He’s staring at me with wide eyes, the imprint of my palm leaving a red mark on his face.
“Fuck you.” I say it again, and then I’m pushing through the crowd, ignoring the sound of a girl calling my name. My eyes are blurring so hard I can barely find my car.
I knew it I knew it I knew it ...
I should never have come tonight.
THEN
Luke and I had our very first fight over it. It was on Wednesday. He’d gone back on Sunday, and he was still refusing to drive down for Rowan’s birthday on Friday.
“Why’s it such a big deal to you if I come?” he’d asked over the phone that night.
“Are you serious?” I asked.
“Well, yeah.”
“First, because I want to see you. Second, it’s your brother’s freaking birthday and you’ve never missed it before and you actuallyhavethe weekend off, but you’re just not willing to come down. Because of some stupid ego trip you’re on.”
“I’m not on an ego trip.”
“Could have fooled me,” I said.
“You’re being so unreasonable.”
“No,youare.”
In the end, he’d said something about how this was between him and Ro, and if his brother didn’t care about him not being there, neither did he. I’d said fine and then I’d hung up.
The next day, Thursday, was the first day since our fro-yo date that we didn’t speak once, either over the phone or even by text. I couldn’t believe I was seeing this other side of Luke. He was so damn stubborn.Insufferablewas the word, actually.
I’d spoken to Ro about it, and he’d just shrugged and said, “If Luke doesn’t want to come, he doesn’t have to.”
I was certain he was putting on a brave face. I obviously didn’t have siblings, but I knew I would care if they missed my birthday for reasons that were not totally unavoidable. I knew what it was like to have a family that was alive but not living. Here, but not present. Knew what it was like to feel like an afterthought to the people who were supposed to love you. And there were few things that sucked more.
The day of Ro’s party, I’d spent the afternoon at Mel’s house, where we piled the back of Ro’s car with snacks, paper plates, napkins, and two foldout tables.
“There better not be any drinking,” Mel warned, and Ro scoffed and acted like his mother was being ridiculous.
“I’m not an idiot,” he said.
I suspected that he was bluffing and that someone (or several someones) was bound to show up with alcohol, but I would always be loyal to Rowan, so I said nothing to Mel.
At seven thirty, dressed in a pair of jeans, a nice top, and a bomber jacket, I jumped into Ro’s car and waved at Mel and Naomi, who had come over for wine. Ro drove us to the lake.
It was kind of dumb to begin with. Having a party at the lake in October. It had been an unseasonably warm fall, and we didn’t have to worry about snow or ice or anything yet, but it was still fall. When I pointed this out, Rowan shrugged and said he couldn’t help when he was born.
When we arrived at the lake, we got to work setting up. My phone was in my jacket, which I’d thrown in a pile on the beach after realizing that Ro was right; it wasn’t “that cold” yet. By eight, most of Ro’s friends were starting to arrive. Cassie Clairburne greeted him with a passionate kiss, whispering something in his ear. She didn’t acknowledge me as I continued setting up. For some reason, there had been this weird tension between me and Cassie since she and Ro started dating. Before they were together, we never really spoke to each other. And now that they were together ... we never really spoke to each other. I didn’t worry too much about it, though, since I suspected that their relationship had all the longevity of a juniors tennis match.
The party got underway, and music blasted out from Ro’s speakers. Despite not being as cold as I’d expected, it was still October and mostly dark by six thirty.
For the first hour, I circled among different groups, chatting to people from different classes. I didn’t know half as many people as Ro knew, and I certainly wouldn’t consider them all “friends,” but Rowan and I had never been the kind of best friends who always had to be joined at the hip. I was fine, drifting in and out of conversations, laughing with people I’d known since elementary school and people I hadn’t. The whole thing was going pretty well.
Until I realized I couldn’t find Rowan.
I shimmied through different clusters of people, looking for him. Thought about finding my jacket and grabbing my phone, but then I remembered that he’d asked me to puthisphone in my second pocket while we unloaded the car. I grew more and more panicked as I searched. Especially when I saw Cassie sitting next to a lacrosse player who had his arm around her. Instead of feeling vindicated that I was probably right about her, I felt sorry for Ro and hoped he hadn’t seen this.
I continued threading my way through the party, looking for Rowan. Since he certainly was not with Cassie, I knew the most likely person I’d find him with was Eric, so when I spotted Eric laughing with a group of girls I didn’t know, my heart sank.
