and he smiles at me when he puts his hand on my thigh under the table, watching my face for any sign of not wanting it there.
I smile back at him, signaling that it’s okay. I try to imagine it feeling alive and exciting, like when Stone first touched me there, but really, Liam’s hand just feels…wooden, in a weird way. Like there’s no life in his touch. Flat.
But I let him leave it there, because he’s taking me out to this nice dinner, and maybe he’ll grow on me. I remind myself I didn’t like hanging around with Stone at first, and he grew on me, right?
Understatement of the year. Stone is all I can think about.
But Stone can’t be my boyfriend.
If anything, I should hate Stone for how he blazed into my life with all his heat and fury and passion. I should hate Stone for his intense gaze, and the way his eyes burn into my soul, and the way he kisses me—like he’ll die if he doesn’t.
Liam kisses me after dinner. More tongue, less passion.
It’s not fair to compare them. Of course Liam would have less experience. I have less experience, too. It’s actually kind of sweet. We can experience this together.
The prom is held at the elite boys’ school down the block from our girls’ academy. The theme is fairy garden, and kids from both schools have been collaborating on the decorations, though everyone knows it’s just an excuse to meet each other.
And as the night goes on, Liam’s kisses get more sloppy. During a slow dance it seems like he’s making out with my cheek. “Got a hot tub room at Solange,” he slurs.
I smile and nod.
Solange (you never call it the Solange) is where the after-party is; Solange is a boutique hotel on River Road Drive, just down from the Ivy Club, which is the exclusive private men’s club that my father belongs to.
If the schools Liam and I attend cater to the most elite families in all of Franklin City, the Solange penthouse after-party is where the heirs of the most elite of the elite families will go.
I’m hoping Liam passes out before we get there. Even though he was nice to me, I don’t want to have sex with him. The condom feels hot in my little black and gold clutch.
He grabs my hand and pulls me out of the ballroom, mumbling something about fresh air.
I’m wondering whether he’s feeling sick. Some small part of me hopes he is.
I imagine myself playing Florence Nightingale, making the limo driver bring us to the 7-Eleven, where I’d buy him crackers and soda. He’d apologize, and I’d be so nice about it. And then he’d drop me off, and my mother would have no excuse to be angry—how could I go to Solange when my date was deathly ill?
“You okay?” I ask.
“Gotta get air,” he murmurs, arm slung around my shoulders.
The limos are arrayed up and down the block. “Which one is ours?” I ask.
“Who cares?” he says, and his voice is lower than usual.
It sends a shiver down my spine, not completely unpleasant. It reminds me of Stone, that voice. Enough that I turn my face away and pretend he’s with me.
So we keep walking. Suddenly, he’s leading me into a darkened walkway between buildings, ivy-covered brick on one side, a chain-link fence on the other, a dim glint in the dark.
“What are you doing?”
“A little party of our own.”
I slow down, tugging toward the street, the light. I’m not sure that I want to go back. Not sure that I want to go forward. “We’re missing the dance,” I say, stalling for time.
He pulls me deeper in, then pushes me against the bricks in the dark and makes out with my face—that’s how it feels, like I’m a face to make out with while he paws my breasts.
My mother’s words ring in my ears. Be nice. Try. We all make sacrifices.
“Somebody might come.” But that’s not what I’m worried about. No one will find us out here. And even if they did, they wouldn’t care. Everyone in there will end up naked in a hotel room.
“Let them come,” he says, running his hand over my dress, pulling it up, feeling my bare thigh above the stockings, reaching higher.
“Wait,” I say, but what I really want to say is, you’re not Stone.
The realization turns my insides cold. No matter how long it’s been since Stone left, even after I knew he wouldn’t come back, I’ve been waiting for him. Ignoring all the prep-school boys for him. Keeping myself a virgin for him. How messed up is that?
In the end it’s not my mother’s words that move me.
It’s the knowledge that I want Stone that makes me decide to have sex with Liam. I think if I let Liam inside my body, if I lose myself in this moment, I can finally forget.
I resign myself to this. I’m going to have sex with my prom date, like a hundred other girls tonight. I’m going to be completely ordinary, completely normal, completely unlike the girl who dreams about the man who took her hostage.
Except that Liam isn’t kissing me anymore.