I started to smile as something like happiness tried to fill in my cracks. Suspicion got there first. “Why?”
“You don’t annoy the living shit out of me. Good enough?” His tone was harsh, but I saw a tinge of warmth in his slate gray eyes.
The happiness came back. “Good enough.”
Chapter Seven
Chance Blaylock’s huge two-story on Ocean Avenue was blaring Eminem’s “Godzilla” over a hundred laughing conversations. I felt the base even out on the street as Evelyn and I headed up the walk, muttering a curse. I was at war with my tight minidress; a constant push and pull between tugging it down and hauling it up to better cover my boobs.
“Will you relax?” Evelyn said, looking stunning in black leggings and a black bustier-style top. “You are fire. River is going to lose his shit when he sees you.”
“I feel half-naked.”
She smirked. “Exactly.”
In my past life, I’d never worn more than jeans and sweatshirts to social events. This was my first house party, and I felt like an imposter. Or a spy from the “other side” come to see how the cool kids do it.
They’re going to see right through me.
Then I chastised myself for being silly and remembered what David Foster Wallace once said: You’ll worry less about what people think about you when you realize how seldom they do.
Inside, the house was dark with only small lamps lit here and there and a string of lights over a sound system. Bodies filled the rooms, talking, dancing, making out. Most with a red solo cup in hand. The music and people filled every corner of the house, upstairs and down.
Evelyn took hold of my hand. “Kitchen. We need to get our drank on.”
We squeezed through the crowd and arrived in a spacious, brightly lit kitchen that seemed blinding after the dark of the rest of the house. The kitchen overlooked the expansive backyard where the party had spilled out onto the patio around the pool. More colored lights were strung in garlands, and people huddled in groups on lounge chairs, the glowing ember of joints passing from hand to hand.
A bunch of football players had set up camp around the keg next to a huge island of gray marble that was covered in bottles, empty solos, and a salad bowl filled with cherry red punch. River was among them.
“Hey, boys. This is Violet’s first house party.” Evelyn pressed a solo cup of beer in my hand and looked meaningfully at River. “Be gentle.”
I rolled my eyes as my face flushed red. “Thanks for that.”
“Shh, here he comes.”
Evelyn side-stepped away as River came around the island in jeans, a white T-shirt, and a plaid button down, open and rolled up at the sleeves. The shirt revealed every cut line of his chest, but his forearms were downright mesmerizing.
“Hey,” he said.
My gaze shot up to a chiseled face that looked cut from granite, a light shadow over his square jaw. “Hi.”
River’s faint smile had just the right amount of casual amusement and confidence I expected from the captain of the football team—a guy who was probably going to end up winning the Heisman and being drafted to the NFL in a few short years. But his eyes darted here and there, as if he was aware we had an audience. Or nervous to be talking to me.
Hello, ego. That’s impossible.
“So…this really your first party?”
“Is it that obvious?”
“Nah, you’re doing all right.”
“Any pointers?”
He laughed. “Yeah. If Chance offers you a cup of his ‘world famous’ party punch, say no. That shit is like gasoline.”
I laughed too and felt a loosening in my ches
t. River Whitmore, who I’d built up into this mythical figure—an Olympian god who wouldn’t dare talk to mere mortals like me—was just a guy who needed a conversation icebreaker like anyone else.