Chapter 9
I think I look good tonight—until Nate and I spot each other in the Cosmopolitan lobby. His eyes barely settle on my face and body before darting away, and he proceeds to thoroughly study everything in the room except me. I look down to make sure I haven’t suffered a wardrobe malfunction.
Nope. Guess I really just don’t do it for him.
“Ready?” His voice is clipped. He’s wearing a blue oxford shirt and swim trunks. Thighs, my mind screams, because they are out . These are a few inches of his body I haven’t seen in a while, where his knees give way to muscle definition and skin covered in golden hair.
I try to look away from him, since he has no interest in looking at me, and smooth out the hem of my dress.
My heart is sinking at an agonizingly slow pace.
I don’t know why I still do this to myself.
He’s checked me out before, and sometimes I see attraction there, like this morning in Tahoe.
But it doesn’t matter. Even if he had a weakness for tiny black slip dresses, it wouldn’t matter.
He’s never really wanted me, and I need to permanently bury whatever it is inside me that continues to hope otherwise.
“We’re dressed for two completely different events,” I say. “Actually, no. You’re dressed for two completely different events. I’m dressed for a third, separate event.”
He tugs on the collar of his shirt. “The dress code was confusing. Is it a pool party or a pool party ?”
Turns out it’s both. There’s a big dance floor lit up in shades of blue, with a fog machine and giant TV screens behind the DJ booth flashing trippy geometric patterns.
Bars and lounge areas surround the pool.
People are dancing and drinking, both in and out of the water.
Next to the steps perches a woman dressed as a mermaid, her tail woven with lights.
Somehow both of our outfits work here, and mine feels less skimpy than it did when I tried it on. People are outfitted in swimwear with varying degrees of ass coverage. Shirts fully buttoned and completely open and everything in between. Dresses both sequined and breezy.
It’s loud. It’s crowded. It smells like so many things—an entire department store of perfume and cologne, plus liquor. My head immediately starts pounding.
Our plan for tonight is not elaborate. We’ll walk around, look for Logan and his friends, and check our phones periodically to see if they post anything from the club.
After Nate corrals Logan, I’m hoping for some time with him and his friends, who have hundreds of thousands of followers.
They won’t mind a few photos or a video with me.
Something playful. I wonder how much I’d have to pay that mermaid to let me borrow her tail?
Before we start searching, I should film something quick, so I have a backup option. But that means I have to ask Nate to help, regardless of how ridiculous he thinks it is.
Before I can work up the courage, he nods at the goofy-looking shark floats in the pool. “Those things are Logan magnets. We should keep an eye on them.”
“You could get in the water.”
His nostrils flare. “There is literally nothing that could get me in that water.”
I roll my eyes. “What if you see Logan in there?”
“We’ll fish him out with a net.”
“Pool snob,” I say. “Hey, real quick. Take a video of me? Please?”
His mouth twists. “I thought you weren’t supposed to be working.” There’s the disapproval, as usual.
“Can you just do it?” I ask tightly, and he takes my phone.
I dance for a few seconds as he records. They are possibly the most excruciating seconds of my life. I’ll post the clip tomorrow with whatever song is trending, captioned something like Reason #1 to fly solo this fall: No one gets in your way when your song comes on in the club .
“Do you want to watch it to make sure it’s good?” Nate asks charitably.
“No, thanks.” I’ve already realized the background would’ve looked better if I faced the other direction, but there’s no way I’m redoing it. “Let’s go.”
At first we stay by the pool, but Logan is just as likely to be in the swarm of bodies moving to DJ COLLIDEascope.
I follow Nate as he tentatively approaches the dance floor.
The crowd sucks us in, and we wind our way through the tiny gaps between couples moving to the beat, people fist-pumping, and, in one case, a tiny, freckled woman kicking off her shoes and doing what looks like an advanced-level Irish step dance with her friends egging her on.
As we get closer to the DJ booth, the crowd gets denser, and the fog rolling out of the machine makes it hard to see anyone other than the people closest to us.
A guy I can’t see does that “I must full-on caress your back in order to move past you” move, and someone accidentally sloshes a drink down the front of my dress.
Nate grabs my wrist so we don’t lose each other.
A row of flame machines sends a blast of fire into the sky, and he jumps.
He says something over his shoulder, but I can’t hear.
I tug on his shirt and holler, “What?”
He dips his head down to speak into my ear, and I feel his closeness more acutely than I feel the cold liquor soaking into my dress. His hand is still on my wrist, and my pulse pounds against his thumb. “I said let’s go back.”
When we finally reach a spot near the pool where we can breathe again, we look like we’ve survived something wild.
Static electricity has wreaked havoc on Nate’s hair, and the top two buttons of his now-rumpled shirt are open.
The spilled drink left a trail of wet spots that darken the front of my dress, making it look like I both have a drooling problem and peed myself.
Logan and his friends are nowhere to be found.
“Let’s get a drink,” I say, and Nate nods vigorously.
We join the mass of people waiting at the bar, and an idea hits me.
“Hey!” I say to the person nearest me, a dark-haired woman wearing a white crochet cover-up over her one-piece.
Her nose is deep in her phone. “I heard some of the guys from that show The Beach House are here tonight. Have you seen them?”
She looks up at me blankly, shakes her head, and goes back to her phone.
“Nice try,” Nate says. “It was a good idea.”
It takes a while to get to the bar, so it only makes sense for each of us to get a mixed drink and a shot.
I want tequila, but Nate’s sworn it off since the September Bailey turned twenty-two, when he sang karaoke in a non-karaoke bar and later threw up so hard he needed Icy Hot for his lower back the next day. He goes for whiskey.
We down our shots, and he grimaces. “Another lap?”
We continue the search, alternating a circuit around the club with a drink at the bar. Each time, the people in the throng on the dance floor are drunker and rowdier, and after each drink, my own buzz loosens me up more.
“You know, I said you were dressed for two separate occasions before, but you fit right in,” I say after our third—maybe fourth—shot. I can feel it in my blood, unwinding me.
His eyes stay level with my…nose? “So do you.”
“I wasn’t sure if you even saw what I was wearing.” I’m fishing, and I hate myself for it, but I can’t stop.
“Trust me, I saw.” This time he does look, and the booze must be getting to him too, because the unhurried way his eyes dip makes me feel like one of those drinks they light on fire. “You look like your own evil twin.”
“Is that bad?”
He sips his whiskey and Coke and wipes the corner of his mouth with his thumb. “No.” His darkening pupils threaten to swallow me up. “It’s not bad.”
A dangerous flutter courses through me. I think I misunderstood the way he acted in the lobby earlier, when he refused to look at me. It wasn’t because of a lack of interest. It was because of too much interest.
The bass thumps, and behind him, sparklers crackle atop bottles of champagne on their way to a table somewhere, but I’m zeroed in on the heavy way he’s looking at me. He lifts a fingertip to the hair going rogue at my left temple. “Your devil horns are out of control right now.”
His hand drops, brushing against the satin of my dress. At first it’s an accident, I think. But then it lingers, skimming the fabric on the outside of my thigh.
He’s flirting, and I like it too much. But I can’t read into it, not again. I’m chalking this one up to the power of Vegas.
“Hey,” I call to two women standing a few feet away. I realize a second too late that they’re deep in conversation, but they turn to me anyway. “Did you hear that some of the guys from The Beach House are here tonight?”
The one in the crop top’s eyes light up. “Shut up,” she says. “I love that show.”
I lean toward her. “Logan, Max, Grayson, and Will. But I haven’t seen them yet.”
Thankfully, she’s not a Logan hater. “I’m going to be on the lookout all night!”
“If you see them, and then you see us, will you let us know?” Nate adds.
I clap him on the shoulder. “This guy’s a huge fan. It would make his night to catch a glimpse.”
He snorts. Our new friend introduces herself as Rosie and her companion as her cousin Camila. Camila isn’t participating in the conversation, but she’s smiling weakly. Across her chest is a sash that says Birthday Girl .
“Happy birthday!” I say. “What a place to celebrate.”
She hugs herself. “Thanks. I’m twenty-one today.” Her voice is shaky.
I take a step closer. “Everything okay?”
Rosie puts an arm around her. “Camila’s friend is being a jackass. She came out with us, and it was supposed to be a girls’ night, but she insisted on bringing her boyfriend.”
“They’ve been dancing all night and ignoring us, and it feels like she doesn’t want to celebrate with me at all.” I can barely hear Camila’s quiet voice over the music.
My heart goes out to her. If I were in her shoes, I’d tell myself not to let it get to me. To forget about my friend and have fun. But she looks so sad and so young, and for some reason that advice feels hollow.