Chapter 28 #2
Gavin beams at her, and I blink as fast as I can. I don’t know what’s wrong with me, but I’m pretty sure a sappy life-insurance commercial could make me weep like a baby right now.
“So, should we head off?” Betty asks. “Go look hot and unbothered as best we can?”
Jake tugs at my dress strap. “Finally, Renaldo. Something I’m good at.”
I swat his hand, but I’m smiling. “We’ll see.”
“Betty’s right,” Cece says, her voice full of Joan of Arc fire. “And I’m gonna be Miss Manners to everyone inside that hotel, but if anyone, and I mean anyone, tries to start shit with Ada—”
“They’ll have to go through me,” Jake says. “But I’ll make sure you get your licks in, Cee.”
“On that note…” Davis says in his perpetually put-upon tone. “Let’s go to a fuckin’ high school reunion, shall we?”
I laugh as Jake slides his arm around me and the six of us head down the semi-lit street toward Silverlight.
Jake, Gavin, and Davis debate how much the school did, or didn’t, spend on catering, as Betty and Cece chat about her baby boy.
I let their voices wash over me, struck by how bizarrely natural it feels that we’re together.
The rugby player, the flautist, the nurse-turned-bar owner, the financier bouncer, the goth-queen, and her strait-laced husband.
“The Breakfast Club,” I whisper. “Betty is Ally Sheedy, Cece is Molly Ringwald, Jake is Emilio Estevez, and I’m… Holy shit, I’m Judd Nelson.”
“What, baby?” Jake asks.
I shake my head, keeping my revelation to myself.
Davis would probably argue he’s the real Judd Nelson, and we’re close enough to the Silverlight Hotel that the bass from Pitbull’s ‘Fireball’ is vibrating my feet.
Strobe lights pulse through the ballroom windows and onto the floodlit lawn, flashing every colour of the rainbow.
The grass is so thick and dark that it could be the ocean.
An emerald expanse in which a careless stranger could drown.
I look down at my feet, willing my brain not to freeze the way it does when things are too bright and loud.
“Here we are,” Betty says, and I force myself to glance up. Silverlight Estate Hotel looms above us like a ghost ship. By day, it’s the epitome of cheesy corporate blandness, but tonight it feels haunted. The kind of place fairytales tell you to avoid.
The white walls and columns gleam like polished bone, and a red-and-gold banner stretches high above the entrance:
One Hundred Years of Pukekohe High!
The six of us fall into a silent line as we take it all in. The roar of voices, the sight of hundreds of bodies pressed together. People I know, people who know me, strangers, and the worst kind of associates.
“Ready?” Betty asks.
I’m not. Not even close.
I imagined walking into this reunion alone, verbally slashing my way through my former classmates until I either got kicked out or arrested.
I planned every possible attack down to the second, rehearsing my opening lines before bed: ‘I came here to vape in the bathroom and pick fights. And my vape’s almost dead. ’
I was ready for that reunion.
This reunion? The one where I walk in with four friends and one lover, knowing we’re about to send Pukekohe’s economy crashing to the ground? Where I’m painfully aware of my flaws, and desperate to begin a future with purpose? I’m not ready for this reunion at all.
Thrasher might throttle me. Jenny might feed me more excrement. Will Sharpe might lob a nostalgia apple at my head.
And even if they leave me alone, any number of bodies currently shaking the dancefloor might find a bone to pick with me tonight.
I look to my left. To the spot Rhys might have stood if the world was a better place.
Although really, he’d never have come. He’d be at home smoking a cigarette and texting to say we should play HALO until we fall asleep.
I miss him with a fierceness that feels both selfish and overwhelming.
I want to talk to Betty, but she’s already linked her arm through Gavin’s and is marching them under the cursed banner.
“C’mon, team,” she calls over her shoulder.
“Fuck yeah,” Cece says, taking Davis’s hand and following suit.
I stay frozen, air squeezing into my lungs through a metal straw. “I don’t think I can do this.”
“Of course you can.” Jake leans his weight against me. “All you gotta do is walk around looking like a million bucks, and that’s a Tuesday for you, Renaldo.”
I smile despite my thumping heart. “Simp.”
“Pussy.”
“Easy for you to say. You’re the fun-times local hero. I’m the mean flute weirdo.”
“I can be mean, too.”
“Yeah. In bed. Everywhere else you’re like… Elmo? Is that mean? Still, you are kind of Elmo…”
Jake tips his head skyward. “You’ve never watched me play rugby, have you?”
“Um…?”
“We’ll deal with that later. For now, look.”
He strikes a pose, arms folded, jaw hard, eyes narrowed. “See?”
“I do see,” I say, trying desperately not to smile. The corner of my mouth betrays me, and Jake throws up his hands.
“The fuck, Renaldo?”
I bite back a full-blown laugh, not because he looks silly.
I’m sure most of the population would find him scary.
The problem is, I know the truth, which is that Jake Graves-Holland is capable of being clueless and cocky, but my brand-new boyfriend doesn’t have a mean bone in his body. Aside from his dick.
“You’re gorgeous,” I tell him. “And I love that you’re angry for me.”
He beams, my failure to be intimidated instantly forgiven. “Cheers, babe.”
“Okay, let’s go,” I say, dragging in a massive breath. “Nothing to fear but fear itself, right?”
“Wrong,” Jake says, sliding my hand into his. “You should be afraid of how hard I’m gonna smash your pussy once we’re done playing nice with these dorks.”
The mix of disgust and delight finally gets my heels moving, and I let him steer me through the doors of the Silverlight and into the Pukekohe High School reunion.
Jake is instantly recognised. He grins and nods at well-wishers but keeps us moving until we’ve joined Davis, Gavin, Cece, and Betty at the bar.
The boys opt for beer while Betty, Cece, and I all choose champagne.
Which is apparently what Silverlight calls the cheapest sparkling wine money can buy.
We turn into a loose huddle, all of us fake-smiling like we’re competing for Miss World.
“So far so good,” Jake mutters. “Everyone we thought’d be here is here. But they’re not staring, and they don’t look like they’re gonna come over.”
“Great,” Betty and Davis say together.
“Thrasher’s on your six,” Cece whispers in my ear. “Mouse-bitch and my twat brother are with him.”
I glance out of the corner of my eye. Cece’s right. Thrasher and Tristan, both double-fisting whiskey, are talking to Jenny Wallis. She’s wearing a bright pink bodycon dress and giggling like it’s the Pick-Me Olympics.
“Jesus,” I mutter. “Are people still calling things a nightmare blunt rotation?”
“Dunno, but that one spells instant psychosis,” Betty says. “A toast, then we divide and conquer?”
We nod, clink our glasses, then drift apart.
Betty and Gavin head for the buffet table piled high with mini quiches and cocktail franks.
I spot a blond asshole smirking at us from behind the cheese board.
Smirking at Cece. Will Sharpe’s shirt is rumpled, his nostrils neon-pink due to what I highly doubt is a cold.
From the look in his bleary eyes, I’d say he’s about ten seconds from walking over.
I grab Davis’s arm. “Cuntlord has landed. I repeat, Cuntlord has landed.”
Davis snaps to attention, straightening his shoulders and turning to Cece like a man possessed. “Would you like to dance?”
Cece looks around like he might be talking to someone else. “Right now?”
“Yes.”
“But we just got drinks?”
Davis plucks the glass from her hand and places it and his beer on the bar top. “What about now?”
Her cheeks go pink. “I, um, don’t really like this song…”
Considering it’s ‘Hot N Cold’ I can’t fault her, but as if on cue, Katy Perry cuts out and the opening chords of Crowded House’s ‘Don’t Dream It’s Over’ swell through the speakers. The whole room cheers.
Davis smiles at Cece. “How about this one?”
Cece puts her hand in Davis’s and the two of them glide onto the dancefloor.
“Jesus,” Jake mutters. “That’s good timing, eh?”
“No, it’s perfect timing. It’s like Davis planned it, it’s so—”
“Dorky?”
“Romantic!” I say, whacking Jake’s side. “This is Cece’s… Oh, forget it. Just know this is going to mean so much to her.”
I watch as Davis pulls Cece close, pressing a hand into her lower back as he slowly sways against her. They look so beautiful together, him in a suit, her in her golden ballgown. A lump rises in my throat.
“Would you like to dance?” Jake asks.
I shake my head. “Soon, but I just want to… It’s so nice to see…”
“I get it,” he says, kissing my temple.
I watch Davis and Cece smiling shyly at one another, so radiant other people have started watching them too. One of them is Will, who looks like someone just force-fed him Drano.
Eat your fuckin’ heart out, dork, I think, as Davis turns Cece in a circle, her hem flashing like a sunbeam.
“JGH!” a man hollers, jolting me out of my reverie.
“Matty!” Jake bellows back. He leans quickly to my ear. “Sorry, babe, it’s game time.”
“Affirmative,” I say with one last look at Cece.
“You deserve all of this and more, baby girl,” I whisper to my best friend, before turning to meet Matty, my Miss World smile firmly back in place.
Seeing as I no longer want to bust heads, it would have been nice to melt into the edges of the party, but with Jake at my side, that can’t happen. Besides, in bed, he declared he was going with the ‘shock and awe’ strategy.
“It’ll set the stage for later,” he said with a grin. “Plus, it’s about time everyone met the real Ada Renaldo.”
I still have no idea what that means. Drinking heavily? Playing the flute for three hours? According to Jake, it means bragging about me like it’s his job.