2. The First Night Alone #2
It’s true. When I did the striptease for the guard, I was actually in jail with Kayleigh after I beat up that girl at the party.
I don’t even remember her name, that’s how lame it was.
But I raise the champagne glass again, the bubbles fizzing at my nose, and let myself savor the thought: alone in this vast, echoing house, with all the potential in the world and nothing to hold me back.
“I guess we’ll see,” I say, voice low and reckless, “just how much trouble I can get into with only one night of freedom.”
And for the first time in days, I don’t feel alone at all.
The party starts in my head long before I send the first text. Maybe that’s my true talent—seeing a silent house as a set piece, a stage to fill with chaos and energy and strangers’ perfume.
It’s after midnight but I’m wide awake, the adrenaline of plans forming prickling at my skin. I move from room to room, champagne glass in hand, surveying the Moreland mansion through fresh, subversive eyes. Not as a museum or a mausoleum, but as my own personal playground.
I start in the great room. The space is meant to impress: pale walls, sky-high windows, a pair of custom sofas arranged in a conversational circle.
The kind of place you’d expect to see in an Architectural Digest feature—elegant, cold, meant for eyes rather than bodies.
But tonight I see it as it could be: people slouched on the furniture, heels kicked off, laughter echoing up into the rafters.
I open the patio doors and step out onto the terrace, letting the crisp air snap at my bare ankles.
The backyard slopes down toward a copse of leafless birch, and the grass is brittle under a skin of frost. Beyond the French doors, the kitchen is lit up like a spaceship.
I can see my own reflection in the glass, all high cheekbones and waterfall hair, pale in the moonlight.
I toast my shadow with a sip of champagne.
Inside again, I run my hand along the slick edge of the kitchen island—twelve feet of quartz, cool to the touch.
It would make a hell of a bar. I pop open a new tab on my phone’s browser and search “signature party cocktails,” already imagining the parade of coupe glasses and artfully rimmed tumblers.
I open the pantry, lined with enough supplies to survive a nuclear winter, and start a mental shopping list: bitters, fresh herbs, more limes, maybe some fancy cheese to replace the hunk I ate earlier.
The dining room is next. I flick on the chandelier and watch as the light ricochets across the cut crystal and silver. There’s something satisfying about knowing I can throw a party here that would piss Thomas off and make Andie want to join.
Texting is almost muscle memory by now. I thumb out a quick save-the-date to Kayleigh and Mary Kate—“Tomorrow night, my place, bring whoever”—and follow up with a string of fire and champagne emojis.
They reply instantly. Kayleigh: “I’m there, bitch.
” MK: “Will wear something slutty.” My heart thumps harder than it should.
I add Chloe from work, then three more friends from the Nicolette group chat, then a guy I met once at a gallery opening who was cute enough to remember and smart enough to never hit on me after.
I put the phone down, scroll through the house sound system, and hit play on a playlist labeled “Stupid Sexy.” Synths and basslines bleed through the walls, shaking off the silence one decibel at a time.
I pour another glass, then climb the stairs to my room, feeling the music reverberate in my bones.
The hallway up here is a runway, lined with empty rooms and faint, echoing versions of myself in every gold-framed mirror.
My bedroom is at the very end, a suite designed to be Instagrammed: king bed, canopy, velvet bench at the foot.
The only thing not perfectly curated is the heap of laundry on the chaise.
I ignore it and go straight to the closet.
There’s a ritual to this. I flip on the track lights, letting them spotlight my wardrobe, and pull out the black minidress.
It’s slinky and soft, the kind of thing that rides up on your thighs if you so much as breathe.
The back plunges low enough to make even Andie raise an eyebrow, which is precisely the point.
I drape it across the bed, set out a pair of strappy stilettos beside it, and stand back to consider the full effect.
In the mirror, I look—well, not like the girl in the park photo from last summer, but not bad either.
I tilt my head and try to see myself the way Hunter might: the lines of my shoulders, the way my hair slips down my spine, the contrast of skin and silk.
I practice a smile in the mirror, a little too sly, then laugh at myself and turn away.
I lie back on the bed, the dress bunched up under my knees, and check my phone again. The replies are rolling in, the group chat blowing up with memes and screenshots and, from Chloe, an ungodly number of GIFs. I tap out a few answers, suggest a time, then scroll up to the message from Hunter.
Arriving Saturday evening. Do you need anything from town? – H
I let my finger rest on it, feeling the latent charge in the single letter. What I want is to reply with something glib and dangerous, like: Only if you’re bringing trouble. But I don’t. I let the question sit, a dare in the dark, and focus on the now.
The HVAC hums in the walls, the house holding its breath.
I close my eyes and picture the party: bodies pressed together on the dance floor, spilled champagne on the marble, someone making out on the velvet bench in the foyer.
I picture myself in the middle of it, laughing until my sides ache, kissing someone I barely know just for the rush of it.
I picture Hunter arriving, his face impassive, and what it would feel like for once to make him jealous.
I sit up, finish the last swallow of champagne, and open the window. Cold air floods in, sharp and cleansing. The future is a blank page, but for the first time in a while, I want to write all over it.
The phone lights up with a new text: See you tomorrow, star girl.
I don’t know which of my friends sent it, but I like the sound of it. I set the empty glass on my nightstand and watch the city lights blink in the distance, each one a tiny, perfect invitation.
I have one night left before Hunter arrives.
I plan to make it count.