RIOT HOUSE (Crooked Sinners #1) - Callie Hart Page 0,58
a party, mocked and ridiculed by Riot House boys, does not sound like a good time, okay?”
“Hah! They don’t attend parties in town. They’re too pretentious and stuck up their own asses to mingle with Mountain Lakes kids. And anyway, I heard Pax telling Damiana that all three of them were heading to Boston for the weekend. Dash’s father’s hosting some kind of charity thing. So you can forget about using them as an excuse right now.”
I scowl, sticking out my bottom lip. “Look. I’m horrible in large social gatherings. I don’t know how to talk to people. I’ll only embarrass you, and then you won’t wanna be friends anymore.”
“Garbage. We’re cooped up here all week long and you wanna stay here all weekend, too? Sorry. Can’t allow it. Come on. Let’s blow this pop stand.”
I am not gonna be able to get out of this, I can tell. She is right, though. It doesn’t make sense to cloister myself up in my room all weekend, when we’re forbidden from leaving during the week. Seems like some form of barbaric self-inflicted punishment that I’m not entirely sure I deserve.
“Who’s throwing this party again?”
She jumps up and down, clapping her hands together. “Yay!”
“Carina, nooooo, I didn’t agree to anything. You gotta tell me who’s throwing the party!”
She shrugs her denim jacket off one shoulder, posing dramatically, grinning like a fiend. “Does it even matter? There’ll be booze. There’ll be boys. There’ll be music. Come on, Elle. Throw on your shortest skirt and let’s GO!”
The mansion—a sleek masterpiece perched on a cliff edge overlooking the town’s largest lake—is big enough to house an entire football team. And the guy who’s throwing this party, Oscar, is the son of an ex NFL player, so that kind of makes sense.
It takes the entire drive down the mountain to figure out who knows Oscar and if we’ve actually even been invited to this thing, by which time I’ve stopped caring and I’m ready for a beer.
The party’s in full swing when we walk through the front door—people dancing and whooping along to the loud, hectic bassline that’s pumping through the professional speakers; shots being thrown back; not one but two beer pong games underway; and so many people I recognize that I immediately relax. Half of Wolf Hall is here. I might not be on first name terms with most of these guys, but I recognize them, and if they’re allowed to be here, then I’m sure I am too.
“We need a bathroom pitstop,” Carina declares, dragging me through the swell of dancing bodies. I apologize to people as I bump into them, but I’m met with friendly faces. No one seems to mind a little jostling. When Carina tracks down a restroom, she pulls me inside and slams the door, spinning around excitedly and leaning against it, laying her palms flat against the wood. “So. I might not have mentioned this. But there’s a guy.”
I hoist myself up to sit on the marble counter by the sink, pulling up my pantyhose, careful not to catch my fingernails on the sparkly, thin material. “Of course there’s a guy,” I agree. “Who is he? What’s his name? Does he go to the academy?”
“He’s a freshman at the University of Albany. His name’s Andre, and he’s beautiful. He’s friends with Oscar’s older brother, and he promised he was gonna be here tonight.”
“And we like this Andre guy?”
Carina nods enthusiastically. “We like him a lot. He’s smart. Kind. Funny. Asks permission before he kisses me, which is actually kind of weird, but it’s better than the alternative. And he looks like a young Andy Samberg, so there’s also that.”
“Andy Samberg?”
“I have a very unique sense of taste, my friend. Haven’t you already figured that out from the clothes?”
In fairness, she’s wearing a pair of purple corduroy dungarees with four leaf clover patches sewn all over them. The t-shirt she’s wearing beneath the overalls has a deranged-looking cat printed across the front of it.
“Okay. I get it, I get it,” I say, laughing. “But the only other guy I’ve known you to be interested in is…well, you know who, and he looks like a classic Greek statue. There’s nothing quirky or weird about him at all. He’s like…vanilla ice cream. But the most expensive, most decadent, luxurious vanilla ice cream money can buy.”
Carina snorts, regarding herself in the mirror. She runs the tap, wetting her fingers and smoothing down her hair, which she’s wearing au naturel tonight: big, and