"Honey, I think your Dad's seeing another woman."
Mom's voice is tiny through the phone, which is on speaker mode because Lacey is doing my makeup. But she keeps stabbing me in the damn eye.
"Stay put!" She hisses, as if having a sharp pencil millimeters from my eyes isn't nerve-wrecking enough.
"He doesn't call like he used to," Mom continues. "Last week, we were having a conversation on the phone, and I heard a woman's voice at the background. Giggling. That sound has been stuck to my head."
They both had similar issues like this when they were still married. Mom always feared Dad's grinding on some woman whenever she's not home because let's face it, it's hard having a ladies man for a husband. It almost seems like Mabel got all the family's good looks, and I fell from the sky.
"Don't you get the signals?" I say. "He's trying to move on. Sooner or later, he's going to find someone else. And you will, too."
There's a pause, as if she's trying to take in what I'd just said. Lacey grips my chin this time to hold it steady as she attempts once more to put the eyeliner.
"Enough about me. How's your vacation been going?"
It's only minutes to the concert's festival and the hotel is already booming with guests trooping in for the event. We're all dressed in our Aloha shirts, except Simone who wouldn't wear 'uniforms' (as she puts it) to a party. So she's on her usual signature look: baggy pants and a T-shirt.
The girl just wouldn't change.
But I'm not about to tell mom we're sneaking into a party or I'm going to receive another long hour of parental advice.
"It's been terrific," I tell her.
"Just be careful. You're surrounded by teenage boys. From what I hear, they don't keep their stuffs in their pants for too long. Don't conceive."
"They're called penises, mom. You can use grown up words with me now."
"You get what I mean. I'm too young to be called granny."
"This conversation has gone weird. I'm hanging up." I hang up the call, blinking severally at the eyeliner on my eyes.
"I'm done!" Lacey announces, holding up a mirror to my face and I gasp at my reflection. I completely do not recognize the girl staring back at me.
My hair is tied up in a loose chignon bun. The eyeliner shapes out the whole of my eyes, making them stand out on it's own. I rub my lips together, feeling the smooth texture of the nude lipstick generously applied on my lips. My eyelashes surprisingly becomes longer with the mascara dabbed into it.
I couldn't stop checking myself out.
"Cory's going to be so whipped when he sees you tonight," Simone grins at me, hoping it'll lift my mood but it doesn't.
"Can we not mention his name right now?"
"I'm sorry, Allie. I really thought he liked you."
They found me drowning in bottles of chocolates the next morning, when I was mourning my ass out in Cory's rejection. I didn't really get rejected, but it's starting to feel like it.
"Let's not have this conversation," I say, turning back at Lacey. "Are you sure this is a good idea? Sneaking into the party? What if we get caught?"
"What if we don't get caught." She replies with a wink.
"You're a bad influence. I like it."
We all step out into the night, keeping our senses alert for any sign of Miss Renee. She's the only one that can recognize us even in the dark.
There's tons of people going in through the front door of the concert hall, handing out their tickets to the two bodyguards standing at the entrance. Tickets?! No one said anything about tickets.
I snap my head to glare at Lacey for not saying anything about the tickets, and she just bobs her head to the direction of the back door.
Simone and I trail along behind her, coming to a stop when Lacey stands in front of a door. Fortunately for us, it's all clear. Except the two bodyguards standing at the far end of the building, having a discussion.
"So here's how this is going to work," Lacey begins. "Simone and I are going to knock out those two dudes over there while we lock them up in a truck and take out the keys to the door. You'll stay here while you watch out if someone is coming. Blow out two whistles if it's an emergency. We'll run back here, open the door, and go put the keys back into their pockets where we lock up the bodyguards so they won't suspect a thing."
I stopped listening when she says we'll lock them up in a truck.
"Or we could just do this," The door swings open when Simone twists the door knob and pushes it aside.
"Way to kill the fun." Lacey rolls her eyes and brushes past us.
The noisy, crowded hall vibrates with life, shook from floor to ceiling with voices and busy feet. The music is so loud that I can't hear my own thoughts. Surely the hot, wiggling moves done body against body on the dance floor looks like nothing less than a mating ritual.
Lights flashes, voices echoes, and no one seems to have a care in the world.
Lacey and Simone already left my side as soon as we step inside, blending into the crowd.
"Allie?" I hear someone call out my name behind me. Noah holds a soda in his hands. "You look... different."
"It's called makeup."
"I know what it's called." He has this strange look on his face that I couldn't read. "Soda?"
I empty the drink down my throat and burp, thankful that the music was loud enough he didn't hear it.
"I bet fifty bucks they're going to play a slow song next." Over the driving ocean if music, I stare at the band group that's shouting about dirty deeds and doing them dirt-cheap.
"I bet a hundred bucks you're going to dance with me in that next song," He says.
"Well, you're owing me hundred bucks in advance."
His lips twitch up in a smile before grabbing my hand and dragging me towards the dance floor. "Come on. Dance with me."
Instant panic. My palm goes damp, my eyes grows huge. "I don't know how to..."
"Shut up, Allie. There's enough room out here to do more than break a couple of commandments. That doesn't take any practice."
"I'd rather just watch."
"Like a doofus?" He yanks me into his arms, grips my hips in an intimate and possessive way that has my breath locking in my throat. "See? One commandment down." And suddenly, his body is moving suggestively against mine. "You've never done this before."
"How can you tell?"
"If you must know, there's something entirely too innocent about the way you're fumbling. The way colors keep rushing to your cheeks. Relax. It's just dancing." I say nothing.
"Put your arms around me." He levels my arms around his neck himself.
"And then what?"
His face is close, and the music continues filling my head. The heat from his body, from all the bodies pressed close against us, is like a furnace.
My head pounds with the backbeat. It's unmercifully hot, the air thick with smoke and body heat, scented with sweat and liquor and clashing perfumes.
"Where'd you learn how to dance?" I ask.
"It's a born gift." He whips me out, spinning me in two fast circles. I catch my breath as my body rammed into him again. "And I might've practiced in front of my bedroom mirror once or twice."
I miss a step, rapping back solidly into a massive muscle with a glossy bald head.
"Sorry." I apologize, finding myself jammed in the middle of a pack of dancers with enthusiastically jabbing elbows and bumping hips. I try to pick up the beat when I bump back into Noah's arms.
"This is fun," I giggle. "I like it."
"Then lets do it again." The volume of the song eases down, the beat smoothing into a hum. "Here comes a slow one. All you have to do is plaster yourself all over me."
"I already am."
"Closer." His leg slides intimately between mine, his hands cruising low on my hips.
The music is seductive, sexy, and sad. My mood changes with it, from giddiness to another feeling I still can't decipher.
"I don't want this to stop," I murmur as I find myself rise to my toes, pressing my cheeks against his. It all feels so right, so good, until something nauseating catches my eye.
Somewhere in the crowd, there's a girl sitting comfortably on Cory's legs. He says something and she smiles, swooping her lips down to his for a long, hard kiss.
I break away from Noah's arms and move quickly through the crowd, heading out of the hall that now feels claustrophobic. I need some air. I need to get my breath back.
The bass from the band inside the club all but shook the sidewalk. Outside isn't as packed as the dance floor, just a lot of cars lying on the road. The bench I sit on wobbles a bit with my weight on it, looking like it won't handle more than two people on it.
"Hey, you okay?" Someone says, the voice sounding like bees buzzing in my head.
"Yes. Just got a bit dizzy. I'll be fine."
Noah sits on the bench, keeping a generous distance between us. "I thought I did something."
"Since when did you ever bother about that?"
His eyebrows creases, as if pondering over my question. "I don't know." Noah blows out a breath. "I really don't know."
He catches me staring at him and I quickly glance away.
"Want to know a secret?" I ask, watching how his eyes lit with amusement from my peripheral vision.
"I like secrets."
I roll the pendant on my neck in my fingers, his gaze following the action. "I'm awfully terrified of guns."
"Does that have to do with the other day?"
I can tell what he's referring to. The all boys party. When Logan got shot and then we had to leave. I can still see him smiling in my mind's eye.
"I told you not to come. You never listen to me." He complains.
"Want to know another secret?"
"I already know you can't dance."
I roll my eyes and point across the street. "See that fountain statue over there?"
There's a medium sized statue art of a human being with double body parts in front of a bar across us as he squints his eyes to have a clear view of it.
"That thing looks deformed."
"It's not. According to Greek mythology, humans were originally created with four arms, four legs, and a head with two faces. Fearing their power, Zeus split them into two separate beings, condemning them to spend the rest of their lives in search of their other halves."
He looks over at me, his intense stare making me chuckle nervously.
"What's not fair is that most people never get to meet their other halves throughout their lives." I continue.
"Are you one of them?"
"I'm eighteen. I still have a whole life ahead of me."
"Want to know a secret too?"
My ears perk up and I straighten my back. What I was not expecting to hear next was the sound of screams coming from inside the hall, people rushing out of the concert, tripping on themselves.
Then two gunshot sounds goes up in the air.
"People really need to stop bringing guns to parties. The bloody bastards." I hear Noah cuss.
But I don't hear the next thing he says because my eyes roll to the back of my head, and I slide from the bench onto the floor in a dead faint.
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