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Authors: Rachel Hollis

Party Girl (21 page)

BOOK: Party Girl
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“Ladies,” I call, and they both stop to look at me. “To Sandra Bullock.” I raise my glass and they immediately both clink with me. Probably because it is New Year’s and shots are a foregone conclusion, but also because no one should disrespect Sandra, especially after Jesse did such a number on her.

We down them simultaneously, and some of us (Miko) grimace theatrically and some of us (Max) act like it doesn’t affect her at all, but all of us are in a happy place approximately seven minutes later. It is, officially, the greatest New Year’s ever!

A little while later we’re all standing around our lounge area sipping some sort of muddled creation Max has talked the bartender into making for us, even though she is drinking water. I am engaged in a pretty fierce debate with a few members of Rihanna’s twenty-person entourage about whether we should all start up some kind of dance battle (because, like I mentioned, tequila makes me dream up things like dance battles). My new friends and I are laughing hysterically, and I am just about to show them my own version of crunking when Brody walks up. He’s with his brother Liam, whom I’d met quickly at the hospital but hadn’t really had time to notice in the chaos of that morning. Liam is shorter and his hair a bit darker, but he is really handsome in his own right. He has an easy smile and a laid-back energy that stands in direct opposition to his older brother.

I’m still not sure how to act around Brody, but my mama raised me with manners, and at the very least I need to thank him for hosting us.

“And I think you know Landon,” Max says as I walk up.

I stick out my hand. “It’s Liam, right?”

“It’s nice to see you again.” He smiles at me sincerely. “I’m sorry I didn’t get a chance to tell you before how much we appreciate everything you did for Mackenzie.”

“Liam—” Max warns him.

Brody must sense her distress because he interrupts her with a swift change of subject.

“Looks like you were having quite a debate there.” He nods towards my new friends.

I smile at him, grateful that he’s helping Max and even more grateful for an easy conversation.

“They’re backup dancers. I was challenging them to a duel of sorts,” I say flippantly, because besides fueling great ideas, tequila also dissolves the filter between my brain and my mouth.

“A duel?” Liam laughs.

“A dance-off,” I tell him with mock seriousness.

“Interpretive?” he teases.

“Hip-hop,” I answer.

“You’re a hip-hop dancer?” Max asks, incredulous.

“God no!” I giggle at her. “But even if I was terrible, I’d be able to say I went all
Step Up 2
with Rihanna’s backup dancers, and that’d be awesome!”

Liam laughs and even Max manages to smile, but Brody isn’t quite so joyful. I’m beginning to understand why everyone seemed so surprised on Thanksgiving; he clearly doesn’t laugh easily. I take another sip of my drink and bop along while Timberlake brings sexy back over the loudspeakers.

A beautiful woman walks up dressed as a vintage cigarette girl, and I am so busy checking out her flawless makeup that I don’t even notice her tray until Miko waltzes up to it.

“What are those?” she coos, and points at the girl’s tray, covered with individual shots that are smoking. Dry ice maybe?

“Those are the Twenty-Five; they’re our signature shot. You should try it.” Brody takes shots from the tray and hands one to each of us.

I sniff it dubiously. It doesn’t smell bad, but it does smell like gin, and mixing different types of liquor is probably a very bad idea. I look up at Miko, who is already half in the bag. But Max is actually sort of grinning happily for once, and she says, “To Sandra?”

And then Miko and I go along immediately, because that’s the theme of the night.

“To Sandra!” we yell.

And then the bad idea is down my throat and it’s too late to take it back. The Ashton brothers are staring at us with confused expressions, but I just ignore them.

Miko turns to me suddenly. “Should we dance?”

She asks the question the same way you might ask if you should get bangs or become a vegetarian.

“We
should
dance,” I tell Miko, like it is the best idea I’d ever heard of . . . and right then it sort of is the best idea I’d ever heard.

“There’s not enough liquor in the world,” Max warns when we look to her. Then she plops down on the lounge with Brody following suit. Liam wishes us a fun night, and I wave to him as I bop and weave my way to the dance floor.

For the next three songs we jump and shimmy and sway, and at one point I do the sprinkler, and it’s awesome because even lame dance moves are forgiven on New Year’s. Finally the DJ puts on something a bit too techno for my taste, and we use the opportunity to bounce back to the table for water.

Miko gets there first and falls in a heap next to Max, which means I have nowhere to sit except next to Brody. He is lounging on a sofa in his perfectly tailored three-piece suit, sipping on a Perrier like he has nowhere better to be when, really, there must be a dozen cooler prospects for him on a night like this. Where is his latest hot date? Surely someone like him is a hot commodity as a New Year’s date.

I grab for a bottle of water, and I look back at the crowd on the dance floor while I drink it.

“How was your Christmas?” he asks after a minute.

I turn around to frown at him . . . Are we making small talk now?

“Fine, thanks. How was yours?”

“It was good. Look, I meant to apologize for the, uh”—he seems to struggle for words—“dry cleaning thing. But then I forgot to—with everything else.”

God, I can’t believe he even remembers that interaction, especially after everything that happened afterwards. Why is he bringing it up now? Why is he still talking?

“I didn’t anticipate her reaction. It was never my intention to get you into trouble.”

I mean to dodge this subject altogether, but his first line mixed with the liquor in my bloodstream pulls me up short. How can so many people who work directly with Selah remain blind to the terrible things she does? I know he’s a man, and she’s gorgeous, but surely you’d be able to see through her crap after working with her a dozen times, right?

“You didn’t think she’d react that way,” I wonder aloud.

Can he really be that clueless?

“Of course not. I know events can be tense so she was likely stressed, but her reaction was completely irrational.” He says it like that settles everything.

She
was stressed out? Is he actually making excuses for the way she acts? As if it’s a one-time occurrence. As if it can all be explained away in one moment of irrational-ness!
Is that even a word?

“Irrational?” I screech.

I’m afraid the last bits of practical thought washed away with that smoky shot, and I’m officially a little drunk and a whole lot pissed off. Miko and Max snap to attention and are both staring at me, and it takes me a minute to realize it’s because I’m laughing like a lunatic.


Irrational
,” I say again. “She once made me work until midnight, changing all her hanging files from white to off-white because she said she wanted them to be ‘white-
ish
’ not ‘white-
white’
! And you know what, I don’t even know what that
means
, but I did it!” I slam the water bottle down on the table. “And the week before Thanksgiving, Mark at the Coffee Bean was having a really bad day—he must have put two pumps of sugar-free vanilla in her coffee instead of one—and when she tasted it she screamed at me for
nine minutes
about how even a monkey could do a better job than I do!
Nine. Freaking. Minutes!
I know because I actually timed it with my stopwatch app! And do you know how many times she called me on Christmas? Not the day before or the day after, but the actual holiday? Don’t guess, I’ll tell you: eleven! I left the table during Christmas dinner to answer a call about how to work her TiVo!” I’m absolutely indignant, and all three of them are looking at me nervously, but I just keep yelling and pointing an angry finger in random directions. “And once she made Miko throw up over dolphin-safe tuna!”

“Grilled shrimp,” Miko corrects me helpfully.

“Same difference!” I glare at Brody because he officially represents every man who has ever made excuses for a woman’s bad behavior because she has a nice rack. “And this is only the teeniest tiniest evidence of her being
irrational
! Which
you
should know because she’s working at being your girlfriend like it’s her part-time job! But maybe anorexic mean-girls are attractive to you, what do I know?” Brody opens his mouth to say something, but I hold up my hand to cut him off. “What I do know is that she doesn’t even want me borrowing her stapler, so how are you
surprised
that she might have issues with me saying one word to you?”

“What are you talking about?” Brody asks at the same time Max barks.

“Ugh! No way. Brody might be a man-whore but he wouldn’t touch her with a ten-foot pole!”

Now that my tirade is over I’m having a little trouble getting my heart rate to slow down.

“While ‘man-whore’ seems a little judgmental”—he rolls his eyes—“Max is right. I don’t have any interest in Selah outside of work.” Then, because he can’t seem to help himself, he adds, “But just to clarify, the pole in question is nine feet at the absolute most.”

Max and Miko laugh nervously, but when I don’t join in the sound falls away. Even with Brody’s attempt to diffuse the tension with a joke, there is no covering up the full-on trip I’ve just taken to Crazy Town.

I’ve screamed at him, a person who—in my mind, if I went back over every single interaction we’d had and, believe me, I’ll spend the next week doing exactly that—had never been anything but professional at the very least and actually friendly in his own aloof way. I’m pretty sure that even if the tequila isn’t going to make me puke, the embarrassment definitely is.

“Will y’all excuse me for just a moment?” I mean to sound breezy, but it comes out strangled.

Dang it! Stupid nervous accent!

Miko makes a move to come with me, but I wave her back down.

“I’ll only be a sec.” I grab my clutch and hurry to the women’s restroom as fast as my five-inch heels can carry me.

Insider information . . . the line for the stalls don’t take nearly that long in VIP. So I have to come up with a way to kill some more time. Once I wash my hands and spend five extra minutes adding lip gloss and fluffing my hair, I have no other choice but to go outside and apologize. I take a deep breath, suddenly feeling depressingly sober, and head back out into the hallway.

I walk a few feet and turn a corner only to find Brody blocking my way. He looks a lot like the first time I saw him, so serious, so grown-up . . . He makes me feel about five years old.

“I’m so sorry.” I want so desperately to look anywhere but at him, but I don’t want to be a coward. “I—it’s been—a stressful month, and I have no idea why I took it out on you. You just—”

“Have this uncanny ability to say things that set you off. I swear it’s not intentional.” He says this with a little smile.

A loud rumble of sound starts to grow from the other room, and it distracts me long enough to lose my train of thought. Over Brody’s shoulder I can see waitstaff handing out hats and noisemakers to the dancing crowd. I hadn’t realized how close we are to midnight.

I open my mouth to continue the apology, but he cuts me off. “I’m thinking we should start again.”

“I’m sorry?” I’m confused.

“We’ve gotten off to a rocky start. We should start again. No misconceptions, no muffin-induced near-death experiences, no advice—”

The muffin comment is below the belt, but also sort of the perfect thing to say because I’m smiling again, and five minutes ago I wouldn’t have thought I’d ever feel comfortable in his presence again.

“Let’s pretend we’re meeting for the first time.”

The idea is so sweet and so unlike anything I’d ever expect him to say. Maybe that’s the point, though, maybe I don’t actually know him at all.

He sticks out his hand.

Behind him the room of people start chanting.

Ten, nine, eight . . .

I look down at his hand and then back up into his face.

“I’m Brody.” He smiles a little, only this smile isn’t the sharp businessman smile; it isn’t cocky or sexy or even a smirk. He looks a little shy, like maybe he feels sort of ridiculous for holding his hand in midair, waiting for me to make the next move.

Seven, six, five . . .

And I can’t even help myself; I smile back. In fact, I think I fairly beam at this too-beautiful man who doesn’t have any reason to try and make me feel better but is doing it anyway.

Four, three, two, one!

As the crowd starts blowing noisemakers and singing “Auld Lang Syne,” I reach out and put my hand inside of his.

“I’m Landon.”

This isn’t the first time he’s ever touched me, but it’s the first time I’ve anticipated what it would feel like when he does. Tingles work their way up my arm and around the back of my neck.

Brody breaks out into a full-blown grin.

“It’s nice to finally meet you,” he says softly, and then, without letting go of my hand, he leans in and gives me a light kiss on my cheek.

I’m so startled, and he must see the question on my face because he shrugs and says, “It’s New Year’s.”

BOOK: Party Girl
8Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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