“How you doing, man?” Jeff asked.
“All right, man, all right,” Giovanni said, pouring our drinks with an easy grin.
“Working hard as usual, right, my man?” Jeff said.
“You know it,” Giovanni responded, handing us our beverages.
“You’re doing a great job,” Jeff said.
Maybe I was just still drunk, but I thought he had the peculiar feigned ease of a rich person talking to a less-than. It’s the way my mother talks to her housekeeper. It’s not condescension, exactly. It’s like there’s this knowledge hanging in the air that one person has more power than the other, and we’re supposed to pretend everything is nice and normal and equal, but in reality, luck or chance has showered benefits on one person that the other person couldn’t dream of. I didn’t like it, but I brushed the feeling aside, reminding myself that Jeff was actually fun and smart and, as far as I could tell, not all caught up in the social-climbing game.
He was also the best shot I had at getting a beach boyfriend, something I’d always secretly wanted—not that I’d ever, ever, ever admit it to anyone, especially not Skags. All the boys in East Hampton had always seemed so douchey, but Jeff was actually intelligent. Another thing that separated him from the pack was that he displayed an interest in me, something no East Hampton boy had done before. To be fair to them, I wasn’t exactly warm and inviting—but neither were they! Oh, it’s a chicken and egg thing, I guess.
Jeff and I walked over to the Ferris wheel and got on board. While I buckled myself in, he murmured something to the attendant. I didn’t catch it.
The wheel moved slowly and kept creaking and groaning. What looked from afar like a sparkling new carnival ride was actually pretty worn-out.
“You’re not afraid of heights, are you?” Jeff asked when we were almost at the top.
“You ask me that now!” I laughed at him. “Wouldn’t the ground have been the place to make that inquiry?”
“Probably. But you’re not, right? Afraid of heights?”
“Nope,” I said. We were almost, almost at the top. Georgica Pond spread out before us, a wide patch of darkness punctuated by occasional twinkling lights on the shore. The party noise had faded somewhat, and I could see Jacinta’s red wig sparkling like a ruby under the lights on the deck. She was still mobbed by people.
“So this isn’t going to bother you,” Jeff said.
“What isn’t going to bother me?”
We reached the top, and the Ferris wheel shuddered to a halt.
“How did you know it was going to—”
“I told the guy to stop us up here.”
“What?” I was utterly confused. For a second I thought about this rich kid in Chicago, this guy who grew up in a penthouse on Lakeshore Drive, who got super-wasted at a party and was all pissed off at his girlfriend, so he pushed her off a balcony. I know it seems weird that my first thought would be that Jeff might murder me, but I was still a little drunk, and it’s not like I had much experience with guys. “I just wanted to do this,” Jeff said, and he leaned over to kiss me.
I had never been kissed before—I know, I know, I was seventeen and that’s old, but whatever, it just hadn’t happened, unless you count the time Alan Scott pecked me on the lips during Spin the Bottle in seventh grade— so you’d think I would freeze up, but actually, I seemed to know exactly what to do. I just leaned over and kissed him back. It was kind of odd, because if you think about it, having your lips on someone else’s lips is just inherently weird—there’s no, like, evolutionary need for it, as far as I know. It doesn’t aid in reproduction, although apparently foreplay is important to the sexual act, according to this sex book my mother sent me when I was fifteen in lieu of having an actual discussion with me about sex. Getting that book in the mail and opening it in front of my dad was one of the single most embarrassing experiences of my life. He grunted, “Oh. Um,” and promptly left the room. But I did read it.
Anyway, we kissed and it was nice, and I had this strange feeling of triumph, like I’d checked off a box on the grand list of Things You Must Do While You Are a Teenager. Then I immediately wanted to text somebody and tell them, but who was I going to tell? Certainly not my mother, and definitely not my dad. Skags would just say that straight make-outs were gross. I wished I had a girly girlfriend I could tell. It’s fun being BFFs with the butch future first lesbian president of the United States, but sometimes I do want to have the kind of stereotypical girl friendship where you paint each other’s nails and talk about boys.
“Thanks, bro!” Jeff yelled down to the ride operator. “You can let us down now!” The guy obliged him, and soon we were slowly lowering toward the ground.
“You want to go up again?” Jeff asked, raising an eyebrow impishly.
“Just don’t touch me,” I said. “That was guh-ross.”
“Yeah, it was pretty disgusting,” he agreed. “Never again!”
“Never again!” I repeated.
We made out for, like, the next three revolutions of the wheel.
Eventually, other people started boarding the ride, which was annoying because the Ferris wheel would squeak to a stop and then jerk to a halt every minute. We decided to get off and head back to the bar tent. Jeff held my hand on the way, and I looked down and blushed when he greeted a couple of guys he knew from Trumbo.
I was about to order another ginger ale when Jacinta appeared, trailed by a gaggle of admiring girls. She was holding her camera—not a crappy little thing, but a real-deal, professional-style digital camera with a big round lens and a light that she held in one hand.
“Naomi!” she exclaimed, hugging me like I was her best friend in the world. “Let me photograph you for tomorrow’s blog post!” This girl gave out hugs like it was her job.
“Is it for a Spotlight?” one of the girls asked tremulously. I recognized her as Ainsley Devereaux, a tobacco heiress who I’d never seen express any feeling other than cool boredom.
“It is,” Jacinta said, and the assembled fangirls collectively gasped.
“What’s a ‘Spotlight’?” Jeff asked, amused.
“It’s a special feature I do once in a while when I think someone looks particularly fabulous,” Jacinta explained. “Usually it’s once a month. During Fashion Week I’ll do six or seven.”
“It is a huge deal,” Ainsley said urgently, grabbing Jeff’s arm for emphasis and shaking it. I looked at her hand on his bicep and instantly hated her.
Jeff laughed and freed his arm from the rich girl’s tight grasp. “Yeah, you don’t need to resort to violence to convince me, Ainsley.”
“That was not violence, Jeffrey,” Ainsley said, rolling her eyes. “It’s a big, big deal. All the other fashion blogs and some of the gossip blogs pick it up. Sometimes it’s even on Page Six.” I knew about Page Six because my mother was on it sometimes—it was the New York Post’s legendary gossip page, and it was stupid and bitchy but apparently very influential.
“Delilah holds the record for Spotlights,” Jacinta said as she quickly redid my ponytail. “Five times. I’ll have to talk to her about that when we have our little get-together at your house.” She bent down by my feet.
“Little get-together? Oh, right.” I felt slightly awkward that Jacinta was straightening my hemline and brushing bits of grass off my sandals.