“Fair enough,” Jeff said pleasantly, pounding the rest of his drink. He set his glass down and put his arm around me. “I think what we need is some alone time.”
“Maybe another time,” I said, shrugging his arm off.
He stared at me like I’d grown an extra head. “You’re not even kidding, are you,” he said after an amazed silence.
“No, I’m not,” I said. He looked at me for another moment.
“Fine, fine,” he said with his hands up in mock surrender.
I wasn’t sure what had just happened, but this night was going seriously downhill. We wandered outside to a table where Brock and Reilly and Teddy were standing and playing flip cup, a dumb game that involves plastic cups and beer, and as far as I could tell, the whole point is just to get drunk. The boys were playing in teams of two. The rules are really inconsequential.
“Naoooomi,” Teddy said, smiling at me. He swayed back and forth a tiny bit on his heels. “This girl—this girl right here—this girl gets it. She and me, we get it.” He took a swig off a champagne bottle and burped loudly. Then he swiveled around and yelled, “Hey, Misti! Misti!”
Misti, still serving lobster, looked up, startled. So did Giovanni at the bar beside her.
“Come play flip cup!” he called. “Come help us play flip cup!”
She blushed happily and waved him off. “I’m workin’!” she yelled back.
“Fuck your work!” Teddy roared. “It’s flip cup time!”
“I’ll get in trouble,” Misti called back. She pointed at Giovanni. “My supervisor,” she said, making zero effort to disguise the disgust in her voice.
“Oh, him?” Teddy slurred, getting out his wallet. “He’s no problem. Me and Giovanni, we go way back. He’s my boy.” He stumbled over to Giovanni and waved a hundred-dollar bill right in front of the bartender’s Roman nose.
“Naomi needs a partner for flip cup,” he said, pointing at me. “That girl there? You know her mom? Her mom’s the cup-cake lady. Anne. . . Anne Rye. The famous cupcake lady.”
“Hey, man, I’m sorry,” Giovanni said stiffly, though he didn’t sound very sorry. “I can’t let the staff mingle with the guests. It’s against our company policy. I didn’t make the rule.”
“Oh,” Teddy said, temporarily nonplussed. Then his expression cleared and he smiled winningly. “But you can break the rule! Right? Right?”
Giovanni shook his head. “I really can’t. And neither can she.” Misti scowled at him bitterly.
“Hey, Teddy, why don’t you come back and finish the game?” Jeff called in that talking-to-a-three-year-old voice people use with their super-drunk friends. “Naomi just wants to watch, right?” He gave me a pointed look.
“Right,” I joined in. “Yeah, I don’t even like beer that much. I like wine.”
“So we’ll play with wine!” Teddy exclaimed, throwing his arms wide open and staring at the ceiling of the tent like he wanted to hug it. “We’ll play with wine!” He reached over and tucked the hundred-dollar bill in Giovanni’s collar.
“A hundred dollars,” Teddy said. “A hundred dollars for a bottle of wine and your girl for flip cup.”
“Wine bottles aren’t for sale,” Giovanni said evenly. He stared at Teddy.
“And neither is she,” he added, looking at Teddy’s girlfriend.
“For fuck’s sake, Gio,” Misti snapped. “Just let me play fuckin’ flip cup. No one gets in trouble unless you tell a manager.”
“You don’t need any more to drink tonight, baby,” Giovanni said, moving his eyes back to Teddy. “You’ve had enough.”
“Baby!” Misti repeated in disgust.
Giovanni removed the hundred-dollar bill from under his collar as if he were holding a shoe covered in dog crap. He held it out to Teddy.
“Here,” Giovanni said. “I don’t want your money.”
“Sure you do,” Teddy said, laughing. “Everybody wants money.”
“I don’t want yours,” Giovanni said. His eyes were steely.
Teddy’s mood soured then, and he glared back at the bartender.
“That’s not what you said last summer,” he said. “Only reason I even know your name is you were running that little side business.”
“I don’t do that anymore,” Giovanni said.
“Why not?” Teddy asked.
“My cousin got busted. Scared the shit out of me. I’m not trying to end up in jail, man.”
“Jail?” Teddy said, chortling. “Bro, all you’d have to do if something came up was call me. I’d take care of it. You know who my girlfriend’s father is?”
“Teddy!” A sharp voice cut through the air like an axe. We all jumped a little—me, Jeff, Teddy, Giovanni, Misti, even Brock and Reilly.
It was Delilah, followed closely by a nervous-looking Jacinta. But this wasn’t the stoned, catty Delilah I’d seen in the red bedroom. This was a very angry Delilah, with fire in her eyes.
“My father,” she said, pulling herself up to her full height, “is not a prop you can use to impress your friends from Long Island.” The way she spit out Long Island meant she definitely wasn’t talking about the Hamptons.
I’d never seen Teddy Barrington cowed by anyone before, but it seemed Delilah had found the trick.
“Aw, baby,” he said. “I was just having fun.”
“Don’t call me baby,” Delilah snapped.
I realized then that while Delilah had referenced Giovanni and Misti—“your friends from Long Island”—she hadn’t looked at them once. She certainly hadn’t acknowledged them directly. It was like they didn’t even exist. In contrast, Misti was staring at her, gape-mouthed, as if she were looking at a movie star.
“I’m going home,” Delilah said.
“But we took my car,” Teddy said.
“Exactly. You’re going to give me your keys, and I’m going to drive myself home. You can come with me, or you and Brock and Reilly can find another way to get out of here.”
Teddy laughed. “Drive home? You? You suck at driving. You’ll put my car in a ditch.”
Delilah rolled her eyes, deftly removed his keys from his back pocket, and began walking away. Before she left, she gave Jacinta’s hand one last furtive squeeze.
Teddy stared at his retreating girlfriend, then at Brock and Reilly, then back at Delilah.
“But we just got here,” he whined.
“Looks like the train’s leaving, bro,” Jeff said. “I’d get on it if I were you. I’m sorry, you know I’d drive you if I were sober.”
Heaving a huge sigh, Teddy trotted off behind Delilah. Brock and Reilly followed suit.
“Well, I guess that’s the end of flip cup,” Jeff said.
“Hey, man, you need a ride home?” asked Steven Xavier, an oily catalog heir who’d joined us with his girlfriend, some chain-smoking Russian model who fawned all over Jacinta in broken English (“You is famous of blog!” she exclaimed at one point). Steven had explained earlier that he was currently “doing the sober thing,” having just finished his third stint at a lovely rehab center in the Berkshires.
“Yeah, I guess I do,” Jeff said reluctantly. “I’ve got a tee time at seven tomorrow morning.” He looked at me. “Is it cool if I leave my car parked overnight at your house? I’ll pick it up tomorrow.”
“Sure,” I said. He kissed me goodbye, and the three of them left.
“You okay, Jacinta?” I asked. She looked paler than pale, so white she matched everything else at the party.
“I think I’ll just sit down, love,” she said shakily, before lowering herself into a chair at our table. Around us, girls had begun kicking up their heels and dancing their own versions of the Charleston and other old-timey dances they’d probably only seen in movies or something. More and more people jumped into the pool, some in their underwear, some wearing nothing at all.