Chapter 26
The club is densely packed, with a lot of nooks and crannies that make it difficult to search. We drift toward the weirdly empty dance floor to survey the scene.
“Why is no one out here?” Nate asks, stretching out his arms.
The club answers. With no warning, an air horn sounds and a deluge of glitter rains down from the ceiling, coating us from head to toe like bread crumbs.
“Ow,” Nate says, slapping a palm over his right eye. When he moves his hand away, tears stream down one side of his face. My eyes are okay, but there’s glitter in my ear, and it’s itching like crazy.
This should be a felony. And I like glitter.
“Are you okay?” I shout.
He crouches, trying to shield his face from the glitter still floating in the air. When he pops back up, blinking furiously, his hair and eyelashes and skin glimmer, alien-like, under the multicolored lights. I’m sure I look similar.
No Uber driver will ever pick us up in this condition. We’re going to have to walk back.
“This is the worst,” he says.
A server walks by wearing a clear plastic poncho with the hood up and rolls her eyes. “It happens every ten minutes. Stay off the dance floor if you don’t like it.”
I brace myself for what Nate’s probably going to say next. “You want to leave?”
He wipes his eye with the back of his hand and straightens fully. “No. No, this ends here.”
A streak of delight—and also, weirdly, desire—runs through me at the determination in his voice. He crosses the dance floor and I scamper after him.
“I have a plan,” he says over his shoulder. “I’m going to do something that will definitely get him out here. Can you wait by that pillar, so we have both sides covered?”
I do as he asks, waiting the length of one full song, wondering how I’m supposed to know when the plan is in motion.
And then the music changes, and I do know, because emanating from the speakers is the voice of Hilary Duff.
It’s the song that never fails to take me back to my first Seapoint trip.
To Bailey’s third-grade-birthday theme party, and the playlist that helped me bond with the people who would become my closest friends.
This is what dreams are made of: the song “What Dreams Are Made Of.”
Hilary hasn’t quite reached the first chorus when a bouncy figure zips onto the dance floor like an out-of-control toy car, glow stick necklaces flying around as he bops to the beat.
I can only see him from the back. He’s ditched the cowboy hat and his normally brown hair looks silver due to several hours’ worth of sparkle showers, but it can only be Logan.
He’s trailed by a puzzled-but-game-looking woman with a bleached pixie cut, wearing a pair of low-rise jeans and a white tank top that is either from the dollar store or Rag & Bone. Breanne. My fingertips tingle when I recognize her, but now’s not the time to focus on my own reason for being here.
I step forward, ready to grab Logan’s arm and cling to him like a barnacle until I can flag down Nate, but Nate gets there first. He strides toward Logan from the other side of the dance floor, stopping in front of him, his face solemn. Logan’s arms drop to his sides and his body goes still.
The moment stretches. Hilary sings. Nate says something, and Logan shrugs, and I have to force myself to stay where I am.
Breanne is hanging back too, her eyes flicking between them curiously.
Don’t say a word, I order her telepathically.
And then Logan wraps Nate in a hug and they slap each other’s backs and rock from side to side, and relief courses through me. The chase is over.
I can’t resist stepping closer to hear their conversation. “I think we can do something incredible with it, if we can just make it happen,” Nate says. “I can’t imagine us not trying to do it together. But I need to know what you want.”
I can’t see Logan’s face, but he shakes his head. “I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about the right thing for me to do next. It’s been tough. I wish we could’ve talked about this earlier.”
Nate lets out a weak laugh. “Is that why you’ve been running away from me?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Sunflower Sound? We saw you on Friday, but you sprinted off.”
Logan slaps his thigh. “That was real? Dude, I thought I was hallucinating. I mean, I kind of was hallucinating. I also thought I saw a unicorn.”
“What about Denver? We showed up at the baby shower. Livvie texted the guys you were with and told them we were there to see you, but you never came back.”
Logan pauses, his forehead wrinkling. “Oh. You were my surprises from New Jersey? I thought she meant this guy Michael Embry, who lives in Hoboken. Every time I see him, he begs me to go on that show The Floor Is Lava with him, but I’m done with TV.
He’s kind of annoying, so I decided to steer clear. ”
Nate glances over at me. “Okay, then what about Tahoe? We had that argument and then you left.”
“Please, dude. You were right about me needing to figure out my shit. No big deal. But there was no room for me there with all that sexual tension between you and Quinnie filling the place up.” Nate coughs, and Logan turns his head. When he spots me, he smirks. “Oh, hi, Quinnie.”
All I do is shake my head.
“So it wasn’t because you knew what I was going to ask and were afraid to tell me it was a terrible idea?”
“It’s the greatest idea I’ve ever heard,” Logan says, and my heart leaps in a way that feels like it’s my own dream about to come true.
“Are you in, then?” Nate asks.
Logan rubs his mustache. “I love you, man. But there’s another path that’s right for me. You’re going to do an amazing job with the camp, though, and I can’t wait to cheer you on.”
A light goes out in Nate’s eyes. “I’m not going to get the camp on my own, Logan.
Your parents spent their lives building the business.
Why would they sell to me when they can leave it in the hands of a company with more experience and deeper pockets?
The only way they’d do otherwise is if they were turning it over to family. ”
“You are family.” Logan claps him on the shoulder.
“You’re the closest thing I have to a brother.
My parents know which of the two of us worked hard when we were teenagers.
They know what you’ve been doing since then, how much you’ve learned.
I’ll go full lobbyist on your behalf, but I have complete confidence you can convince them to sell to you on your own. ”
I happen to agree, but my chest still tightens. This isn’t what Nate wanted to hear. It’s not why we came all this way.
Nate says something to Logan in a low voice, then looks at me, his expression tight. He points toward the exit and mouths, We’ll be back.
That leaves me alone with Breanne. When the guys disappear, she stays with me without acknowledging my existence, busying herself with her phone instead.
I’m worried about Nate, but I need to seize my moment with Breanne.
“If my friend ditches me for your friend, does that mean you and I are now friends?” I try.
She shoots me a suspicious look. And I mean shoots.
Her scrutiny feels like the snap of a rubber band as she gauges everything about me in a half second, and I’m pretty sure I shrink an inch or two.
“You two are the ones who hunted us down tonight,” she concludes.
“Even though he didn’t invite you here. Kind of creepy. ”
“Ah.” I toy with one of the buttons on my shirt. “Yes. Because those two—Logan and Nate—they have some stuff to figure out. It’s…urgent.”
“According to who? Logan didn’t mention anything urgent. To me, it seems like you guys interrupted our night out because your friend wants something from him.”
I need to smooth this over. “I think you’re misunderstanding what’s going on here,” I say. “Logan and Nate have been best friends since kindergarten. There’s a conversation they needed to have, and now they are having it. Willingly.”
“What does he really want? Help getting on the show? Promotion of his business? Or is he just straight-up looking for money?”
People must try to use her all the time.
I guess that’s what happens when you’re famous.
I can see it, after what’s happened to me over the last couple weeks, albeit on a smaller scale.
The way Tracy started treating me differently, the encounters with strangers who think they know me. Like I’m no longer a real person.
“It must be exhausting when every interaction feels transactional.” I ignore the twinge in my gut that’s trying to remind me that I too jumped at the chance to meet her for my own personal gain.
She presses her lips together. “No offense, but you don’t know me.”
“I don’t, but I’ve known Logan since we were teenagers,” I offer.
“I’ve seen what he’s faced since he went on TV.
I know it’s not easy, and so does Nate. Aren’t your pre– Beach House friendships even more important now?
Otherwise how do you remember who you really are?
” A lump grows heavy in my throat at the thought of Bailey.
“I’m dealing with, like, one-tenth of the attention you get, and it makes me miss my best friend like crazy. ”
Breanne tilts her head slowly, and the sharpness in her gaze fades away. At that moment, the air horn blares again, and I close my eyes just in time to feel a fresh barrage of glitter wash over me.
“Goddammit.” I wipe my face.
When I open my eyes, I half expect Breanne to be gone, but she’s still there, flicking a clump of sparkles off her nose. She sighs. “You want to grab a drink?”
“I can be overly guarded sometimes,” Breanne says after we find a spot at the bar, stirring her whiskey-and-diet with a cocktail straw.
I shrug. “It’s understandable.”
“There’s nothing worse than someone like me complaining, though. Too much money, too many people wanting to talk to me, blah blah blah.”