emotions washed over Emma. “Thank you,” she said quietly, staring into his round blue eyes.
“Kiss him,” I whispered, feeling like the singing hermit crab in The Little Mermaid. I was all out of my own first kisses, so I had to root for Emma now.
A woman in a magenta dress bumped into Emma. “Sorry,” she slurred, her eyes glazed and her cheeks a boozy red. And Emma pulled away, giggling.
“So how do you know so much about crashing art openings?” Emma said, smoothing the front of Sutton’s dress. “I thought you were anti-party.”
Ethan strolled to a bank of windows at the back of the gallery that overlooked a stone terrace festooned with Christmas lights. “I’m not. I’m just against the kind of party with spiked punch and body shots. It’s so . . .”
“Juvenile?” Emma filled in for him. “But sometimes that’s a part of having a social life. Sometimes you just have to grin and bear it to have friends.”
Ethan drained his glass of champagne and set it on a side table. “If that’s the price I have to pay, then I’d rather be alone.”
“What about girlfriends?” she asked nervously. She’d wracked her brain for days, thinking of how to ask him this.
A tiny smile danced across Ethan’s lips. “Yeah, I’ve had a few of those.”
“Anyone I know?”
Ethan just shrugged and sank into one of the angular leather chairs that could’ve been an art exhibit themselves.
“Were any of them serious?” Emma pressed as she settled next to him and cradled a soft, overstuffed pillow.
“One was. But it’s over now. What about you?” His gaze canvassed her face. “Did you leave anyone behind in Vegas?”
“Not exactly.” Emma stared at her lap. “I had some boyfriends, but nothing was too serious. And then there was this one guy, but . . .”
“But what?”
Emma’s throat tightened. “It ended up being nothing.”
She hated lying, but she didn’t want to get into her embarrassing fiasco with Russ Brewer, whom she’d made the mistake of liking. After he’d asked her out, she’d prepared for the date, borrowing a dress from Alex, wearing the last-season Kate Spade shoes she’d scored at Goodwill, rewashing and restyling her hair three times to get it right. But when she’d gone to the mall entrance, Russ wasn’t there. Instead it was his ex-girlfriend, Addison Westerberg, and her posse, their laughs high, horrible cackles. As if Russ would date the foster girl? they’d teased. It had been a setup. Not, in fact, unlike a Lying Game prank.
Ethan opened his mouth, perhaps to say more, but suddenly his eyes widened at something behind them. “Shit.” He leaned forward and clamped down on Emma’s arm.
Emma swung around and stared. Nisha Banerjee, dressed in a high-neck black dress and snakeskin heels, stood by a huge photograph of a mostly naked man. Her father was next to her, glancing around with a blank look on his face.
“Oh my God,” Emma whispered. Just then, Nisha turned and stared right at her and Ethan. A chicken satay skewer dangled from her fingers, forgotten.
“Come on.” Before she could think, Emma grabbed Ethan’s hand and pulled him through the crowd. She ditched her champagne flute in a big trash barrel and wound around the guests, nearly upending a waitress’s tray of cheese puffs. A man in a blue ruffled suit and a teal cowboy hat sneered at them over his martini, as though they were two children escaping the scene of a schoolyard scuffle. But Mr. Tuxedo opened the double doors for them placidly, as though he saw people fleeing from art openings all the time. They scurried down the stairs into the twinkling Tucson night.
Only when Emma had safely reached the street did she turn around to see if Nisha had followed them. There was no one at the entrance.
Ethan straightened his jacket and wiped a bead of sweat off his brow. All of a sudden, Emma burst into giggles. Ethan chuckled, too.
After a moment, she grew serious. “Nisha definitely saw us.” Emma flopped on a green city bench and heaved a sigh.
“Who cares?” Ethan asked. He sat down, too.
“I care,” Emma answered. “She’ll tell my parents I snuck out.”
“Are you sure that’s all that’s bothering you?” Ethan glanced at her out of the corner of his eye. “You wouldn’t mind if she saw us . . . together?”
Emma’s stomach flipped over. “No, of course not. Would you?”
Ethan stared at her without blinking. “What do you think?”
Jazz music drifted out from the party. Across the street, a stray