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The side of his mouth lifts in a smirk. “If you knew my parents, you’d realize how funny that actually is.”
“Wait. Are theyactuallyaliens?” I ask with wide eyes and mock solemnity.
He shrugs and looks away, looping back to my previous question when he answers, “I went out on Friday.”
“Out? Like to thebars?”
This is almost more shocking than the fact that he might come from another planet.
His eyes lock with mine as he nods.
It’s on the tip of my tongue to ask him who he went with. Tamara? Her friends? But I resist. If he spent Friday night sidling up to Tamara, flirting with her in a loud bar, their mouths inching closer to each other’s—I do not want to know about it.
“Fun,” I say with a cavalier indifference. It’s like I couldn’t care less about his comings and goings.Go to twenty bars, for all I care! A hundred!“I probably wouldn’t have had much time to talk to you on Friday even if you had come to the bonfire.”
“Oh yeah?”
He sees right through me.
Nowhe’s amused. His smile hurts me.
“Yes, I was prettypreoccupiedwith Blaze.”
I all but mime a blow job for emphasis.
This is a total lie. After the marshmallow incident I mostly hung out with Lara, Camila, Oscar, and Théo. We played a trivia game on Oscar’s phone, and then I called it an early night. Blaze never came over to talk with me—not once—but I think he’s just shy. I caught him looking at me before I left, likereallychecking me out, so there’s still hope.
“Blaze the bartender?” Cole asks in a droll tone. Those three words hold a whole lot of meaning.
I laugh with heavy sarcasm. “Ha ha ha.Yes.Blaze the bartender. We can’t all be assistant directors likeyou.”
I reach out as if to straighten his name tag for maximum teasing effect, but then I think better of it. We shouldn’t touch. My fingers curl into themselves, and then I drop my hand back by my side.
He clucks his tongue and then tucks his hands into his suit-pants pockets. “Well, I hope that works out for you.”
“It will,” I say with absolute certainty.
“You should probably get back onstage.” He nods his chin toward the front of the room. “Your adoring fans are waiting.”
“Right, but you have to leave. You’re not allowed to watch me make a mockery of myself.”
His tilted head and the knowing glint in his eyes say,Paige, I’ve seen you make a mockery of yourself a million times over.
And it’s true, he has.
Cole has seen the very worst of me.
Chapter Five
PAIGE
Six months ago, on a random Saturday night, I got really drunk at the Conch Bar. To my credit, it was ladies’ night, and the bar was running a Jell-O shot promotion: two for the price of one. As someone who enjoys a good bargain and the taste of sugary alcohol, I simply could not turn down the opportunity life had presented me. Unfortunately, prior to this, the night was already headed south. There was a big group of us out on the town, all girls from the resort. We started with dinner that included copious amounts of wine. After that, we decided to go out and let our hair down, dancing, sharing stories of past sexcapades, and generally just acting like fools. The Conch Bar was our last stop of the night, and that first Jell-O shot was the beginning of the end for me. I was having so much fun until I wasn’t.
I remember the tipping point. I was standing on the dance floor thinking,They should really turn the strobe lights off in here.
Of course there were no strobe lights.
Then the next thing I remembered, we were back at the resort, and I was being dragged down the pebble path through the dense forest that leads from a private circular drive down to staff housing near the beach. It was Camila and Lara who were lugging me down the path, but theywere drunk, too, and we kept falling over and laughing. Everything was funny. The shapes of the trees. The color of the moon. The fact that my dress was riding up around my hips.
