Except Robby, who keeps gnawing on his lip as he studies me, frustrated about something.
I glance back at Chad. He’s still talking with Kirk and Bonnie, but the moment I look his way, he seems to sense it, because he returns my glance with a curious one of his own.
I still can’t believe the crazy circumstances that have brought us here to this night—me and Chad. I can’t believe so much has happened in my short time here.
“Anyway, I’ll stop holding you hostage,” Vanessa tells me, likely noting my aloofness. “I just absolutely had to see you up-close for myself.”
“It’s great to catch up,” I reply.
“You know, you were always one of my favorite people, Lance, and I just adore you. Oh!” She puts her hand back on my thigh and her eyes brighten. “I nearly forgot! We saw your spread in Rougé Fashion Weekly. My mother and I. She’s a subscriber. And I’ll tell you one thing, Lance, next time my mother, myself, or anyone I know needs an outfit for an event, you’ll be the first person on my list that I call up or recommend, and that’s not lip service.”
I find my lips hanging open. “Oh. Um … wow.”
“Do you own a boutique yet out in LA?” she asks, leaning in. “Do you do online consults or … whatever you call it? I mean, my mother is so crazy about your style, she is ready to endorse.”
Listening to Vanessa, I find my grip on my glass of champagne growing all the more tight. Between her flattery, everyone around the couches listening attentively, and Robby’s dead-eyed stare at me, I’m not sure how to feel. “Thanks. That’s kind of you to say all of that.” My words are unintentionally flat, despite trying to make them cheery and appreciative. “If I ever someday open up that hypothetical boutique, you’ll … you’ll be first to know.”
“Maybe it’s not as hypothetical as you think.” She smiles at me, then gives me a wave as I rise from the couch to take my leave. “I’ve got my eye on you, Mr. Future of Fashion.”
She isn’t the only one who’s got her eye on me. Robby, who hasn’t so much as flinched since I called him out for prom night, stares after me with a faraway, pained look on his face.
I won’t read too much into it.
I happen to return to Chad the moment Kirk and Bonnie have taken off to find some other friends, and once again, it’s just the two of us in an ocean of chatter and bodies. “Nessie Evans thinks I should open a boutique,” I tell Chad after taking another sip of champagne. “Mrs. Evans apparently wants to endorse me.”
Chad’s thoughts, of course, are preoccupied with something else entirely. “What did Robby say to you?”
I roll my eyes. “Really, Chad?”
“Did he say somethin’ about me? I saw him lookin’ this way.”
“Nope. But Vanessa—I’m sorry, I never boarded the ‘Nessie’ train—had to ask what I was doing here with you, and I said we came to terms. Then Robby got his panties in a knot trying to squirm his way out of taking any responsibility for what I went through back in high school, claiming to have had nothing to do with it, since he was basically—”
Chad cuts me off. “Y’know what? Ever since that guy started singin’ in the choir and dating Nessie, he acts like he’s got a one-up on everyone in town, actin’ pious and virtuous and …” He huffs, annoyed, then heads off without finishing his point.
Well, I guess his point was pretty much made.
After one last glance back at the couch, where I notice that Robby just witnessed this whole exchange from a distance, I follow Chad through the large archway leading out of the room.
I don’t catch up to him until we’re stopped at the foot of a big staircase that winds upward to the second floor. “Chad …”
He spins on me. “It won’t matter what I do, will it? I’m always gonna be surrounded by what I’ve done. Robby. Owen and the guys. You can tell me I’m forgiven ‘til you’re pink in the face and we can pretend we’ve moved on, but how will I ever move on from my own guilt? How will I ever let it go?”
“Blue.”
He lifts an eyebrow. “What?”
“The expression is ‘blue in the face’.” I cross my arms and lean against a nearby column, facing him. Yes, this giant front foyer with the giant winding staircase has fucking columns throughout it like the goddamned Parthenon; that’s how froufrou this place is. “I don’t really have any golden wisdom to impart on you. But all I’ll say is, we all had to endure the plague of the 90s perms.”
Chad wrinkles his face. “The what?”
“As well as turtlenecks,” I go on. “Velcro sandals. Chokers.”