Sinner

“Don’t say anything,” I said.

He laughed under his breath.

“No, seriously. Shut up.”

He shut up.

There was nothing unpleasant, physically, about making out with this person. In fact, the opposite, if I was reductive. My mouth parted beneath his. My belly pressed into his abs. His fingers teased down the zipper on the front of my dress, and my breath skipped when he kissed the edge of my breast. I felt like someone else. From the outside, I thought we probably were a very pretty couple. This seemed like a very grown-up, L.A.

moment to have. Two pretty people kissing in an observatory built to study people, groping beside a bed meant for things beside sleep. I knew he would take off my dress if I let him, and I didn’t see why not. It probably wouldn’t be bad, even if it wasn’t good. It would be a chic and distinct story, anyway.

His shirt had tugged up. He was ripped and not offensive in any way. This was fine. I was fine.

Beneath his right palm, the material of my dress had made uneven waves. Surely vinyl wouldn’t move like that? I really didn’t know. Now I felt like I was going to have to look this up online.

He unzipped my dress straight down to my belly button.

So, I guessed this was happening. I kept waiting to feel half naked.

Mark leaned back.

“God,” he said, “you are beautiful.”

His voice sounded precisely like it did when he walked into the back room in the evenings to do paperwork. Precisely like it had when he’d asked me if I knew Cole. Which was to say, precisely like Mark, because he was Mark. What was the point to him even saying that? Possibly he’d misunderstood what this was all about.

I said, “I told you to shut up.”

He laughed.

I didn’t. I slapped his hand away and tugged up my zipper.

“We’re done here.”

“What?” he said. “Really?”

“Yes, really.”

I expected him to protest, but he just ran a hand through his hair. His lips were smeary neon. From me. That was from my lips. Finally, he said, “Well, damn.”

Part of me wanted to tell him, No, really, let’s still go through with it. Because now I was just stuck with this bad taste in my mouth, and a dim feeling of hating him or hating me or hating everything.

“It was probably a bad idea anyway,” Mark said. “I’m not drunk enough.”

The more he spoke, and the longer it had been since he’d touched me, the more the truth was sinking in: I had almost slept with my boss’s husband. I had made out with my boss’s husband at a party. I was that girl.

“You should go,” I told him. My voice was this side of the crypt, but only barely. “Sierra’s looking for you.”

When he looked at me, his expression was confused for a second, and then it turned to something like pity. He laughed, but it wasn’t a funny laugh, and it was at me or him. I felt naive and stupid. “No. She’s not.”

I leveled my gaze on him, blue eyes cold-dead behind their mask, and waited until the uncertainty crept back into his eyes.

Then I said, “I have to fix my lips.”

By the time I had fetched my purse, he was gone, the door barely cracked. I stood in front of the mirror and observed my neon-smeared lips. I cleaned them up and carefully drew my cool pink lips back on and readjusted my hair around my face and tugged the zipper of my dress until I looked the same as I had before.

Then I took my phone out of my purse. I redid my eyeliner, careful not to smudge the neon blue Sierra had put on my eyelids.

I took a breath.

I dialed Cole’s number.

“Are you sober?” I asked.

“Oh, come on. That’s what you —”

“Cole. Are you?”

A pause to convey irritation. “Yeah.”

I kept my voice very even, but it took a lot of effort. “Please come get me.”

Chapter Forty-Three

· cole ·

When I got to the party, I had to park way down the street, and then after I got in, it took me a while to find Isabel. Inside the house, the lights were out and black lights were wired up to make all of the girls glow in the UV. Outside, it was all glitter and experimental dancing because they were that sort of people.

I was recognized, because it was that sort of party, but no one cared, because it was that sort of party. The music made me want to punch a hippie.

Isabel stood by the pool in a group of people who moved their arms with the enthusiasm and gracelessness of the inebriated.

She was posed. One shoulder down, chin up. Her eye makeup was black and thick except for a line of neon blue that matched her eyes. Her mouth was a glass creation, still and chiseled. She wore a white leather dress that made her look one thousand times more sophisticated than most humans. Surrounded by all this glitter, in this noise and silliness, in a world that I clumsily and loudly inhabited, she was beautiful.

The guys in the group gazed at her with fearful awe. They looked at the face she wore right now and saw a stunning ice queen. Something to be thawed.

All I could see was how sad she was.

As I got closer, I heard their voices. The others were hysterical and loud. Isabel’s voice, lower, sounded bored and over it.

I walked up behind her. They saw me before she did. “Hi, princess,” I said, loud enough for them to hear me. “The world called. They want you back.”

She turned to me and her face, just in the split second when she saw me — I was murdered by it. Not because it was cruel, but the opposite. For one fraction of another fraction of a second, I saw na**d relief on her face. Then it was gone behind the mask. But I still had it inside me.

“What, are you going?” asked one of the other girls. She was blond and blue-eyed like Isabel, but slightly older and several degrees softer looking.

Isabel’s hand was between her leg and mine. Without any fanfare, I threaded my fingers through hers. “Yes, yes. I’m very needy. Don’t tell anyone.” I flashed a smile at her, a needy one, and the girl’s eyebrows shot up.

“I’ll see you on Thursday,” Isabel said. How easily she hid her misery in plain sight. I didn’t think I’d ever seen her so upset. She might have said something else. I didn’t know. I was leading her away, out of there, through the people, through the gate, down the road, toward the Mustang. We were out of neon and into the dark, but I didn’t let go of her hand.

We got to the car.

“I want to drive,” she said.

I did not want to give her the keys. Wordlessly, I handed them over.