A laugh bubbled out of me. “God, no matter where you go, high school follows you, doesn’t it?”
He frowned and glanced down. “Yeah, it does.”
I tilted my head back. “Was I a total spaz?”
“I find it endearing if it helps anything.”
“Well, let’s try to get through this engagement party and not mention anything that just happened in there. Deal?”
“Deal.”
Chapter 22
Natalie
Luckily, the party was in full swing when we showed back up with the cake. I had to endure a nice little lecture from my dad about “stealing” his car. But it was worth it for the drive. Even if I was still off-kilter because of Mary Beth Wilson, née Buchanan. And I still couldn’t figure out why it had freaked me out so much. I could deal with the likes of Katherine Van Pelt, but get all worked up over Mary Beth? Pathetic.
“You saw Mary Beth?” Amy said, bending at the waist and laughing hysterically. “How did that go?”
“Awful. I was a spaz, and she was checking out Penn the whole time.”
“Of course she was. He’s the hottest guy in, like, existence. Not my type, but you know, for people like her, he’s the cream of the crop.”
“Awkward.”
“Def,” Amy agreed.
“Am I a total weirdo for getting all worked up over some person I hardly even recognized?”
“Nah. It happens. You’re in a different place in your life. It brought you back to reality to see someone like her. It’ll pass.”
I took another sip of the Coke I’d snagged from the cooler.
“Penn looks like he’s having a really good time,” Amy said with loaded sarcasm. “I’ve never seen him dressed down. Does he normally wear jeans and a T-shirt?”
“No,” I admitted. “He’s so far out of his comfort zone, it might as well be another planet.”
“At least he didn’t freak out on Mary Beth.”
I rolled my eyes. “I’m never living that down.”
“Nope. Anyway, Penn can charm, like, anyone. Half of the party probably wants to bang him, and the other half is uncertain about their masculinity around him.” Amy tapped her finger to her lips. “Actually, I’d wager more than half want to bang him.”
“You’re the best friend a girl could ask for,” I said with a nudge of my shoulder.
“Duh.” Amy groaned. “Don’t look now. A troop of Melanie’s little college friends is approaching.”
I took another sip of my Coke and wished I’d grabbed a beer even though I didn’t really like it. I only recognized one of the girls, Marina. Her family owned a boating company, and her brother, Daron, was my age.
“Hey, Natalie,” Marina said with a wide-grinned smile.
She was like girl next door met town sweetheart. I was certain my sister corrupted her on a regular basis.
“Good to see you, Marina.”
“This is Tatum,” she said, gesturing to a brunette with a pixie cut and then a curly-haired ginger, “and Christy.”
“Are you really living in New York?” Christy asked.
I nodded. “Yeah, I moved there last year.”
“That is so cool,” Tatum said in a monotone drawl that could have been sarcasm. I wasn’t sure.
“Thanks.”
“Is it true that your boyfriend is the son of the mayor of New York City?” Christy asked.
I startled. “Um…yeah. Penn’s mom is the mayor. How did you know?”
“Oh, it’s all over the Charleston High Crew page,” Marina said.
She pulled her phone out and showed it to me. I took it and saw with deep, deep regret that none other than Mary Beth had posted all about me in the alumni group that I hadn’t known existed.
“Shit,” Amy said, barely containing a laugh. “Didn’t see that coming.”
“Was she good at much in school other than gossip?” I asked Amy as I passed the phone back to Marina.
A few other girls had congregated around me. A crowd was forming. Great.
“Are you really a socialite?” Christy asked. “Like, you have designers dress you and you go to, like, Fashion Week events and charity functions?”
I opened my mouth and then closed it.
“Yeah, I found her Influencer page,” another girl said. “She has sixty thousand followers.”
“Jesus, did it increase that much over the week?” I asked.
Christy looked at me with hero worship in her eyes. “How do you do it? You were, like, a nobody in high school, and now, you’re somebody.”
“Wow, thanks,” I muttered sarcastically. “Amy? Some help?”
“Nope. You got this one,” she said with a snicker.
“Well, when I was working in the Hamptons, I met a group of people who lived on the Upper East Side. We became…friends. And they assimilated me into their group. I started dating Penn. And now…I guess this is part of my life.”
A way, way dumbed-down version of reality. But as much as I could feed these gossip-hungry girls. I hadn’t expected Mary Beth to tell the entire world of Charleston what I was up to. Or that it would permeate through our town so fast. Or that anyone would even care.
“Melanie told me you were living an awesome life in New York, but it’s different, really knowing,” Marina explained. “You’re like a celebrity with a celebrity boyfriend.”
I glanced up at Penn in the distance, hoping he would see the sea of girls desperate to know more about my life. But he was with a few of the other guys, drinking beer—which I’d never seen him do—and joking around. No saving for me.
“I’m not a celebrity,” I said. “Just…I live a different life than I did here.”
They kept chattering, bouncing more questions off of me, and searching through my page right in front of me. I realized then why this bothered me. Why Mary Beth had bothered me. Why it all felt so wrong.
I’d thought I was coming home to escape. Letting my world in New York slide off my shoulders. That I could slip back into my Natalie Bishop shoes here in Charleston. Be the loner girl who’d only had one friend and no one knew. The girl who liked to live in libraries and write stories and swim a lot.
But I wasn’t that girl anymore. I’d brought the Upper East Side with me. It was a second skin now. And I couldn’t just take it off and be me. The two sides of me were so perfectly overlapped that there was only one me anymore.
I understood now, when I hadn’t fully grasped it from Penn before, that I couldn’t escape the Upper East Side. He’d said he wanted to escape, but he couldn’t. I’d thought that it would be so easy. But it had followed me here of all places. To the grocery store and my sister’s engagement party and a crowd of preening college freshmen.
If I couldn’t escape it here after only such a short period of time, how could Penn hope to leave it behind when he’d been in it his whole life?
“All right, ladies, let’s give Natalie a breath of air,” Michael said over the questions from Melanie’s friends.
I didn’t realize that the crowd had grown and grown as word spread, that half the party was hanging around me. Melanie was standing next to Marina, filling her in on all of my amazing adventures at Fashion Week.