“Well it wasn’t about you,” Suri says, propping one hand on the hip of her burgundy, silk sheath Valentino gown. She slides her eyes to me, and Adam grins his dimpled grin. “Oh, I see. Miss Elizabeth.”
“No, not Miss Elizabeth.” I scowl, because I resent the simpering nickname.
“She has a hot crush,” Suri murmurs, barely containing another giggle behind her wine flute.
“I do not.” My face is flaming. I seriously consider smacking Suri, except I know that would draw even more attention, and I am not a fan of attention.
“Bet my crush is even hotter,” Adam says, taking Suri’s hand. He brushes her brown curls out of her face and nods to the doors behind us, most of which have been propped open, letting in the nippy November air. “Want to dance?”
I roll my eyes at their cheesiness, but truthfully I’m glad Adam got the heat off me.
“Why of course, my love.” Suri curtsies, and I have the wherewithal to flush on her behalf. Someone from Suri’s family should act a lot more reserved in public. Suri’s like an oblivious 9-year-old.
I, on the other hand, am absolutely conscious of the eyes pulled to my orbit as Suri and Adam pass through the doors behind me, leaving me alone with my half-empty wine flute. I hate moments like these, where I know what everyone is thinking: Look at Elizabeth DeVille, left alone by the only friend she has. With a mother like hers and hardly any money left, it’s a wonder she has even one.
Mentally shoving off their judgment, I lift the tail of my green dress in my right hand and gently pick my way through the crowded room, toward a slender hallway just beyond a staircase. I can’t resist a glance over my shoulder as I go; I’m looking for Hunter, but he’s nowhere in sight.
To my left, beyond a wine-gurgling fountain and across a vast oriental rug, I spot my friend Cross Carlson with his arms around the red-haired Cole twins: identical, including their D-cup racks. He winks, and I give him a genuine smile, hoping the black-haired, blue-eyed devil in the bespoke tux is actually Cross. I really can’t see. I curse the loss of my contact, and my own vanity. I have a pair of glasses in my clutch, but I’m too vain to wear them with my emerald satin, mermaid-cut Vera Wang.
Not that it would change my aesthetics much. With or without glasses, I’m still a fat girl. Not like…unusually fat. Just regular, eats-too-much-good-food fat. The kind of fat that curls the waist of my blue jeans down and creates an unattractive line of back fat between my pants and my top, just over the butt, when I sit cross-legged, hunched over one of my textbooks.
Since finishing undergrad—since my mom threw my dad out before having her third nervous breakdown in as many years, and dad went running to another family, complete with two new daughters—I’ve gained probably forty pounds, and the thing about the new me is, I don’t care. I like Phish Food ice cream. I like beer, wine, and whiskey. I like Dove dark chocolate even better than the fancy imported stuff, and my mystery novel fetish is such that the time I don’t spend studying for a PhD in Ethics is devoted to figuring out whodunnit.
With the exception of Hunter West, who’s been my own personal porn since that fateful night Mom’s Porsche broke down, I don’t find that many men attractive. Maybe I am a lesbian, but I don’t think so. I’ve never had the hots for another woman. I think most guys are just boring.
I clutch the tail of my dress a little more tightly as I glide down the hallway just off the great room. The wall on my right has turned from stone to glass, and I realize I’m approaching the atrium: a glass-walled garden in the middle of the octagonal house.
Through the glass wall on my right, I see a swatch of starry sky, and I remember three nights ago, at Mom’s house. Cross and I went to the front lawn to watch a meteor shower, and I think he wanted to kiss me.
He’s always been like that when he drinks. Affectionate. And horny. Most girls love it, but Cross is one of my oldest friends. I know how closed off he is to everyone, how shallow he keeps things, especially with girls he “dates,” and I can’t risk