Caitlyn's mouth curled into a snarl, her amber eyes glinting like a wolf's, as she opened the grand front door to her house and saw me standing in the entryway. "What are you doing here?"
"HI, Caitlyn." Ellie stepped between us, and then confidently made her way inside, drawing Caitlyn's attention. "We're just meeting up with Eric and a bunch of other people here before we go to Jamie's party. Hi Lea."
"Hi, Ellie." Lea brushed her dark hair out of her face and gave Ellie a quick hug. She turned to face me, and briefly glanced up at my face before dropping her eyes to the floor again. "Hi, Jay."
"Hi, Lea." I'd never held Lea's friendship with Caitlyn against her. Ellie was more or less a part of the same crowd, and I'd never had a problem with that. Our school was small -- you did what you had to do. I avoided Caitlyn whenever I could help it though, so Lea and I weren't really ever around each other much, so we'd barely ever gotten beyond awkward greetings.
Caitlyn's glare briefly flickered off of me, and onto Lea, before she stomped behind me and closed the door. "Are you and Eric dating now or something?"
I had a brief moment of panic before I realised that she was actually talking to Ellie.
"No, no." Ellie smiled gracefully. "Just friends."
"Because I thought you had something going on with that Gary guy. He's certainly better than your other options." She put her hands on her hips and made a dramatic display of looking me up and down.
I resisted the urge to roll my eyes, but that was the best I could do. "Well, you would know all about inferior options."
Lea let out a quick burst of nervous laughter, but was immediately silenced by Caitlyn's outraged glare, which was then brought to bear on me. I stared back flatly.
"We should get going." Ellie's tone was strained, and full of fake cheer. "Eric's on the balcony, right?"
"Maybe. I don't really care." Caitlyn spun on her heels and walked away.
"I, um- Bye." Lea gave us a shy grin and a shrug, and hurried after her.
"Why do you do that?" Ellie said in an annoyed tone, as we marched through the corridor towards the stairs at the back of the house.
"What?" I scoffed. "Retaliate?"
"Yes! What on earth do you think you're achieving, anyway? It only makes her worse."
"Like she could get any worse." I grinned. "Who's Gary?"
"Absolutely none of your business." She crossed her arms.
"Hypocrite."
"Likewise. Aren't you always telling me I shouldn't pry?" She shrugged. "It isn't really anything at the moment. I'll tell you when it is."
"I'm just making a point," I said, trying not to sound too smug. "You don't have to tell me if you don't want to."
"Listen, when I do want to tell you, I WILL tell you." She gave my shoulder a shove. "Whether you want to hear it or not."
"Great." I laughed.
We reached the stairs, and made our way up to the balcony at the top. Seeing the place again was a great feeling -- it was where Eric had brought me that night, and it was where I'd met most of his friends, aside from Louis. Eric looked surprised when we walked in, and he came up to throw his arms around me and give me a quick peck on the lips. I melted into his embrace for a second, and then gave him an annoyed look.
"You didn't answer your phone." I put my hands on his waist and pushed him away slightly. "We had to deal with Caitlyn."
"Oh, god." He grinned sheepishly. "I'm so sorry. I left it in my room -- I'll go get it now."
Eric went back inside, and the rest of us greeted each other. Ellie and Sara settled down at the bistro table to chat, while I grabbed a drink and stood around the cooler with Louis and John. Louis was dressed nicely again, with no glasses on -- he seemed to be making a habit of it now -- and John was just in a t-shirt and shorts. Sara, as always, looked like she'd just stepped out of a beauty pageant, even if she was just in jeans and a sequined top, like Ellie.
"So do all you Elohim kids do this? Rich kid parties where just anyone can show up?" John asked.
"Rich kid parties?" Louis laughed. "Dude, you took us to Switzerland to go skiing for your eighteenth."
"Yeah, but that was just you, Mel and Vince. And my family was going anyway." John shrugged.
"My party was quite small. Just family, and a few friends," I said. That hadn't been by choice, unfortunately, but I still didn't want Louis or John to think of me as a loser.
"I think that's better," Louis said confidently. "I didn't need a whole bunch of people around that I don't even like. I was happier with just you guys."
"I told you not to drink so fast. What's that, your second beer? And you're already getting sentimental." John nudged Louis with his shoulder, laughing softly. "After the next one, you're going to be professing your love for all of us."
"Shut up." Louis shook his head, and blushed slightly.
It seemed like there was a slightly awkward silence after that, so I tried to move the conversation along. "But Jamie actually invited you, right?"
"Yeah," Louis said, seizing on the topic. "He seems like a really nice guy. I was chatting with him and Ellie at AP maths last week, and he mentioned it and sent me an actual invite. It's John and Eric who are the tag-alongs."
"Not too bad. We're both dating people Jamie knows."
"Uh, yeah." I took a big sip of my drink. The fact that Eric's friends all knew about us mostly felt good, but thinking about it too much could still make me panic. I'd probably feel better once we reached the middle of the year, and classes gave way to prelims, moderation and finals. At least by then, if I was accidentally outed somehow, I wouldn't have to see everyone at school all the time.
Fortunately, before I'd had time to spiral about it, Eric walked back through the doors. "Okay, I have my phone. Now that we're all here, we can leave whenever, I guess."
"Well, it started about twenty minutes ago," Louis said. "And it'll take us about ten minutes to get there, so if we leave in then next ten minutes, things will have gotten going, but we won't be those douchebags who get to the party an hour late just to seem cool."
"Wow. That's..." I scratched my head. "A lot of strategising for a party."
"Yup, Louis always has a plan." John clapped him on the shoulder.
"I hate plans." I grimaced. "Mine never work out."
"Sometimes mine don't either." Louis gave me a rueful grin. "But I just keep trying. Eventually, you figure it out."
"Mine normally go pretty well." Eric downed the rest of his drink, and put his arm around me. "And I am ready to go, whenever the plan wants us to."
We ended up waiting for Ellie, who seemed to bask in the attention she received from being the one holding everything up, but she didn't keep us too long. After she'd had her fun, she quickly finished her drink, and we set off for the party. We made our way out onto the street and down the hill to the lifesaver's clubhouse, which Jamie's parents had booked out for his party.
It was a pretty standard place to rent for this sort of thing. The cost wasn't excessive, and while the building wasn't great -- just a messy collection of square blocks with one big one in the middle that served as a hall -- it had three bars, and all the doors tumbled right out on the beach, so it was always a fairly nice place for a relaxed event.
The main hall was being used as a dance floor, so the rest of the guests milled in and out of the other rooms and spilled out onto the beach. Braziers full of burning logs had been set up at odd intervals along the paving that abutted the sand, and people gathered around them to talk while warming themselves against the biting sea air. It was still summer, more or less, but the cold current coming up from Antarctica could always import some of that chill.
All the bartenders were being very strict about ID, so Eric and John -- who didn't have drivers licences on them like the rest of us did -- were turned away. Ellie and Sara had gotten drinks for them instead. After we'd settled around a brazier near a low concrete barrier wall, the two girls had gone off together to get their own drinks from one of the other bars. While we were waiting for them, Jamie showed up, with a very pretty girl hanging off his arm. They'd almost walked right past us, but then he'd looked up, seen me, and wrenched his arm out of her grasp.
"Hey, Jay! You came!"
"Uh, yeah." I grinned as he walked over and shook my hand. "Happy Birthday. Great party."
"Thanks, man. Looks like we'll make a partier out of you yet." He grinned. There was a soft, feminine -- and possibly annoyed -- sound of a throat being cleared behind him, and he winked at me before turning to hold his arm out to the girl he'd been walking with, who approached us. "This is my girlfriend, Megan."
I could be fairly sure it was the girl that I'd seen him kissing at Caitlyn's party, because she'd been all over his social media accounts lately. I normally would have found that sort of thing annoying, and probably would have had a pre-formed low opinion of her. But after meeting Eric, I kind of understood the impulse of feeling happy about being with someone and wanting to share it, even though I wouldn't really do that myself.
"Hello." She smiled sleepily.
"Meg, this is Jay -- he's kind of this genius in our grade. Then that's Louis, he comes to AP maths with us. Also a genius." He gave John and Eric a friendly smile. "I don't think I've met you guys."
I cleared my throat. "This is Eric, and this is John. They go to North Grove with Louis."
"Oh, right." Jamie shook Eric's hand, and then John's. "You're Sara's guy."
"Um, Yeah." John grinned.
"Well, it's been nice meeting you all." Megan's hand went up to the back of Jamie's neck. "But I was just taking Jamie to see some of my friends, so we'll chat later." He shrugged and winked again, and allowed her to steer him away.
"Well, that was kinda rude," John said.
"Yeah. Yikes." Louis chuckled. "Seemed like a bit of a hostage situation."
"Do you think that wink was a cry for help?" Eric asked.
"Oh, no. He does that with everyone." I frowned. Jamie didn't seem unhappy to me. But I was usually pretty bad at telling what kind of behaviour was 'normal'.
At that point, Ellie and Sara got back from the bar. Ellie bumped her hip against mine. "What'd we miss?"
"We just saw Jamie, and his new girlfriend," I said.
"Oh no." Ellie started tapping her foot on the ground, clearly annoyed. "I kind of wanted to see what she was like in real life, without all the filters."
"She was pretty attractive." Eric shrugged.
"John, was she attractive?" Ellie asked.
"What?" John had his arm around Sara, and looked a bit startled at the question. "Uh, No? I don't know."
Louis grinned. "Leave John alone. He's Sara's 'guy', according to Jamie."
