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I’m annoyed at his interruption, and I immediately turn my attention back to the dark-haired girl brooding along the wall.
It’s clear her mind is elsewhere; she doesn’t seem like the kind of girl to jump on the opportunity to be present on the opening night of a club like this. Even if every impression that I have of her is incorrect, she intrigues me.
Her dress is sexy, but not in a loud, overbearing way. She’s perfectly balanced how she is, with her long hair swept over her shoulders and her piercing green eyes gazing thoughtfully over the sea of people in front of her. Maybe she came here just to watch people, which is something I would understand and appreciate about her.
I think again about approaching her, but then I’m motioned over to the bar by the bartender, who has already encountered his first problem customer.
Oh well. The night is still young.
3
Delilah
“Jesus, the drinks here are like twenty dollars each! Who do they think is going to pay that for a shitty Manhattan?” Regan whines as she sips her drink.
“Maybe they think that all the rich kids from the private colleges will. That’s probably the whole reason they opened this club,” I reply offhandedly as I lose sight of Elliot in the crowd. Every time I see his face, I feel like I could throw up. I hate being here. I just want to go home and be upset by myself.
“Hey, how old is your little sister?” asks Regan after a brief pause.
“She’s twenty-one. Why?” I ask.
Regan’s only met my sister a couple of times. Why would she be concerned with her at all?
“Because I just saw her walk away from the bar,” she replies uneasily, pointing over to the group of college students that have gathered at the edge of the dance floor, sipping their drinks and aggressively stirring them to mix the alcohol more evenly.
“What the fuck? How does she even know enough people to be in a group that big?” I say as I spot her in the crowd. She’s wearing one of the old dresses that I left behind when I went to college, and she sticks out like a black sheep among the meticulously polished socialites she’s glommed onto.
My sister Arielle isn’treallymy sister, at least not by blood. I was adopted into her family when I was four because her parents thought they weren’t able to have children. As irony would have it, they conceived her a few years later, and suddenly all of the grandstanding about how I was their ‘real child’ came to a screeching halt.
I became theotherchild, and she became their miracle baby.
“Oh god, you don’t even want to look,” Regan mutters.
And she’s right. Following her line of sight, I see Elliot and Arielle walk over to the dance floor together just as a slow, bass-heavy song begins to play. To make matters worse, it looks like Arielle is the one tellinghimwhat to do, leading him by his wrist to the center of the room where she can embody her role as the main character for tonight.
“No fucking way,” I growl to myself.
Regan glances at me with a pale face. Whatever stunt she expected me to pull tonight is about to be dwarfed by the scene she knows I’m going to make over this.
As soon as I begin to walk towards Elliot and Arielle, Regan grasps my hand, pulling me back into the shadows by the edge of the wall. “Don’t do anything that’s going to get us in trouble. I still want to have a good time tonight. I haven’t been able to get away from work all month,” she hisses.
I don’t even look at her before I jerk my hand away from her and walk straight toward Elliot, my heels clicking obnoxiously against the tile floors, even with the deafening music.
Just as Elliot is about to turn in my direction, I pull my fist back and throw it toward his obnoxious face as hard as I can. My knuckles make satisfying contact with his nose, the crunch vibrating all the way up into my forearm.
“God, what the fuck?!” he screams, bringing his hand up to his nose as blood pours down his shirt.
“What do you mean ‘what the fuck’? I’m the one who should be asking that!” I scream in his face.
He’s clearly startled, and we’re already drawing a crowd, but I’m not about to stop my tirade now. I’m all hyped up and ready to throw fists again to get my point across.
“God Elliot, after everything I’ve done for you, you’re going to cheat on me with my sister? My younger sister?!” I shout, pointing to Arielle as she attempts to disappear into the crowd with no success. “You’re such a little bitch. You couldn’t even cheat on me with someone I didn’t know? You had to do the worst thing possible? You’re fucking dead to me.”
Elliot opens his mouth to speak, but I steal a drink from a man nearby and toss it in his face before he can get a word out. I don’t want to hear his stupid excuses. This is unforgivable.
I turn away from him, making a hasty retreat into the crowd as I spot Arielle trying to make a quick escape.
Not so fast, bitch.
