47. Chapter Forty-Seven #3
I don’t see him, but the girls want drinks right away, so we head to the kitchen.
He’s standing at the counter with a container in his hands, big and broad, calm in the middle of the chaos, mixing up a huge batch of something in a drink dispenser.
For one second, his eyes lift and cross the whole crowded house and land on mine.
And then they let go, because the guy beside him is talking.
He’s good at this too. We’re both so good at this.
Gianna cuts through the crowd to the counter. “Percy, you’ve got to stop making the mango one. You’ll cross-contaminate and put Lucy in the hospital again.”
“I wash everything down with a separate sponge.” Percy shakes his head, unbothered. “There’s no cross-contamination. She’s fine.”
Lucy reaches Benson, and they fold into a hug. I watch it happen, and it hits me in the chest, seeing them like this. Not one of the guys so much as blinks at them. I think my heart cracks a little at the sight.
“Somebody told me once that Hawthorne parties had terrible drinks,” Percy says, to no one, to the room. “So I started making this.”
I stare at the container he’s filling from the blender, listening to what he’s saying and wondering why he’s saying that.
Then it hits me that I’m the person who said that.
That was years ago. He was a freshman. I was a sophomore.
It was nothing, a throwaway thing I said to put Hawthorne parties down.
I said it once and never thought of it again.
“It’s a tradition now, G,” Stanley barks, slinging an arm across the counter. “Let the man make his goalie juice in peace.”
Rowan laughs. “Wait — is that why you make it? Because someone said Hawthorne had bad drinks?”
Percy nods, and says nothing, and still doesn’t look at me.
I pull two cups from the stack, one for me and one for Mara, as he tips the last of the batch into the dispenser. He nods at our cups, an offer, and Mara pushes hers across first.
“Yes, please,” she says, and he fills hers to the top.
I hold mine out. He pours it halfway and stops. I get half of what he gave her, and for a second, his eyes flick up to me and away, and there’s color high on his face.
I take a sip. I nod, like it’s just a drink, but it’s the best thing I’ve ever tasted.
Percy’s flushed, so I turn away to give him cover — to Mara. “Did my roommate ever text you?”
“Text us, you mean.” Mara’s already got her phone out. “Group chat, remember. Oh. She says she’s heading over soon.”
“Okay.” I drink again. God, the mango. “This is really good,” I murmur, mostly to myself.
Mara shrugs. “You’ll get used to it. It’s been around three years. He makes one for Lucy too, allergy-safe. Hers is better, honestly.”
I smile down into my cup and take another sip. “I like mango.”
On my way out of the kitchen, I turn my head, and he’s watching me. His eyes touch mine and slide away, like he wasn’t looking at me at all. Mine do the exact same to him. It lasts half a second.
Then Mara announces Melly’s arrived, so I follow her toward the door, except Melly’s already halfway through it, so I stop at the threshold. Melly introduces me to her boyfriend and she has her best friend Mila with her, whom I met earlier.
Mara gets them drinks, and I pull out my phone.
Me: You’ve been making me that drink for three years?
I watch him across the loud house. I watch him feel the phone buzz and pull it out and read it. I watch his shoulders go still. He doesn’t look up right away.
And then he finally looks around the room.
His eyes find mine, and for one single second neither of us bothers to pretend.
He just looks at me, and I look back, and everything is in it —the drink, every party I never came to, the whole summer, the porch, the couch, the French — all of it held between us in a room full of people who have no idea.
I love him.
Then a hand claps down on his shoulder and someone pulls him back into the noise, and the moment is over, and we both look away.
He doesn’t text back for a long time.
Percy: Two years. It’s only the start of the third.
Percy: You finally came to a party.
Percy: Tonight?
I read that last word three times. Tonight.
Even now. Even with the season and the roommate and everything he said in the dark about not being able to keep coming — still, tonight.
He’d still show up. He’d carry me to bed one last time at half past midnight and slip back out before the sun came up, and we’d keep doing this until it broke one of us for good.
Me: I have a roommate now.
I watch him read it. I watch his face not change, because he’s so good at that.
Then I watch him tuck the phone away into his pocket, and turn, and walk out the back door into the dark, and I stand at the front of his house full of our friends and pretend I’m part of the conversation that Mara and Gianna are having with Stanley.
Stanley mentions something about Benson breaking the house rules, so I look up to the whiteboard and sigh. I hold my drink near my mouth and take a long sip.
He’s just following the rules.