She sought out Victoria, who was regaling a small crowd with one of her ludicrous stories. Liz only caught the tail end of it.
“So two Australian firefighters and a scuba instructor later and I had the perfect Aussie sandwich. I know that I’ll be going back to Australia. That place should not be a one and done kind of thing. There’s a reason their population started off as criminals,” Victoria said with a wink. She shifted into her right hip and took a drink out of her red Solo cup.
Liz just shook her head. Victoria and her adventures in Australia this summer for study abroad had been a constant stream of conversation since she returned. Liz had heard about how Victoria had been triple-teamed by the three Aussies at least twice. She was most proud of that story.
Why she insisted on telling it to complete strangers was beyond Liz’s mental capacity.
“Hey, bitch!” Victoria said when she saw Liz. “About time you got here.”
“I’ve been here for a while. I was talking to Justin. Thanks for inviting him.”
Victoria twirled her finger in the air and took another sip from the cup. “You’re friends and all that. Plus, I’m secretly hoping you’ll find someone other than your Hayden Lane,” she said with that teasing lilt she always got to her voice when she got the opportunity to make fun of Hayden.
“Oh, yes, so many better options at this party. I guess I should go back to Australia with you.”
“Don’t be jealous of my abilities. I don’t know if you can handle three,” she said, patting Liz on the arm. “You have a hard enough time with one.”
“Oh my God. Why am I friends with you?” Liz asked.
“Because I’m awesome, obviously.”
Liz couldn’t deny that her best friend was awesome, and she was happy that Justin was in attendance even if she was missing Hayden. She wandered into the kitchen and poured herself a glass of the red hunch punch sitting in a cooler. The party picked up pace as everyone fed off of the post-summer energy that took over the room.
Massey showed up at some point with a bunch of her sorority friends. She and Justin seemed to know each other. Soon enough he had his arm around her and was regaling her friends with stories. Tristan appeared shortly after that. Liz wasn’t even sure how he had found out about it, but he only stayed for a grand total of fifteen minutes before making some excuse about homework and leaving. It was the first day of school. There was no way he had any homework.
Savannah arrived late as usual. Liz was pretty sure she had never been to anything except the paper on time. She had a guy with her who couldn’t seem to stop touching her ass even when she swatted his hand away. He was pretty hot, super tall, with buzzed dark hair and a tattoo peeking out of the sleeve of his black T-shirt. He must be the aforementioned Forrest. All Liz saw when she looked at him was the exact opposite of Lucas. A very clear rebellious act.
At the first opportunity, Savannah ditched the guy and veered over to Liz. She was standing off to the side debating on whether or not she wanted a second glass of the hunch punch.
“Hey! Sorry I’m late,” Savannah said in greeting.
Liz chuckled. “I wouldn’t expect anything less.”
“Sorry—years of making fashionably late entrances never wore off, I guess. Also, my brother’s in town.”
“Understandable,” Liz said, ignoring the part about her brother. “Is that your Forrest?”
Savannah glanced back at the beefy guy she had walked inside with. She tilted her head and smiled. “Yeah. That’s him.”
When Liz glanced past Forrest, she saw Justin had Massey’s back against the wall and his tongue down her throat. Liz laughed and pointed it out to Savannah. “Well, he certainly moves fast.”
“So does she, apparently,” Savannah said.
Liz shifted her gaze back to Savannah with a smile. She liked having her around. She was different from most of Liz’s other friends, and she appreciated how easily their friendship came to her.
“What were you up to before this?”
“Ugh! I had family shit after the newspaper meeting,” Savannah grumbled.
“Did you take Forrest to your family stuff?” Liz asked with a giggle, imagining the large, tatted man in front of her in the Maxwell house. It pinched at her heart to think about Brady being in town, but she tried to dismiss it. It wasn’t as if she were going to see Brady, and anyway she had moved on to Hayden. That was what was important now.
“No! Are you crazy? My family would take one look at him and tell me to stop acting like a teenager,” Savannah said indignantly. “And I was getting enough of that shit this summer from my brother’s stupid girlfriend.”
The way she said that almost made Liz laugh. There was only one person that Savannah would think was the stupid girlfriend in the Maxwell family. “Andrea?” she asked without thinking.
Savannah raised her eyebrows sharply and Liz realized her mistake. There was no way that Liz was supposed to know that name. No way she was supposed to know anything about Clay, let alone Clay’s girlfriend.
Shit! Shit! Shit!
How could she backpedal out of this one? Liz knew there wasn’t stuff about them in the papers. She had checked and rechecked all of her sources last summer. Clay Maxwell didn’t even have pictures appear online that weren’t from when he was a kid, and the man had sure grown since he was a boy.
“How do you know Andrea?” Savannah asked curiously.
“Um . . .” Liz said, racking her brain. “I met her at an art gallery opening in D.C. over New Year’s,” she blurted out.
“Really?” Savannah asked. “I remember her mentioning buying a bunch of artwork, but I normally tune everything she says out. Have you met Clay? They’re an odd pair, but normally together.”
“He was there with her,” Liz confirmed. That was completely a true statement and yet didn’t answer Savannah’s question. How many times had she met Clay? How many times had he propositioned her to go home with him? Um . . . yeah she had met Clay.
“Huh,” Savannah murmured, clearly mulling it all over. “Well, anyway . . . no, not Andrea. She’s a nut job, but she’s always been that way. You get used to it. It’s Erin . . .”
Liz swallowed and cleared her mind. Nothing to think about. Nothing at all.
“What happened with Erin?”
Savannah rolled her big brown eyes to the ceiling and pulled all of her hair over to one shoulder. “She just . . . mothers me! Like I think she really, really wants to be my friend, because Brady and I are close. But she was at Hilton Head with us, and found out about the thing with Lucas. She wanted me to play buddy-buddy and have me confide in her. She kept saying things like, ‘I feel like we’re sisters.’ Um . . . I’m sorry. I don’t know you like that. We’re not sisters. I don’t have any sisters, you know?”
“Sure,” Liz said softly.
“Anyway, once I told her what happened with Lucas, she started telling me how I was like a bad person for kissing him and that if he really liked me then he wouldn’t string me along and all this. Which, okay . . . she’s right. Fine. It’s not exactly what she said, but how she said it. In this holier-than-thou voice with her finger sticking out and scolding me. And she has treated me like that every time I’ve seen her since. When I’m around her, I swear I’m about to go crazy.”
Liz nodded, her mind drifting off. She felt bad for Savannah having to deal with someone like that. And she really wanted to think that it didn’t matter that Savannah didn’t like Brady’s girlfriend.