“Because it’s not a big deal. He’s only a year older.”
“So he says. He could be lying. He could be fifty-five. You have no clue.”
“You’re acting likeIinvited him here. He was the one who brought up Senior Night at Alderton-Du Ponte and said he was attending with his parents.”
“And don’t you think that’s at all suspicious? That he just sohappensto be attending the same event we are? That he just sohappensto be in the same city?” Jamie closed his eyes. “You don’t even know his actual name, Nell.”
As someone who’d been gunning for perfect attendanceandperfect grades, I’d had to learn quickly what worked when it came to focus. For me, that’d been turning on an ASMR Study With Me channel, where they set up the camera in their workspace and film it. Something about the pen scratches and page flips kept my mind busy, filling in the spaces my letters normally shouldered into.
And one day, as the ASMRtist on my computer unloaded his bag for a Study At the Beach With Me video, I’d seen something.
The beach he’d sat on. I’d recognized it. It’d been the pier in Bayview, the next town over. I’d quickly sent Mr. ASMR a DM, commenting on the proximity, and he’d replied almost as fascinated as me.
And when he said he’d be coming to Senior Night at Alderton-Du Ponte—an event that was open to all the influential families of Fenton County, members or not—I didn’t think anything of it.
“I’ve shown you his hands,” I told Jamie. “Those were not a fifty-five-year-old’s hands.”
The alarm in Jamie’s expression didn’t fade. “You’re basing this on hishands.”
“C’mon, guys!” Mom called up the stairs. “We’re going to be late!”
I took one step away from the bathroom counter before stopping. I needed to look myself over one more time. “As long as you don’t sneak off to read, I’ll be by your side the entire night. You can beat him up if he looks skeevy.”
“Right, because these muscles I’m hiding under my jacket will do maximum damage.”
His sarcasm was noted. One glance at him and it was clear Jamie was a reader, not a workout enthusiast. “Leave the physical stuff to Daisy.”
Jamie’s grumbling faded as he left my room.
I tucked my dark hair behind my ears. Mom’s earrings would look lovely against the sea of darkness, tickling the fair skin of my throat.
I reached up and pinched the pendant between my thumb and finger, and it was small enough to fit between them perfectly. It almost served as a button on a remote, pressing pause, rewinding to the first time I’d put it on, to the person who’d given it to me.
To the person I refused to let myself really think about longer than two seconds.
No good would come from thinking about him. Not when I had to be on my A game.
“F-O-C-U-S,” I spelled, and then spelled it again in my head.
I hated clutter. I could live with a little dirtiness—like a toothpaste smear on the sink or a few hairs in the showerdrain—but dirty clothes lying around, or an unmade bed? A cluttered room, a cluttered mind, a cluttered life; that was the motto Dad instilled in me.
I was Eleanor Brighton, future defense attorney with a perfect life to lead. I could not becluttered.
I had to be perfect.
“P-E-R-F-E-C-T.” I released a breath, the letters washing over me like a magical spell. Perfect girls were not nervous to talk to professors, or boys, or any other influential adult they met—no, they were confident. Sure. They walked into rooms as if they owned them, and they held their chins high. They were the prettiest person in the room.
“Perfect,” I repeated.
And then I went downstairs to meet my family in the car.
Alderton-Du Ponte was Connecticut’s most elite country club—or at least, that was what its members liked to claim. I wasn’t sure anyone had ever bothered to fact-check it. Still, there was no denying that ADP felt like another world entirely. Marble floors gleamed beneath towering windows, catching the light and sending it sliding across the lobby. Everywhere you looked, there was something designed to make you forget the outside existed—spas scented with eucalyptus, glittering saltwater pools, pristine pickleball courts, and an 18-hole golf course that stretched on and on.
The whole place felt dipped in gold. Perfect.
Stressful.
Growing up at the country club taught me one thing: everything was about moves and countermoves. The place ran like a game of chess, with careful strategies and players who smiled sweetly while plotting three moves ahead. Nothing happened by accident. Every decision had to be thought through. Analyzed. Risk weighed carefully against reward, because one reckless move could cost you the entire game.
