Look - Zan Romanoff Page 0,84

Rich, which was the actual point of them coming to the party. Lulu stays in the den, mostly. She feels like a prey animal or a spy, keeping her eyes on the door so that no more surprises sneak up on her tonight.

There’s only one bathroom down there, though, and someone has been in it for a while. Lulu really has to pee. The second-floor bathroom is just at the top of the stairs—safe enough, she figures, and it is. She pees, washes her hands, redoes her topknot, wishes she could touch up her eye makeup, which has gotten a little too smudgy for her taste.

Sloane is standing outside the door when she opens it.

“Sorry,” Sloane says. Her facade of calm has fallen slightly with the wash of drunkenness. She’s twisting her hands together, biting the inside of her lip. Lulu feels a swell of the thing she felt over the summer, the ease of desire, of sheer, sharp want.

And then she immediately feels disloyal to Cass, which is—No. She pushes the thought away. Cass still hasn’t texted her back. Lulu assumes this means they’re over.

Sloane continues. “I didn’t mean to ambush you. I just wanted to talk, and I didn’t want to do it in front of everyone.”

Lulu looks around. The second floor is open plan, mostly—a living room that unfolds into the kitchen; the bedrooms are all on the third floor. There’s no one around to hear them, but still she feels terribly exposed.

“Do we need to?” she asks, trying to keep it light.

“I just—I saw the thing,” Sloane says. “That Ryan made. And I heard a rumor that you weren’t, like, totally down with it.”

“I guess,” Lulu says.

“I mostly wanted to say: That fucking sucks,” Sloane says. “I knew him growing up, you know. And he—”

Lulu’s had enough of watching girls take responsibility for Ryan. “He’s not your fault,” she says.

“Thank god.” Sloane laughs, and then turns to go.

“I’m sorry,” Lulu says.

“What?”

“About the summer. About the Flash,” Lulu says. “I’m sorry.”

Sloane shrugs. “Nothing people didn’t already know about me,” she says. “And I know you didn’t do it on purpose.”

“Do you?”

Sloane smiles. “I was there. I know what happened. Plus, you had a boyfriend.”

“I did.”

“He’s not here tonight.”

“Yeah.”

“I heard you guys broke up.” Sloane waits for Lulu to respond, and when she doesn’t, she continues. “I sort of figured it would be temporary. I don’t know why. I just thought it might blow over, after.”

“If you heard about the pictures, you must have heard the rumors about me and Cass.” Lulu hasn’t said her name much lately. It makes her seem more real, somehow, not just the memory of her, indistinct, but her name like currency, something anyone can use to conjure her.

“I guess I did,” Sloane says.

“And Owen has a new girlfriend,” Lulu adds. Now that she’s got a knife in her own side, may as well twist it a little.

“And you and Cass?”

Lulu shakes her head.

Sloane steps in closer to her. “Do you want me to kiss you?” she asks.

Lulu feels the same sting of disloyalty, the idea that this is wrong, that it will hurt Cass. But Cass is the one who stopped speaking to her. May as well, she thinks. And Sloane is still so beautiful. “I do.”

Sloane kisses her in the hallway. She puts her hands on Lulu’s waist, under her shirt, and now that Lulu isn’t so overwhelmed by the fact that it’s happening, that she’s kissing a girl for real, it’s easier to notice details: that Sloane’s hands are bigger than Cass’s were, but smaller than Owen’s, and softer, that instead of being slick with summer like last time, she’s cool and dry. Sloane touches Lulu easily, certainly, like she’s trying to tell Lulu something, to convince her that she knows what she’s doing.

Sloane is the one who pulls away after a while, takes Lulu’s hand, and leads her silently up to one of the guest bedrooms. Lulu thinks about last time this happened, and all the things she didn’t know, didn’t know how to do. Now she could be in charge, if she wanted to. She could ask for the things she wants.

It feels good, though, to give in. To follow Sloane, to lie down on the bed, to kiss until her mouth is numb. Lulu takes Sloane’s shirt off; she surrounds herself with the distraction of someone else’s skin. She loses herself to the moment and lets it go further than it should. Usually she tries to be