Chapter Thirty-Eight #2
She didn’t hear what the man said after that, but she let him steer her across the ballroom. The next thing she knew, they were standing at the bar, and he was handing her a drink.
“Teddy,” she said, as if she had just noticed him.
“Yes, of course it’s me,” Teddy said.
She took the drink he handed her and downed it in two swigs. It burned the back of her throat, warmed her stomach. She wiped the back of her mouth with her hand, and Teddy laughed.
“Attagirl,” Teddy said. “Fancy another turn around the dance floor?” he asked.
He didn’t wait for her answer; he already had his arms around her waist, as if they belonged there. As if they belonged together. Saoirse tried to push him away, feeling repulsed.
“Don’t touch me,” she said.
“What’s this?” Teddy asked, confused.
“I said, get your fucking hands off me.”
She broke away from him and walked in the other direction as fast as she could, out of the ballroom, toward the bathroom, where he couldn’t follow her.
There was a line in the hallway, but Saoirse didn’t care.
She cut to the front of it, and as soon as the door opened, she rushed inside, then slammed the door shut behind her and locked it.
Saoirse sank to the floor. She pressed her lips together to try and muffle her sobs, but she knew they all could hear her anyway in the hall—her gasps, her pitiful sobs.
How did she end up here, she wondered, at her own party, hiding in the bathroom, a weeping mess?
The tiles under her were muddied with heel prints and mud from the rain earlier. Her beautiful, perfect dress was probably streaked with mud now, ruined, but she didn’t care. Everything was ruined anyway.
There was a knock at the door.
“Go away,” Saoirse said harshly.
“It’s me,” a woman said, and Saoirse recognized Tessa’s voice. “I just wanted to make sure you were all right.”
Tessa. There would have been a time in her life, not too long ago, when Saoirse wouldn’t have hesitated to let her in.
Tessa was the closest thing Saoirse had ever had to a sister.
They’d sat next to one another in their algebra class at Choate, passing notes surreptitiously back and forth; borrowed one another’s eyeliner; squeezed themselves onto a sofa, lying side by side like sardines, one summer night at a house party in Martha’s Vineyard when they were too stoned to stumble home.
There was a time when Saoirse couldn’t imagine keeping anything from Tessa.
But then Teddy had happened, and Saoirse suddenly couldn’t find herself divulging the biggest secret she’d ever had: that she was pregnant.
She knew that Tessa would tell Teddy, and she didn’t want Teddy to know the baby was his.
She wanted him to care, but not because he had to.
She had shut Tessa out, and Tessa had bristled at her sudden distance, her silence, her coldness.
Now, Saoirse wiped her snotty nose on the back of her hand and stood on shaky legs to unlock the door.
Tessa looked at Saoirse a moment—her mascara-streaked face, her rumpled dress—and then turned toward the women still standing in line, the ones staring at the two of them curiously, craning their necks to get a peek.
“There’s another bathroom down the hall, on the other end,” Tessa said.
The women just looked at her, not moving.
“Get out of here,” Tessa said, louder, more firmly. “Go.”
She started waving them away, yelling at them to hurry up, asking them what they thought they were looking at. When the line had dispersed, Tessa entered the bathroom and closed the door behind her. She grabbed a fresh hand towel from the basket, and Saoirse joined her at the pedestal sink.
“Was it Teddy?” Tessa asked as she wetted the towel and dabbed at the charcoal streaks down Saoirse’s cheeks.
Saoirse shook her head. “For once, no.”
Saoirse’s breathing slowly steadied, and she hiccupped her way back to a semblance of calm. It was such a relief not to be poked or prodded with questions, to just be cared for. She felt raw, her head too big for her body, like it couldn’t possibly be connected to the rest of her at all.
“That’s better,” Tessa said when she was done.
Saoirse glanced at her reflection in the mirror. Her eyes were red rimmed and watery, but other than that, she looked normal.
“What a fucking disaster of a night,” Saoirse said.
Tessa shrugged. “I don’t know,” she said. “I mean, if some girl isn’t absolutely losing it in the bathroom, is it even a party?”
Saoirse caught Tessa’s gaze in the mirror and laughed so hard she snorted.
“Ow,” Saoirse said, touching her nose.
“What do you say we grab some cake and go watch the fireworks?” Tessa asked.
“Fireworks?” Saoirse said, a panicked thought suddenly percolating in her mind. “It’s midnight?”
“Thereabouts,” Tessa said, checking her watch.
“I have to go,” Saoirse said, darting toward the door. “There’s somewhere I need to be.”
“What, is your carriage going to turn into a pumpkin or something?” Tessa called after her, but Saoirse didn’t answer.
Saoirse speed-walked down the hallway, past the entrance to the ballroom, telling herself not to run, not to attract attention.
A woman she didn’t know, who was very much inebriated, exuberantly wished her a happy birthday as she passed, raising her glass high into the air and sending champagne sloshing over the sides and onto the wood floorboards. Saoirse only nodded at her.
She was flat-out running after she turned the corner, down another hallway, this one much quieter than the one outside the ballroom.
She started up the staircase, taking the stairs two at a time, and then took a sharp left down the next hall to the library.
She was going so fast she almost ran right into him.
“You came!” she said excitedly, throwing her arms around him.
“Of course I came,” Salvador said. “Did you ever doubt I would?”
He was wearing a suit and tie. She had never seen him so dressed up before. He looked handsome.
“I don’t know,” she said into his chest, smelling the familiar spicy scent of him, like cloves and bergamot. It was a comforting smell. “Everything tonight has been such a disaster.”
“What happened?” he asked, stroking her hair.
“Nothing,” she said. “I don’t want to talk about it. I don’t want to think about it. I just want to forget it ever happened. Can we do that?”
“It’s your birthday,” he said. “We can do whatever you want.”
“Good,” Saoirse said. “Well, I want to go watch the fireworks.”
She led him by the hand out the back into the dark.
People were gathering on the balcony, but there was almost no one in the yard or in the garden.
Saoirse and Salvador took the rickety old staircase on the cliffside down to the beach.
They made their way down slowly, carefully, as the steps were slick with the recent rain.
“Do you think it will storm later?” Salvador asked, looking up at the sky dubiously.
“It wouldn’t dare rain on my birthday,” Saoirse said. “Again.”
When they reached the bottom, Saoirse took her shoes off so she could feel the sand between her toes.
They were the only ones on the beach. Probably the daunting look of the staircase and the earlier rain had put everyone off it, but she didn’t care.
It was better this way, just the two of them.
She lifted up the hem of her dress and stepped into the water lapping at the shoreline.
The cold salt water felt good against her skin.
Salvador followed suit, kicking off his dress shoes and rolling up the hem of one pant leg and then the other to follow her.
When the fireworks started, they stood on the beach, looking up at the sky. Saoirse leaned into Salvador, and he wrapped his arms around her.
This is perfect, Saoirse thought. Everything is perfect now.
In between the breaking of the waves along the shore and the loud crack of the fireworks erupting overhead, Saoirse heard the creaking of the stairs behind them.
She turned her head. There was a figure there, stepping down onto the beach.
At first, Saoirse thought it might be one of her party guests coming down to enjoy the fireworks, but who would venture down here by themselves in the dark?
Besides, they weren’t looking up at the sky, admiring the show.
They were staring right at her and Salvador.
“Hello?” Saoirse called out, trying to keep the quiver out of her voice. “Who’s there?”
The person didn’t answer. They took another step forward. Saoirse couldn’t see from this distance who it was, if she knew them.
She tugged on Salvador’s arm, and he turned to look too.
“Who is that?” she whispered to him, and she felt his arms tighten around her.
Just then, the sky lit up again, not with a colorful explosion but with lightning. Saoirse saw who the person was and what they were holding.
“Oh my God,” Saoirse said.
And then the sky went dark, plummeting them into pitch blackness.