“This is why I’m going to marry him,” Izzy told me. “He always figures this stuff out. I never go hungry at a party. Although I do go thirsty, because once he’s staked out a spot, he won’t let us leave it.”
“I’ll make a bar run,” George said. “What does everyone want?”
I asked for a Diet Coke, Izzy wanted wine, and Jonathan said he’d take a beer. I was happy to hang out with them, but Luke spotted me from across the room and beckoned, so he could introduce me to some guy in thick black glasses and a buzz cut—no costume—whose name I didn’t catch, but who asked me so many questions about school and my hopes for college that I felt like I was being given an oral exam.
The worst part was that someone else pulled Luke away, so I was stuck talking to the guy one-on-one, which made it hard to extricate myself. Fortunately Aaron suddenly appeared at my side.
“There you are!” he said. “I’ve been looking for you.” He slid his arm under mine. “You can’t monopolize her all night long, Samson,” he said, and my examiner held his hands up and said, “Wouldn’t dream of it—she’s all yours,” with an annoyingly insinuating smile.
“Samson?” I hissed as Aaron led me away. “Was that Samson Cardoza?”
“You didn’t know that?”
“He’s like my favorite movie director ever. Rats.” I glanced back regretfully. “I would have enjoyed that conversation so much more if I’d known who I was talking to!”
“You do realize that’s a ridiculous thing to say, right? You want to go back?”
“Nah, he was still pretty boring. Where are we going?”
He’d steered me out of the living room and back into the foyer, but now he stopped. “I don’t know. I just wanted to make sure I had you all to myself again. Sorry about abandoning you before, by the way.”
“It’s fine. Was something wrong?”
“Crystal just likes to be pissed off at me. Makes her feel all maternal. Apparently I wasn’t being a good host because I was spending so much time with you.”
“Well, now I feel guilty.”
“You should,” he said. “It’s all your fault. Fluttering those big brown eyes at me, making me forget that I’m supposed to be talking to old people who can’t keep their food in their mouths and spew it all over everyone who stands near them—”
“There’s no one like that here!” I said, laughing. “And I know this is a weird segue from that, but I’m hungry.”
“The dining room’s wall-to-wall food. Come on.”
The statement might not have been literally true, but it was pretty close, since their banquet-hall-sized table took up most of the room and was covered with platters of roasted meats, small biscuits, salads, and pasta. There were surprisingly few people in there—I didn’t know whether it was because most of the guests hadn’t discovered it or because no one in Hollywood eats real food.
Aaron found us a quiet spot in a little area off the dining room that was lined with glass-fronted cabinets filled with china. He dragged two chairs in and we sat together and ate, our plates on our laps, wiping our faces with the backs of our hands because we’d forgotten to get napkins.
We talked about the food for a while, but then Aaron fell silent. I looked up after a moment. He was studying my face seriously.
“What?” I said.
He put his plate on the counter and leaned toward me. “Ellie,” he said, and glanced around like he wanted to make sure we were alone. “I’ve been wanting to talk to you. There’s so much that I—” He stopped. Then he said, “I just want to get everything out in the open.” He stopped again and rubbed his head, like he was a little unsure of what to say next. Or whether he should talk at all.
Suddenly the last bite I’d taken felt all bunched up in my throat and I had to swallow hard to get it to go down. I already knew what Aaron was going to say. It was obvious. He was going to tell me that he liked me. And not just as a friend.
All of the attention he’d been paying me—even against Crystal’s orders—and the way he kept tucking my hand against his side and keeping me near him . . .
Aaron liked me. A lot.
And I liked him a lot.
But did I like him as much as he liked me? Or the way that he liked me?
My stomach lurched.
I just wasn’t ready for things to change between us. Not yet. I needed more time to figure out my own feelings. I had thought all of our flirting was friendship flirting. Like the jokes I made about our future marriage—I had always assumed he knew I was just being silly when I said stuff like that. But maybe he didn’t. Maybe he thought I felt the way he did.
And maybe I did but just didn’t know it. Could that happen? I didn’t feel shaky and excited when he was around, just happy to enjoy his company. Shouldn’t I be less comfortable with him? More starry-eyed? Or was that just in movies and books? I’d never felt that way about anyone. But maybe I wasn’t the kind of person who got that way—I never had crushes and most of my friends had them all the time.
My mind raced, while the smile on my face froze.
I didn’t want to be mean, but I desperately didn’t want Aaron to say something that would change things between us. Not yet. I needed to hold him off for a while, buy myself some time, and figure out how I felt.
I said, “What’s up?” as lightly as I could.
“We’ve gotten so close,” he said. “We basically think the same way about everything—”
“Well, not everything.” I cut him off with a forced laugh. “There’s that whole putting-fruit-on-frozen-yogurt thing that I still haven’t accepted about you.”
“Right,” he said. “I put fruit on mine and you put gummy worms on yours, and I’m the crazy one. Anyway—”
“Gummy worms are so much better. Just ask any eight-year-old you see. Well, any eight-year-old girl. Do little boys like sugar as much as little girls do? This is where not having a brother affects my knowledge. I mean, I do have a brother—duh—but he’s way too little. He doesn’t count. Plus he’s really weird about food. And doesn’t really talk.” I was chattering as fast as I could to keep him from saying more. His face kind of fell while I was talking; it was probably pretty obvious that I was trying to avoid having a serious conversation. “I’m really thirsty,” I said abruptly, and rose to my feet. “I told George to get me a Coke and then totally forgot about it. I’d better go back to the living room and make sure he’s not looking for me.”
“Okay,” Aaron said, and got up, too.
We abandoned our plates and moved back through the dining room. I threaded my arm in his, glancing up at him uncertainly. I couldn’t really acknowledge what had just happened because I hadn’t let him get far enough for us to talk about it openly. But I hoped the pressure of my arm told him that I understood what he had been trying to say, and that I did care about him—I just wasn’t ready for that kind of a talk yet.
It was a lot to try to squeeze into, well, a squeeze, but he smiled down at me without any noticeable resentment. Maybe he was relieved, too.
The Nussbaum brothers and Izzy were right where we had left them, but they had been joined by a tall, muscular guy dressed like Khal Drogo from Game of Thrones. He had the body for it, I’d give him that. Huge biceps.
“Hey!” I said to George. “You never brought me my drink!”
“I did bring you your drink,” he said irritably. “But you disappeared.”
“I’m still thirsty. Hint, hint.”
“Yeah, no,” he said.
“I’ll get it.” Aaron disentangled our arms and gave my hand a good-bye squeeze. I saw Jonathan and Izzy exchange a look and knew they were misreading the situation. “Diet Coke, right?”
“You might want to tie her down first,” George said. “She disappears.”
“I always want to tie her down,” Aaron said with a gallant leer, and left.
“That wasn’t what I meant,” George said to no one in particular.
“I’m Ricky,” said the artist formerly known as Khal Drogo, holding his hand out to me.