So I changed my plan to just ignoring him.
As you can see, I’ve spent way more time thinking about this than I should have.
Anyway, getting to the reception a little bit late meant my parents left their hotel room before I left mine. And so I had to walk into the reception alone, which was kind of intimidating, and a little bit humiliating. What if Jace saw me and thought my parents weren’t even at the wedding and I’d come by myself just because I wanted to see him so badly? Like some kind of stalker or something?
I do my best to ignore the butterflies in my stomach, then walk with my shoulders back and my head held high right to table eight, which, according to my place card, is where I’m sitting.
There’s no one at my table yet, which makes no sense since I got here late. Shouldn’t people be seated? But it seems like everyone’s at the bar, eating hors d’oeuvres and ordering drinks and having a grand old time. Damn. I should have come later. Or at least made sure someone was sitting at my table before I sat down.
God. What a disaster.
I sip water from my goblet, then grab an hors d’oeuvre from one of the tuxedoed waiters as he goes by. The thing I’ve learned about hors d’oeuvres is that you have to get them while you can—otherwise, you end up having to wait forever just to get some food.
I pop the pig in a blanket into my mouth, wondering why they’d have pigs in a blanket at such a high-level affair. Then I realize that if Jace lays his eyes on me now, he’s going to see me sitting here all by myself, eating a hot dog. Which is so not the first impression I want to give him. I quickly swallow what’s in my mouth and decide not to eat any more until other people sit down.
But now I don’t know what to do with my hands.
I take another sip of my water.
“Our table’s over here!” someone shouts. I look up to see a guy about my age dressed in a white suit and white shoes weaving his way through the crowd. He plops down into the seat next to me.
“Howdy!” he says. “Who are you? And are you here for the bride or the groom?” He sticks his hand out to me, almost knocking my water glass over in the process. I can’t tell if he’s drunk or just crazy.
“Um, I’m Peyton,” I say, moving my glass to the other side of my plate and safely out of his reach. “And the groom is my uncle.”
He nods. “I’m here with the bride.” He pulls a sparkling white handkerchief out of his pocket, blows his nose, and then stuffs it back in his pocket. Ewww.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “Are you Jocelyn?”
“Jocelyn?”
“Yes,” I say. I point down at the card in front of him. “Because the place card says I’m supposed to be sitting next to someone named Jocelyn.”
He peers down at it. “Oh, no, that’s my girlfriend.” He leans in toward me, like he’s about to let me in on a secret. “Actually, she’s my ex-girlfriend as of 12:17 a.m. last night. Or this morning, whatever.” He reaches for his water glass, and downs the contents.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “Um, that you guys broke up.”
“Yeah, it was really horrible,” he says. “I just . . . I don’t understand what women want, you know? “ He shakes his head sadly. “Do you?”
I’m about to say that of course I understand what women want, that I am a woman, but then I realize that would be a lie. How can I know what women want when I hardly know what I want myself? “No.” I sigh. “I don’t think anyone knows what women want.”
“That’s what I’ve been trying to tell people,” he says, gesturing around the wedding, as if maybe he’s been going up to each and every guest, trying to convince them that no one knows what women want. He points a finger at me. “You’re smart, I can tell.”
“There you are!” Another guy comes up to our table, sounding a little frantic. “Jesus, B.J., can you stay in one place for one second?” This new guy sets a white ceramic cup full of coffee in front of B.J. “Here, drink that.” He shakes his head, and I recognize him as Courtney’s boyfriend, Jordan.
“Hi, I’m Jordan,” he says, holding his hand out to me.
“I’m Peyton.”
“Oh, right,” he says, his face breaking into a smile. “Courtney’s cousin. She talks about you all the time.”
“She does? Good things, I hope.”
“Always.” He smiles again, and slides into the seat on the other side of B.J. And then, suddenly, Jordan’s smile fades. “Ah, shit,” he mutters.
I follow his gaze to where Courtney’s crossing the room, walking toward us with another girl. They both look stunning—Courtney’s in a floor-length red gown, and the girl she’s with is wearing a tight baby-blue dress that hits just below her knees, her hair swept to one side.
“What?” I ask.
“That’s Jocelyn,” B.J. says morosely into his coffee. “That’s my ex-girlfriend.”
“Oh.” I clear my throat. “Um, so you guys are both going to be at this table, then?”
“Yup,” B.J. says. He leans in close to me. “Listen,” he says, “I might flirt with you, you know, to make her jealous. I want her to know that I’m desirable and that other girls are interested in me.” He inches his chair toward mine.
“Oh, I’m sure she already knows that,” I say.
“No, she doesn’t. So if I kiss you or something, just know that it’s all part of the show.”
Great.
“You’re in my seat,” Jocelyn says to B.J. when she gets to our table.
“I’m sorry,” he says, looking around like he doesn’t know where her voice is coming from. “I thought you weren’t talking to me.”
“I’m talking to you,” she says. “I’m just not dating you. Now move.”
“No.” B.J. shakes his head. “I want to sit here.” He scoots his chair even closer to mine and gives me a smile, like he wants to sit there so that he can be close to me.
“Who the hell are you?” Jocelyn asks. She puts her hand on her hip and glares down at me.
Lovely. Now I’m going to get my ass kicked by some girl I don’t know, over some guy who I don’t know, and don’t even care to know. “Um, I’m Peyton.”
“Jocelyn,” Courtney says, grabbing her arm, “come on, you can sit over here with me.”
“I don’t want to sit over there with you,” Jocelyn says. “I want to sit there, in my seat.”
“You heard Courtney,” B.J. says, waving Jocelyn away like she’s some kind of gnat. “You go sit over there. I’m going to sit with Peyton.” He puts his hand on my arm and gives me another smile.
I smile back tentatively. I don’t know what’s worse—pretending to be going along with B.J.’s flirting and maybe getting into a fistfight with Jocelyn, or not going along with it and dealing with whatever craziness B.J. might come up with to punish me.
Joceyln’s eyes widen when she sees B.J.’s hand on my arm, and for a moment, I’m pretty sure she’s going to hit me. Or him. Or both of us. But at the last second she changes her mind, and her face breaks into a wide smile. But it’s not the kind of smile you give when you’re happy. It’s the kind of smile you give when you’re up to something bad.
Sure enough, a minute later, she’s heading off to the dance floor, where she grabs some random guy and starts grinding on him. It’s kind of a spectacle, actually, since no one’s really even dancing yet. And Jocelyn’s kind of rubbing all over the guy. And he’s definitely older than her. Like, twenty-five at least.
Jordan looks at Courtney, but Courtney just shrugs. “We have to let them work it out,” she says.
“We’re not going to work it out!” B.J. declares. “You two need to stop babysitting us. We’re breaking up.” He motions for a waiter who’s holding a tray of champagne flutes, grabs one, and downs it in about one second.
Great. Somehow I’ve ended up at the crazy table. Why is this stuff always happening to me? Why aren’t I sitting with my parents, over in some corner somewhere, listening to adults talk about property taxes and kitchen renovations and school dist
ricts and all the other ridiculous things parents talk about?
Then again, this is a lot more interesting. At least I won’t be bored. In fact, I realize I haven’t thought about Jace in, like, ten minutes. That must be some kind of record or something. I guess being about to get your ass kicked will do that to you.
Courtney slides over to me and smiles. “I like your dress,” she says.
“Thanks. I like yours, too.”
“How’s everything going?”
I paste a smile on my face. “It’s going great.”
“Really?” she says. “Because—”
“Excuse me,” a voice on the other side of Courtney says, “but I think you’re in my seat.”
I look up. And there he is. Jace. The wind immediately gets knocked out of me, and red-hot lust shoots through my body. He looks amazing, even better than I remember. Tall. Dark hair. Blue eyes. He’s wearing a white button-up shirt and gray pants, and his tie is loosened around his neck. His sleeves are rolled up a little bit, showing off his forearms, which are tanned and muscular.
“Oh.” Courtney sounds surprised. She looks at me. “This is . . . I mean, this is my seat.” She points to the place card. “And I was talking to Peyton.”
“Yeah,” Jace says. “But I want to sit there.”
Courtney looks at me, her eyes asking me if it’s okay. And what can I do? I can’t say no. If I say no, Jace is going to realize that he’s having an effect on me. And what is it that they always say? The opposite of love isn’t hate, it’s indifference?
Well. I will show Jace Renault that I am totally indifferent to him, thank you very much.
“It’s fine,” I say, and shrug.
And then, before I know what’s happening, Courtney’s getting up, and Jace is settling into the chair next to me. He reaches out and grabs my water glass, then takes a swig.
“That was my water,” I say.
“Sorry.” He holds it out to me. “You want it back?”
“Not now.”
He shrugs and then takes another sip. “So how are you doing?”
He looks at me, and I look at him, and something about the way he’s doing it, something about the way he’s looking at me is sending shivers up my spine. He’s looking at me the same way that I’ve been wanting to look at him. Like maybe he wants to take me into the coatroom and get me naked or something.
And that’s when I know.
It is definitely not over between me and Jace Renault.
Saturday, June 26, 9:29 p.m.
Savannah, Georgia
I don’t know how or why that happened. One minute I was telling that stupid story about my fake dog having cancer (which was pretty scummy, I’ll admit), the next minute I was goofing off and splashing around in the bathtub with Hector, and then somehow, I was kissing Peyton.
I couldn’t help myself. It was like I had to have her. Her body was pressed against mine, and I needed to kiss her. If I’m being totally honest, I’ve been wanting to kiss her all damn day. I’m actually surprised I lasted as long as I did.
And the kiss was good. Really, really, really good.
I pull her down closer to me, my hands on her face and in her hair. I want the kiss to go on forever. But after a little bit, she pulls back.
“Hi,” I say, giving her a lazy smile.
“Hey,” she says. She rests her head on my chest, and for some ridiculous reason, we just stay like that, me holding her in a bathtub while I stroke her hair.
Hector is gone—I don’t really know where he is, but it definitely cannot be anywhere good. He’s probably messing up the room. But I don’t care. Right now all I care about is Peyton, about making this moment last forever. It sounds cheesy, but I don’t give a fuck.
We stay like that for maybe twenty minutes or so, alternating between kissing and just lying there. Finally, she props her head up on her elbow. “We should get out of this tub,” she says. “My clothes are soaking wet.”
I grin. “Or you could just take them off.”
“Funny.” She pulls herself up and out of the tub, and after a second, I follow. She hands me a fluffy white towel off the rack in the bathroom, and I get to work drying off my hair.
“I need some dry clothes,” I tell her. “I’ll be right back.”
I head back to my room and change into a clean T-shirt and a pair of track pants. When I get back to Peyton’s room, she’s sitting on the edge of the bed with Hector. She’s changed into a soft pink T-shirt and a pair of black yoga pants, her hair hanging in curly tendrils down her back.
“Hi,” she says.
“Hi.” I sit down next to her. But suddenly, something feels . . . I don’t know, different. Like the spell was broken or something. Now that we’ve kissed, I’m not sure what I’m supposed to do. Kiss her again? Turn on the television? Act like nothing happened?
“So,” she says.
“So.” I look at Hector. “You dried him off.”
She nods.
“He looks clean.”
“Yup.” She nods again.
Wow. Talk about awkward. This is what I hate about things like this. It’s like they can’t ever just be normal. They always have to be some big deal. Like, we just kissed. So what? Let’s kiss again, that’s what I say.
“So, are you hungry?” I try. “Maybe we should order food or something.”
“I got food from the gas station.”
“Oh. Right. Well, what do you want to do?”
“I think . . . ” She twists her hands in her lap nervously. “I think that maybe I should go to sleep.”
I blink at her, unable to believe what I’m hearing. “You think that you should go to sleep?”
She nods.
“But it’s not even ten o’clock!”
“We need to get on the road early tomorrow.”
“Bullshit.”
“What?” She looks at me, sounding shocked that I would say such a thing.
“I said bullshit,” I say. “I just kissed you, and you’re freaked out by it, and so now you want to do what you always do. Just run away and pretend it didn’t happen.”
Her eyes widen, and flash with anger. “Are you kidding me?”
“No.” I cross my arms over my chest. “I’m dead serious.”
“You think I’m freaked out because you kissed me?”
“Yes.”
“I’m not.”
“You are!”
“I’m not!”
“Then why are you acting like it?”
She springs off the bed, like there’s too much anger in her body to keep it still. “Okay, fine,” she says. “I am freaked out, Jace. I’m freaked out because for some reason, I can’t stop thinking about you. I can’t stop thinking about how it feels to kiss you, about how happy I was when I thought we were going to be together, about how even though I feel like I should hate you, my heart knows that I don’t.”
“You don’t have to be freaked out about that.”
“Yes, I do,” she says. “I do have to be freaked out about it!”
I stand up and go to put my arms around her, but she pushes me away. “No,” she says. “Every time I let myself get close to you, I end up getting hurt.”
“Every time?” I ask. I’m still standing close to her, and it’s taking every ounce of my self-control not to reach out and kiss her again. “I don’t think we’ve gotten close enough times for there to be an ‘every time.’ ”
“Yes, we have!” she says.
“Name one time.”
“Last night.” She crosses her arms over her chest. “We . . . I mean, we . . . you know what happened between us last night, and then I found out that you lied to me.”
“I didn’t lie to you,” I say.
“A lie by omission is still a lie,” she counters.
“Oh, really?” I say. “Because if we’re counting lies by omissions as lies, then I’m not the only one we should be talking about.” It’s kind of a horrible thing to say. It’s not fair to he
r to bring up what I’m talking about.
“What are you talking about?” She frowns.
“Nothing,” I say. “Just forget it.” I shake my head and grab Hector’s leash off the nightstand and clip it onto his collar. He’s just sitting there on the bed, his head down, almost like he knows we’re fighting. It actually makes me kind of sad. Just because me and Peyton are pissed at each other doesn’t mean we should be scaring poor Hector.
“No,” Peyton says. “I don’t want to forget it.” She stands in front of me, blocking my way to the door.
“Peyton,” I say. “Stop. I don’t want to talk about it. I’m going back to my room.”
“Of course you are,” she says, giving me a bitter laugh. “That’s what you do, right, Jace? Everything’s always some kind of big joke, you never want to talk about anything real, like why you kissed me last night, or why you lied to me, or why you just stopped talking to me after Christmas.”
“You think that’s what happened?” I say. “That I just stopped talking to you?”
“You didn’t?” She crosses her arms over her chest, daring me to contradict her.
“No! I mean, I did, but it wasn’t . . . ” My thoughts are spinning around now, making my brain all confused and crazy. I take a deep breath. “It’s not that simple. And besides, I told you I didn’t want to talk about it.”
“Of course.” She steps out of the way, and I’m halfway to the door before she speaks again. “Don’t worry about tomorrow, Jace,” she says. “I can find my own way home.”
Suddenly, I’m super pissed off. Like, really pissed off. I don’t know why, since it’s not like she said anything horrible, and let’s face it—her giving me an out is going to make my life a whole lot easier. I might even be able to make graduation.
But it’s just the way she says it—in this completely detached voice, like she’s taken all her anger and hurt and folded it up into a little square and then deposited it into some box somewhere that’s out of reach. It’s the same shit she pulled with me over the spring, the same shit that caused her to be the only girl who’s ever broken my heart.