She looked great, though — at least that part of my fantasy remained intact — casual but festive in a tight white camisole and short black skirt, ruffled at the bottom, that showed off her impressively muscled legs. Her arms were slender and toned, her hair gathered in a sleek ponytail that swayed when she moved, providing periodic glimpses of the tiny, green-tufted carrot tattooed on the back of her neck (when I’d asked her about it in art class, she just shrugged and said she liked carrots). As far as I could tell, she wasn’t wearing a bra, and you could see the outline of her nipples pressing through the stretchy fabric of her top, two emphatic dots that commanded the attention of every guy in the room. Brendan Moroney, this ginger-haired lummox who’d been the bane of my middle school existence, nudged me with his elbow.
“Yo, dude, is it just me, or is it getting a little nippy in here?”
I smiled politely, not wanting to offend him, but not wanting to encourage him, either. Brendan was a total jackass, one of my least favorite people in the world. Back in fifth grade, he and his Pop Warner buddies had decided it would be amusing to call me Fosh, a ridiculous nickname I found deeply humiliating (I was pretty sure it stood for Fat Josh or Fag Josh, or maybe a combination of the two). They kept it up for a full year before moving on to the next target. I still hated him for that, though I got the feeling that he barely remembered my real name, let alone the insulting substitute that had made me so miserable.
“Last week she made out with Emma Singer,” he informed me. “Capaldo got it on his cell phone. So hot. Like a fucking porno movie.”
“I heard about that.” Emma Singer was a sophomore who’d gotten kicked out of private school for some kind of scandalous offense — arson, drugs, or sexting, depending on whom you asked. Last Monday, Sarabeth had told me she was a lousy kisser.
“I think Emma’s here tonight,” he said. “If we’re lucky, we’ll get an encore.”
I didn’t answer because Sarabeth was heading our way, passing out lime wedges for the next round. When she got to me, I smiled and asked how she was doing, but she didn’t seem to hear the question. She was looking up at Brendan, shaking her head in mock exasperation.
“You’re such a pig,” she told him, but her voice was sweet and friendly, as if pig were a compliment.
“What?” Brendan raised both hands in self-defense. “What did I do?”
“You know,” she teased him. “Don’t even try to deny it.”
Casey Amandola followed close behind Sarabeth, pouring tequila into our plastic cups. When everybody was ready, Sarabeth counted to three, and we all drank at once, tossing back the shots and sucking on our limes.
“Goddam!” Brendan said, punching himself hard in the chest. “That shit is poison!”
AFTER A while, Brendan got bored and drifted off, to my great relief. I probably should have left, too — three shots of tequila are enough for anyone — but I didn’t want to let Sarabeth out of my sight. I figured that sooner or later we’d get a chance to talk, and I was planning on coming right out and telling her how pretty she was, just state it like an obvious fact and see how she reacted.
In any case, the kitchen wasn’t the worst place to be. All sorts of people drifted in and out — there was a keg on the back patio — and I found myself hugging a whole bunch of them, including some I barely knew, and one or two I didn’t especially like. Most of us were seniors who’d already gotten our college acceptances — I was heading across the country to Pomona — and a generalized cloud of goodwill was in the air, that sense of connection that comes from having a shared past and one foot out the door.
One of the few people who didn’t hug me was Iris Leggett. She just sort of materialized by my side while I was recovering from shot number four, which had gone down easier than its predecessors and then detonated like a fireball in my stomach. I had to close my eyes and wait for the uproar to subside.
“You okay?” she said, tugging gently on my shirtsleeve.
“I think so.” I blinked a few times, getting the world back in focus. “Just a little wobbly.”
After that there was an awkward pause. Despite our promise to remain friends after the break-up, Iris and I had been avoiding each other for months, and now here she was, squinting up at me with an expression that seemed to hover somewhere between amusement and concern. I was also a bit distracted by her shirt, so tight and low-cut that it could barely contain her breasts. In school she always covered up, usually with an extra-large hoodie that hung down to her knees.
“I know.” She nodded ruefully, following my gaze down to her impressive cleavage. “Holy shit, right?”
I winced and mumbled an apology. I still felt bad about blurting that out, making her cry the first time we had sex — the first time for both of us.
“It’s okay,” she told me. “I’m trying to own it, you know? I’m sick of hating my body.”
“That’s good,” I said. “That’s a really healthy attitude.”
“Fuck it, right?” There was something a little off about her smile, or maybe the tone of her voice. “If guys want to stare at my tits, who am I to stop them? I’m like, Here they are, dudes. Knock yourselves out.”
“Are you drunk?”
She raised her red plastic cup, tilting it to show me the contents. It was pretty big, at least twenty-four ounces, and more than halfway full. “Turns out I like beer,” she said, shrugging in a who-woulda-thunk-it sort of way.
“You should try some tequila. That’s pretty good, too.”
“Maybe,” she said, but her attention had shifted from me to Sarabeth, who was taking a selfie by the sink, making a supermodel face for the camera. It seemed like everybody in the room was watching her.
“She’s pretty,” Iris observed. “But she’s such an exhibitionist.”
“She’s nice,” I said. “She’s in my art class.”
Casey joined Sarabeth for the next picture, the two of them posing with the tequila bottle. On the one after that, they gave each other a playful kiss. Some guys started cheering for more, but Casey pulled away and gave them the finger, telling them to dream on.
“I should’ve gone to more parties,” Iris said. “I used to act like they were stupid, but that was bullshit. I pretty much wasted the past four years pretending I was above it all. But the joke was on me, you know?”
“You didn’t waste it,” I told her. “You worked your ass off and got into a great college. I bet you’re gonna love it at Northwestern.”
“I’m gonna go to more parties, that’s for sure.” She swirled the beer in her cup as if it were fine wine. “I just wanna have some fun for once.”
There was a disturbance just then, a bunch of football players scuffling in the hallway. From the sound of it, I thought it might be a real fight, but they were just goofing around, Brendan and Chad Capaldo and Dontay Williamson tugging on one of their buddies, dragging him forcibly into the kitchen.
“Get this man a shot!” Brendan shouted as they spilled through the doorway. “It’s his birthday next week!”
Dontay was blocking my view of the birthday boy, but then he moved and I saw that it was Jake Harlowe. He looked sweaty and a little flustered, his blue oxford shirt rumpled and askew.
“I can’t drink tonight,” he said, realigning the buttons on shirt. “I have to take the SATs tomorrow.”