CHAPTER 13 #2
But, sure enough, they were there. Huddled in the middle of the lobby as if they had nothing to hide. Their hushed voices, though, hinted otherwise. From here, I couldn’t see Carter’s expression—only Lydia’s. Her eyes were wide, tracing his face, filled with something like confusion.
I was a terrible lip reader, but I was really good at reading the room. The atmosphere between them was nothing short of tense, like Carter was rushing to get words out before someone stumbled upon them.
Someone like me.
Instead of going toward them, I turned away.
My body buzzed with the lack of confrontation, almost in tandem with the song blaring over the speakers in the ballroom.
There were too many things going on that I didn’t understand.
It felt like a chess game, except instead of a player, I was a pawn, being slid around in time with a strategy I wasn’t privy to.
Why would Carter tell me that I was the perfect thing he needed, and then be like that with Lydia? Had they shown up together?
When I rounded the corner to the ballroom’s entrance, only then did I stop in my tracks. There, just outside the door, stood Beck and Mrs. Johnson. And she was yelling.
She still held both drinks in her hands, though they weren’t as full as they’d been a moment ago when I’d seen her with them.
She gestured at Beck wildly with them, face red.
Most of her voice was swallowed up by the music, and anyone inside the ballroom wouldn’t have been able to really notice anything was going on unless they looked.
But no one did. No one looked over to see Beck’s stiff shoulders, nor the hollow look on his face.
“I will not have you creeping around my daughter the way you creeped around the Brighton girl all those years ago,” Mrs. Johnson growled at him. “Not when so much is within her reach. Stay away from my daughter, or so help me, God, I will ruin you.”
“Someone beat you to the punch with that threat, Mrs. Johnson,” Beck replied coolly, sliding his hands into the pockets of his dark jeans. His voice was lazy as always, but his rigid posture gave him away. H-O-L-L-O-W. “You’ll have to be more original.”
“Boys like you shouldn’t be in a place like this.”
“Like me?”
“Trouble. A—A waste of space. I spoke with your mother the other day. Told her to come wrangle her son. You know what she told me?” Her features twisted up into a sneer, but the evil expression was dulled a bit by her slurring. “That she doesn’t have a son.”
It was only a second. Less than a second. A blink-and-you-miss-it second. Beck’s neutral face crumpled on itself, as if Mrs. Johnson had dealt him a physical blow. He rocked back on his heels, absorbing the weight of the strike, the words sinking in.
My body, still craving confrontation, started forward. R-A-G-E. A simple word. A simple feeling.
Mrs. Johnson swayed from the alcohol souring her veins. She looked like she was struggling to remain upright. “Crawl back to whatever hole you slithered out of, you snake.” And she lifted one of the drinks in her hand.
“Mrs. Johnson!” I shouted, voice cracking like a whip in the hallway. Beck started to turn toward me, but Mrs. Johnson was too focused on her brainless task.
I stepped between her and Beck at the exact second she flung the contents of her cup forward, drenching me in the face.
For a moment, I stood stock-still, eyes closed and sputtering vodka off my lips. The cup hadn’t been that full, but the liquid dripped off my chin down my neck.
“E-Eleanor?” Mrs. Johnson sounded bewildered, far different than she’d sounded cursing Beck a moment ago. “Is that—are you—what are you doing?”
But her words still echoed in my ears, egging on the wrath. She doesn’t have a son. You snake. And the image of Beck’s face crumpling, just as it had in the garden all those years ago, filled my mind. W-R-A-T-H.
Without thinking, I flipped Mrs. Johnson’s other cup up, soaking the front of her dress in vodka.
I should’ve been prepared for her drunk overreaction.
I wasn’t. She let out an ear-piercing shriek, and I couldn’t help but flinch back into Beck.
My spine hit his chest, but only for a moment, because he immediately snatched my wrist. He wrenched me away as Mrs. Johnson still screamed, as if the vodka had been battery acid, drawing the attention of partygoers in the ballroom.
Beck dragged us into a closet reserved for coat overflow for winter parties, slamming the door shut behind us. The world was suspended in darkness for a moment before he found the switch, and the light illuminated his wide, glowing green eyes. He was quiet, listening to see if anyone followed us.
I could still hear Mrs. Johnson’s cries, but as more voices joined in, it became impossible to differentiate words. Until—“She threw it on me! She threw it on me!”
“You’re cut off, Rebecca. Come on, let’s get you a water.”
“But—she—”
Beck’s shoulders loosened as he turned away from the door and to me. “Are you insane?” he demanded. “Why did you do that?”
I blinked, eyes burning from the few drops of alcohol that’d gotten in. “Which part?”
“Any of it!” Beck’s chest rose and fell sharply. His white T-shirt glowed in the low lighting, and it was tucked into the belt of his black jeans, which hung loose off his hips. “Get in the middle. Dump Mrs. Johnson’s drink on her. What is wrong with you?”
“Me?” I huffed out a breath, and a drop of alcohol blew off my lip. “Why were you standing there, taunting her?”
“I was taunting her?”
“You could’ve walked away. You should’ve!” The sting in my eyes was hard to ignore, and I growled as I scrubbed my fingers into them. Smudging my makeup right off, surely, but it burned. “Where even were you? I didn’t see you get here.”
“I was in the garden.” A moment later, something soft brushed my chin, and I opened my bleary eyes to find Beck pressing a handkerchief to my skin, catching a drop of alcohol. Avoiding eye contact, he muttered, “It’s clean.”
I held still as he dragged the swatch of plaid cloth down my throat.
My heart tugged violently, and so did my mind, filling with the image of a littler version of Beck who’d done the same thing.
And then held it out for me to take. “You still carry a handkerchief?” I asked, rubbing the fabric against my eye.
“I didn’t realize you were still so… insufferably pretentious. ”
Beck’s eyes shifted to mine as he remembered the words. Their hardness softened as his lips twitched. The tension between us didn’t so much shatter as it bent. “Old habits die hard.”
I wasn’t sure if it was the dry way he’d said it, or if the few drops of alcohol that’d made it past my lips had effectively warped my brain, but I couldn’t help it—I laughed.
I scrubbed the handkerchief into my other eye, laughing at Beck, at myself, at the fact that I’d now be meeting Carter’s parents reeking of alcohol.
And at some point, I’d have to leave this closet with Beck following out behind me. That would be a good look.
Suddenly, Beck’s expression shifted. He almost looked… horrified. His green eyes traced my face as if something there alarmed him. Disarmed him.
Beck looked away. “You look ugly, laughing like that while your makeup is all crazy.”
“Gee, thanks.” I gave a disbelieving scoff, watching as he turned toward the closet door. “Wait!” I called, stopping him from leaving. “I have a question. And I want the truth.”
Beck didn’t turn. “When have I ever lied to you?”
I was sure he had. Plenty of times. “Are Carter and Lydia together?” I lowered his handkerchief. “Is this some big joke on me?”
In hindsight, I shouldn’t have asked it. The soft atmosphere in the closet had lulled me into a false sense of security. Beck turned around, eyes lit up with the same sort of glee a cat gets at the sight of a new toy. “You saw them come here together?”
So they had arrived together. “Are they dating?”
“How am I to know?”
“You know.” I had to clamp my jaw shut to keep my voice from rising. “You and Lydia are close. Lydia asks you to do all these things to sabotage Carter and me. Don’t act like you’re oblivious.”
Beck considered me, considered how he wanted to respond. Every moment with him was like a chess game of its own. I moved, he counter-moved. And with Beck, I turned into a player like Carter—eager for a win, fumbling with my strategy.
“You’re answering your own question, you know,” Beck said finally. “Lydia wouldn’t ask me to sabotage you if they were together.”
The closet was quiet. I couldn’t hear the music from the ballroom at all from in here, only the sound of my pulse in my ears.
Right. If Lydia was trying to get me out of the game, it was because she hadn’t won yet.
She was desperately trying, even resorting to dirty moves, but it wasn’t working. She wasn’t winning. I was.
I didn’t feel relieved, though. I just felt tired.
“It’s funny,” Beck went on. He took the handkerchief from my limp fingers, folded it into a small square, and gently wiped at my undereyes. At the makeup I’d smudged. “You’re not jealous.”
“What?”
“Of Carter and Lydia. It isn’t jealousy you’re feeling.” He was focused on his soft task, gaze not straying. It felt too much like how he’d done when we were little, wiping away the dirt from my fingers. “You’re not the jealous type.”
Maybe it hadn’t been jealousy in the traditional sense. I hadn’t looked at the two of them and felt enraged, but more alarmed. It was close enough to jealousy that it made Beck’s superior gaze confusing. “You don’t know me,” I told him for the millionth time.
Beck lowered the handkerchief. “We were close before.”
“You never let me get close.”
Something in Beck’s eyes flashed, like I’d hit him somewhere tender. I wondered if he realized it’d been a bruise-like spot for me to touch, too.