up where we left off at the last party. I rest my head on his shoulder and for one wonderful moment, it feels like everything is right with the world.
The fast song ends and a slow one starts. I lift my head up so I can look him in the eyes, but he isn’t looking at me. He’s looking over my shoulder, back at the pretty college girls.
“Hey,” I say, calling his attention back toward me. He looks down as if he’s expecting me to say something else, but it’s not words I want. I tilt my head and stand up on my toes so my mouth is lined up with his. He doesn’t make the move, so I go for it. My lips lock onto his like a magnet, but when I open my mouth, his stays closed.
“Easy, tiger,” he says, pulling away from me. I frown, waiting for him to explain what’s wrong. The room is still swaying a little even though we stopped dancing.
“You want another beer?” I ask. Maybe he just needs another drink before he’s feeling as good as I am, the way we both were at his last party. Then we can get back to the dancing and the kissing.
“Sure.”
In the kitchen, I go to open the refrigerator door but it’s stuck. I laugh and try again, but no matter how hard I pull, it doesn’t open.
“I got it,” Bella says. “It opens on the other side.” She opens the door and takes a bottle out but doesn’t hand it over. “Are you sure you need another one?”
“Are you sure you’re supposed to be here? This is a cast and crew party.”
“My house is next door,” she says. “Liam invites me to all his parties; I think his parents make him.” She hands me the beer, and I don’t know whether to say thank you or I’m sorry. This night is not turning out how I planned.
I twist the bottle cap, but it doesn’t budge. I try again, same results. I look down at my palm and see a bunch of little red marks from the cap.
“Baby girl, you need an opener!” Jen says. Her boyfriend takes the beer from my hands and uses his key chain to open it before handing it back to me. I hold it up and air “cheers” toward Bella before going back to the living room.
“Hey, CeCe?” Bella says. I turn around. “I just wanted to say I’m sorry about your dad. If you ever need to talk—”
“I don’t want to talk about it,” I snap. “I just want to dance.”
I take a defiant swig and turn back toward the dance floor. I stop in the open doorway. Liam isn’t where I left him and I forgot his beer. I’m about to turn around when I see him in front of the fireplace, slow dancing with one of his sister’s friends. Their bodies are pressed together like they’re one person, swaying back and forth in perfect rhythm. I watch as he lowers his head to whisper something in her ear, not mine.
He looks up for a second and sees me see him. I smile, hoping he’ll stop dancing with her and come back to dance with me. But he doesn’t. He just smiles and whispers something else in her ear. She laughs and the butterflies in my stomach turn to stone.
I want to go home, but the room is spinning and I’m afraid to move.
“CeCe.” Bella is standing next to me, holding my arm so I don’t fall. “Come on, let’s get out of here.”
Chapter Twelve
Alexis
Tommy and I are half watching the eleven o’clock news when my phone vibrates with a text. “CeCe wants to sleep over at Bella’s,” I tell Tommy. It’s strange that she texted instead of called. And even stranger that she reached out to me, not her dad. “Should we be worried?”
“About CeCe?”
Tommy’s right. I text back a quick reply, letting her know to call in the morning and one of us will pick her up. CeCe’s a good kid. As far as teenagers go, we’ve got it pretty easy. Unlike Jill, one of our closest friends back in Destin. She has her hands full with Beau, her son, who’s a year older than CeCe. From the look of his Instagram account, that kid is his father’s son in more ways than just his playboy good looks. He’s posing with a different scantily clad girl in almost every photo—the one I saw today was