Late to the Party - Kelly Quindlen Page 0,41

breath. “Man, I think I need some water.”

He ambled into the kitchen and didn’t come back. I was pretty sure he must have been looking for Tucker, but none of his friends seemed to notice.

“Ha!” Natalie said, pointing across the room. “As promised, Codi.”

I turned to look and saw Lydia heading our way, a giant tub of popcorn under her arm. She looked radiant. I wish I could explain the way she lit up the room, how she had this natural energy about her, how she stopped to chat with almost everyone she passed. When she plopped down on the family room carpet with us, she was almost breathless.

“Here,” she said, passing off the popcorn bucket, which Cliff grabbed immediately. “What are we drinking?”

“Vodka,” Natalie said in a Russian accent.

“I’ll make you one,” I said, and hopped to my feet before she could tell me no.

I mixed the drink the way I’d seen Natalie do, crossing my fingers that I got it right. When I got back to the family room, Samuel, Cliff, and Natalie were absorbed in conversation again, but Lydia looked directly at me with a grin that made my heart leap. I caught a whiff of her perfume, sweet and floral and distinctly her.

At some point our group ended up on the deck, where we found Ricky chatting with Tucker by himself. Their energy changed the moment we walked out. Tucker looked at me with mild horror in his eyes, then looked to Ricky with an almost imperceptible question. Ricky shook his head and muttered something in hushed tones, and Tucker’s shoulders relaxed.

Cliff and Samuel converged on Ricky and Tucker, and I knew to anyone else it must have just looked like a bunch of guys hanging out, but I could see the subtle resistance in Ricky’s and Tucker’s body language: how Ricky took a second too long to angle his hips away from Tucker, how Tucker crossed his arms over his chest, how their grins looked a little too forced.

“Are you people-watching?” someone asked.

I turned to find Lydia standing there with a cold beer in her hand. She held it out to me, and I took it and popped it open like a pro.

“Nah, just waiting for you,” I said, feeling bold. “I wanted to play the star game again. What do you think of the name ‘Kris Jenner’?”

Lydia choked with laughter, dribbling beer onto the deck. Everyone looked up as we hopped backward from the splash, Lydia still choking, me laughing and thumping her on the back. Her bare shoulders were like sparks beneath my fingertips.

“Damn, that was embarrassing,” Lydia said, coughing between laughs, but she seemed perfectly at ease.

“Good thing I’m not wearing sandals,” I said, shaking the beer-covered toe of my Vans.

She rolled her eyes, but she was grinning. “It could be worse, trust me. The other day a customer sneezed scrambled eggs onto my thigh, and my manager scolded me for not telling him ‘Bless you.’”

“My brother threw up ice-cream cake on my arm once. At my own birthday party.”

“Seriously? You win.”

“Anytime my family tells the story, my dad is always like, ‘Yeah, Grant, you really take the cake for that one.’”

“Dad jokes are simultaneously the best and worst thing in life.”

“They really are.”

We turned to lean against the deck railing, facing outward toward the trees. It felt like the world had shrunk to just the two of us. Her elbow bumped against mine, and my body hummed at the touch.

“Are you having a good time?” Lydia asked.

It was easy to be honest with her. “Actually, yeah, I am. Would you believe this is my first real party?”

“You’re kidding,” Lydia said, but there was no judgment in her eyes, only spark.

“Big groups of people aren’t really my thing. But I really like your friends, so it’s easy to be here with you all.”

Lydia smiled. “They’re really awesome people. I didn’t even hang out with them until this past year.”

“Really?” I asked, surprised.

“Well, excluding Natalie. She and I have been friends for years. We used to hang out with a different group of girls, but then something happened and we kind of … went our separate ways. Last summer she started dating Cliff and hanging around his friends—you know, the boys—so I started hanging around with them, too, and then Samuel and Terrica started dating, and we all just kind of fit together.”

I paused, letting the narrative sink into me. “Can I ask what happened with the other girls?”

Lydia crossed her arms. “It