5. Indy
FIVE
INDY
The party is so loud the walls vibrate. The bass seems to have taken up permanent residence in my eardrums, and loud laughter ricochets from the walls.
The house feels full to the limit, like one more body might make it split right down the middle.
If this was a bar, instead of our house, having all these people inside would be a fire code violation.
I push through the crowd, holding my drink above my head to keep it from spilling as people stumble into me from every direction.
Someone’s elbow slams into my ribs. Someone steps on my foot and doesn’t notice.
Glitter sticks to my skin and the front of my shirt.
The air is thick with perfume and cologne and the scent of champagne.
I don’t know many people here, but that’s not unusual for my parents’ New Year’s party.
The guest list for this thing is less of a list and more of a suggestion.
Family, friends, coworkers, former coworkers, neighbors, tennis partners, the guy who fixed our gutters in November—basically anybody Dad has made eye contact with in the past few months.
If you’ve ever laughed at one of his jokes, congratulations, you’re invited.
Clusters of strangers shout over one another like they’ve known each other for years. Our dentist is telling a story and making wild hand gestures, nearly taking out a tray of hors d’oeuvres from the hands of the passing waiter.
Mom is weaving through it all with a bottle of champagne, refilling glasses as she goes.
Near the dining room, a folding table is working overtime, sagging under the weight of at least thirty champagne bottles sweating onto the silk tablecloth.
Plastic champagne flutes crowd the edges, precariously stacked, so when somebody bumps into the table glass knocks against glass.
Half the bottles roll straight off the edge and hit the floor. One explodes on impact.
Shouts and shrieks drown out the music for a moment.
“Five-second rule,” a guy says, so I half expect him to go and lick the champagne off the floor.
Dad throws his head back and laughs like this was all part of the plan.
“Plenty more where that came from,” he calls out over a chorus of approving cheers.
I shake my head, pick up one of the bottles that’s still spinning away between people’s feet, and swipe the broken glass in the corner as best as I can.
When I stand up and take a step back I bump straight into yet another body. It’s not the first time tonight. It’s impossible to move without running into people.
“Sorry,” I say immediately, even before I’ve fully turned around.
I come face to face with Nick. My whole body tenses the moment my eyes land on him. That’s just the way it is nowadays.
Three months.
Three months since the bonfire.
Since the almost.
Since I backed away from him like the ground had burst into flames beneath my feet.
He hasn’t mentioned it.
Not once.
Somehow, that makes it worse, because not mentioning it comes with knowing looks and half-smirks that radiate the vicious glee of triumph because I’m the one who bolted. I’m the one who flinched. I’m the one who chickened out.
He won.
Granted, it would be difficult for him to mention what happened seeing as I’ve been putting in a lot of effort into avoiding him. It’s not that easy when we live in the same house, on the same floor, in rooms just across the hall, so I’d at least like some credit.
“You’re home,” I say. I’ve barely seen him today. He’s probably taking extra shifts at the diner where he works as a busboy.
He quirks a brow slightly. “Your extraordinary powers of observation never fail to impress me. What gave me away?”
I mentally sigh and then force a smile. “Your sunny personality just makes the house come alive.”
I don’t know when the switch happened, but all the tension between us has started to leak out of me via sarcasm, and that’s not like me. I’m not a dick to people. Lately I’ve been making an exception, though.
And it feels good.
It’s like a tiny bit of pressure is released whenever he says something biting and I don’t just take it but bite back.
He’s laughing at me. Mocking me. At least that’s what most of our conversations feel like lately.
He even refuses to call me by my real name.
Instead of Indy, I’m Blue to him. Just a random color.
That’s fine.
It’s easier this way. This way I can concentrate all my energy on not liking him, so there won’t be any room left for those late-night moments when I remember in exact detail what it felt like to want to kiss him.
So, yes, I try to avoid him. Lately, and I’m halfway sure I’m imagining it, but lately it feels like the more I try to avoid him, the more he tries to make sure I don’t succeed. Where before I could go days without laying eyes on him, he’s suddenly everywhere all the time.
Like right now. He leans his shoulder against the wall and settles in, so now I can’t leave either because these are the kinds of games we play.
His dark eyes take me in slowly, and I grit my teeth and resist the urge to fidget. I’m not giving him the satisfaction.
“Any New Year’s resolutions?” he asks.
I shake my head. “No? Why do you ask?”
He shrugs. “You’ve always seemed like the kind of person who would make those.”
“The kind of person?” I repeat flatly.
His eyes are moving up and down me again. “The kind that enjoys visualizing their goals. I imagine you have a list somewhere.”
“I don’t make lists.”
“No?” His gaze flicks over my face again, unhurried. “And here I had you pinned as somebody who enjoys rules.”
I cross my arms over my chest. Someone pushes past me and jostles me closer to Nick. “What does somebody who enjoys rules look like?”
His grin is downright wolfish, and I can’t make any sense of him. He’s a storm of different emotions at all times, and I can’t pinpoint most of them.
“Proper,” he says. “Self-aware. Well adjusted. Accomplished.”
How the hell does he manage to make those arguably good qualities sound like something to scoff at?
“Oh, yeah. I see what you mean. It’s so much better to be a complete fucking mess.”
“It all depends on the perspective.” He snags a glass of champagne from the tray of a passing waiter and throws it back with practiced ease, getting rid of the evidence just as swiftly as he puts the glass down on the floor, next to the bottle I placed there earlier.
Not that anybody would notice or care at this point.
“It’s like driving,” he continues. “Some people key the destination into the GPS and take the shortest possible route. Others will take the random exits and stop to admire the view along the way. Live a little while they’re at it.
Make the trip worthwhile. Cross their fingers they’ll end up somewhere good. ”
“Which is nice and all, as long as you don’t make any promises to be somewhere.”
He rolls his eyes. “The saint-in-training strikes again.”
I blink and a laugh escapes. “The what?”
His dark eyes move up and down me slowly. I avoid meeting his gaze. Looking at him makes my mouth go dry. No. Not looking at him. Nerves make my mouth dry. It’s not him.
“You’re too nice,” he says.
My gaze flies back to him in surprise.
“I’m sorry?”
A smirk tugs at the corner of his mouth. Once again, he’s laughing at me. Once again the back of my neck heats, and I grit my teeth.
He tilts his head to the side. “Which word is giving you trouble?”
“What’s wrong with being nice?”
“In my experience, there’s absolutely nothing less exciting than someone who is too nice.”
My whole face burns because there’s so much suggestiveness in his tone.
“Is that concern about me? That’s unexpectedly touching.”
Somehow I manage to sound flippant. It’s by design.
Otherwise he’ll make some dumb comment about what a sheltered life I’ve lived or about how experienced he is in all the areas I’m not, or something in that ballpark.
And he’ll look impossibly derisive, and then, once again, I’ll feel like an idiot.
He grabs another glass of champagne and chugs it. I try to swallow too, but it’s suddenly difficult. Because I’m looking at his throat. The way it moves.
I want to bite it.
The thought is just there in a flash, abrupt and immediate like they sometimes are.
Unwelcome. I don’t get to prepare myself for it, I just get to deal with the aftermath.
The sickening, too-hard beat of my heart.
The loud voice in my head that tells me I’m an idiot.
The anxious moment of did he see me looking? Did anybody else see?
I shouldn’t notice him.
I don’t want to notice him.
But I do.
And it’s getting harder and harder to tell myself I don’t.
It’s not just his throat. It’s the way the collar of his shirt is loose, a few buttons undone, exposing the hollow. It’s his long fingers wrapped around the champagne glass. The way he tips his head back.
The way my pulse spikes involuntarily.
There are a million reasons why this fascination with him is a terrible idea.
The assessing, calculating way he looks at me makes me feel small, and the way his eyes sometimes go flat and unreadable when somebody mentions my name does not bode well.
Whatever lives between us is the furthest thing from simple. It’s not just curiosity. It’s friction.
I watch him watch me the way you’d eye a storm rolling in—wary, already calculating the damage, held in place by horrified fascination.
He’s closed off, all his walls up. He says things that sound harmless until you think them over and realize they aren’t.
His smiles never reach his eyes, and there are moments when there’s unmistakable spite in them.
And still, underneath it all, there’s that current.
That pull. The hostility rolls off him in waves, yet somehow the urge to step into the storm anyway is getting harder and harder to resist.
“What about you? Did you make any New Year’s promises?” I ask when the thoughts get too loud and overwhelming.
“No.”
I wait, but he doesn’t elaborate.
“Any plans?” I ask just for the sake of asking. I don’t expect a real reply at this point. Nothing with any substance, at least. Talking to him while he’s so clearly annoyed by me is a form of entertainment of sorts. A bit of self-inflected torture, too.
Being around him turns me into a mess of confusing thoughts and intentions.
“Another year in purgatory,” he says.
“A roof over your head and a welcoming family? It’s truly the worst.”
His eyes settle on me. Where half the time it feels like he looks right through me, I now get the full force of all his attention.
“A welcoming family,” he drawls, and every syllable sounds mocking.
I clench my jaw.
“That’s nice,” he continues with the same mocking tone.
“Is it?” I ask impatiently when once again he leaves the thought unfinished even though he clearly has more to say.
“Are you?” he asks.
I feel like this would be a good time to walk away and extract myself from this conversation. “Am I what?”
He leans toward me until our faces are only separated by an inch of space, eyes moving up and down slowly and thoroughly. “Welcoming.”
Only, the way he says it… I’m not sure I’m going to find what he has in mind funny.
“I see you, Blue,” he says.
I try to swallow, but my throat is too thick.
“The way you look at me.”
It’s the first time he’s acknowledged point-blank that he’s aware.
Waves of hot and cold wash through my insides.
Apprehension and embarrassment and something that feels too much like suddenly being exposed under a spotlight I wasn’t aware was on me.
The realization that every look I thought I’d got away with, every moment I let my guard slip and curiosity get the better of me—he noticed. He cataloged it. Kept it.
My pulse stutters with the horrified realization that all of those moments, hundreds of them…They’re not mine anymore.
Now they’re something he can use.
And I have no idea what he plans to do with them.