Page 61 of Embrace

“Hey, I’m going to pick up some stuff for the party. You haven’t told us what we’re dressing up as.”

He pauses for the briefest moment before he shrugs. “Whatever you want.”

He’s gone before I can ask more questions. For the past four years, I’ve only seen him smile, but now all I get is one of his tired shrugs. His apathy only cements how perfect this party has to be.

Summer insisted that we need real food, so I go to the caterer first.

A wisp of smoke curls around my throat, and I cough into my arm, squinting through the haze that covers the store. There’s no one up front, so I pop into the kitchen.

I walk past the metal racks. There’s a chef hat on the lower shelf calling my name so I pick it up and am inching toward a jacket when staff members scurry past me.

Then the entire kitchen brigade is staring at me. “Uh, hey. I’m here to pick up an order for Ishida?”

The man gestures to the blackened oven and refrigerator. “Sure, go ahead. It’s mostly ash now but take your pick.”

“We can salvage some of it,” someone else says. “But the chocolate fountain? Forget it.”

This can’t be happening. My stomach twists into knots.

Chocolate fountains don’t fix people, Kian.

“The party is in two days,” I say.

“Do you understand what an electrical fire is?”

“Do you understand that it’s my best friend’s birthday?”

I’m pretty sure he swears at me in another language before shoving the sample box into my arms and walking off. A low hum of dread presses into me.

I’m stress-eating in the car, stuffing my face, when my phone buzzes. I answer with a muffled, “Hello?”

“Hi, this is HartDecor. Is this Mr. Ishida?”

I hum, swallowing my mouthful. Summer got tables, and I had the idea to get balloons with their faces on it from this place.

“So I have some bad news. Our truck route was incorrect, and it’s on its way to Texas.”

“But we put a deposit on the tables. Weneedthose tables.”

“I can’t exactly pluck the truck, now can I? Oh, and the balloons? No can do. It’s the humidity,” she says, “Everything’s deflating faster than I can inflate.”

My chest twists like a cork in a wine bottle. My only hope is the music. If the music is good, then everything will be fine.

The DJ is some dude who played at every frat party. He still glares at me like I poured my chaser over his turntable. I did, butthat was an accident. Luckily, one of Dylan’s frat brothers got him for the party. I just have to pick up the sound system from Kappa Zeta.

But the second I step into the frat house, none of them have a clue what I’m talking about. “The speakers? DJ Numbs? I’m supposed to pick up the sound system from here,” I explain.

The frat guy scratches his chest and burps in my face. I take a deep breath. I call DJ Numbs sixteen times. Sixteen. Every call goes straight to voicemail, where he plugs his SoundCloud like that’s helpful.

“Check the basement,” one of the guys suggests, opening the door for me.

It looks creepy as hell down there. I swallow, trying to not look as panicked as I feel.

“Are you gonna go? The draft’s making my nips hard,” he says.

Then something dings and I shriek, which makes the frat guy shriek too. We stare at each other for a full second before it clicks. My phone. It’s a text from Summer, checking in. I don’t answer. I can’t disappoint her. I can still figure this out.

“Do you guys wanna come downstairs with me?” I ask the frat guys.