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But as soon as I open my mouth, someone calls his name.
“Chase! Derek needs you to referee this game of beer pong!” someone yells.
“Duty calls,” Chase says. “I’ll see you later, okay?”
“Sure. Okay,” I say, and he disappears into the crowd.
The next hour is a parade of awkward. I’m awkward in the living room, where I find myself on a couch between two couples making out. I’m awkward on the dance floor as I try to maneuver into the hallway. I’m awkward in the hallway as I wait in line for the bathroom. I’m awkward in the kitchen, where I deny alcohol again and again. I thought I could do this—be on my own. That’s why I don’t look for Sophie in the basement. I don’t want it to be so obvious that I need her.
But when I ask a couple people whether they’ve seen her—to make sure she’s okay—one actually says, “Who?” even when I give her last name.
The idea that other people don’t know this girl who’s been my entire life for so many years is mind-boggling. It’s become clear, though, since school started, that Sophie has been the kind of person who keeps to herself. Whether we sit with the dance team or occasionally with Josh and his friends, she focuses on her lunch or on me. No one asks her questions, invites her into the conversation, and she doesn’t make an attempt to join it.
I’ve given up and am on my way to find the basement when she finally stumbles back to me. Into me, actually, when her heel catches on the carpet, and I have to grab her shoulders to prevent her from falling.
“Having fun?” she asks as I help steady her. The rim of her cup is stained with her lipstick. I can’t tell what’s in it.
“Oh yeah,” I say. “Giant buckets full of it.” She raises an eyebrow. “Is . . . it that obvious?”
She links her arm through mine. “I have an idea,” she says, and tugs me out of the crowd, upstairs, and into an empty bedroom. She closes the door behind us but doesn’t lock it. “It’s just us.” She gestures for me to sit next to her on someone else’s bed. “We only need you and me to have a good time, right?”
“Right,” I agree, my heart starting to pound. “What . . . do you want to do?”
Now that she’s
here, I want to be able to relax. But I’m alone with Sophie in a stranger’s bedroom, my heart thumping in anticipation. The opposite of relaxed.
She laughs too loudly. Shoves my arm. “Peter,” she says. Like my name is an admonishment. She claws her hands through her hair, her perennial nervous habit.
“Sophie,” I say back, which makes her laugh again.
When Sophie and I talked about losing our virginities together, which we’ve never discussed since, my feelings for her had dimmed back to friendship. This is what stops me every time I nearly compliment her, though: remembering how it felt in that music room in sixth grade after I confessed that I liked her. I don’t want to go back to that place. If anything’s going to happen, I can’t make the first move this time.
“Do you know a guy named Chase?” I ask.
“Chase Cabrera? Glasses?”
I nod.
“I had math with him last year. He was a little loud, but I don’t really know him. Anyway, why?”
Loud. I guess it makes sense Sophie would find someone outgoing “a little loud.”
“He’s in my AP Lit class. We’ve talked a few times.”
“Aww, are you making friends?” With that, she reaches over and smudges my cheek with her thumb. “Baby Peter’s growing up.” She twirls a strand of her hair around one finger, then takes a sip of her drink. Twirl, sip, repeat.
All of her is a little mesmerizing right now, the red of her hair and the pink of her cheeks and the black of her dress.
“You guys were great out there,” I say for about the third time tonight. I’m close enough to count her freckles.
She stares down at her ID bracelet, flicking the charms back and forth across her wrist, and blushes deeper. If I pressed my mouth to her cheeks, would they be warm against my lips? “Thanks.” Twirl. Sip. “Do . . . you remember when my mom took me bra shopping for the first time? And I was too embarrassed to tell what we were doing, just that we were going to the mall? But you begged and begged to go along with us because you wanted to go to the bookstore?”
“And so you let me tag along, and I sat in front of the lingerie store for an hour waiting for you and your mom, reading The Perks of Being a Wallflower and pretending I wasn’t mortified.” I laugh, though I’m unsure where she’s going with this. “I’d forgotten that.”
“Only you would remember exactly what book you were reading. I’d never seen your face that red,” she says, then stares up at me from beneath her lashes. “Except for now.”
At this I’m sure I blush even deeper. “You—you should probably have some water,” I croak out. I hand her the bottle I’ve been slowly peeling the label off of for the past hour, and her mouth stains it burgundy. The plastic crunches as she sips.
