Just Listen(71)

I leaned back, pressing myself against the wall, and took a sip of my beer as people continued to push past. I was getting ready to go back into the throng when Will Cash walked by. He glanced over at me, then stopped.

"Hey," he said. Two guys passed him going the other way. One of them reached up, ruffling his hair, and Will made a face. "What are you doing?"

"Nothing," I said. "Just—"

He turned, then ducked under to where I was. There was barely enough room for both of us in the alcove—it was the kind of place for a small table, or maybe a piece of art—but I still tried to move to my left, putting some space between us.

"Hiding out, huh?" he asked. He wasn't smiling as he said this, even though I was pretty sure he meant it as a joke. That was the thing with Will. You just could never tell. Or I couldn't, anyway.

"It just… got a little crazy out there," I said. "Have you, um, caught up with Sophie yet?"

He was still looking at me, that flat gaze, and I felt myself flush again. "Not yet," he said. "How long you guys been here?"

"Oh, I didn't come with them," I replied as Hillary Prescott walked past. When she saw us, she slowed her pace, staring at us for a moment before moving on, disappearing around the corner. "I just got here…

I got held up at home."

Will didn't say anything, just kept staring at me.

"You know how it is," I said, taking another gulp of my beer as a bunch of girls passed by, laughing loudly. "Family drama and all that."

I had no idea why I was telling him this, just as I had no idea why I did anything I did around Will Cash.

Something about him unsettled me to a point where I felt so tentative that for some reason I compensated by being entirely too open.

"Really," he said now, his voice flat.

I felt my face flush again. "I should go catch up with Sophie," I said. "I'll, um, see you around, I guess."

He nodded. "Yeah," he said. "See you."

I didn't even wait for a break in the crowd, instead just pushing forward, bumping some football player who was passing and following him back toward the kitchen, where I found Emily leaning against the island, her cell phone pressed to her ear.

"Where'd you go?" she asked, flipping it closed and slipping it back into her pocket.

"Nowhere," I said. "Come on."

When we got back to the living room, Sophie was still on the couch, but now she wasn't alone. Will had joined her, and from the looks of it, they were having some sort of argument. Sophie was saying something, her face pinched, while Will seemed to be only half listening, glancing around the room as she talked.

"Better not bug them right now," I said to Emily. "We'll come back. Anyway, I have got to pee. Any idea where the bathroom is?"

"I thought I saw one over there," she said, nodding toward a nearby hallway. "Come on."

There was a bathroom there, but also a line, so we decided to try our luck on the second floor. We were navigating a long hallway when I heard someone yell out my name.

I stopped, then doubled back to an open door we'd just passed to see Michael Kitchens and Nick Lester, two seniors I'd spent all semester suffering through art history with, playing pool.

"See?" Nick said. "I told you I saw Annabel!"

"What do you know," Michael, who was bent over the table about to take a shot, said. "And here I thought you were just hallucinating."

Nick turned around, then put a hand to his heart when he saw me. "No, it's Annabel," he said. "Annabel, Annabel, Annabel Greene."

"You promised when the year was over, you'd let that go," I told him. He'd done some senior project on Poe and had bugged me with this line endlessly. "Remember?"

"No," he said, grinning at me.

Michael took the shot, the balls splitting apart with a clank. "Nick's drunk," he informed us. "Consider yourself warned."

"I'm not drunk," Nick said. "I'm just cheerful."

"Is there a bathroom in here?" I asked. "We've been looking for one everywhere."

"Right over there," Michael told me, nodding across the room.

"Come on," I said to Emily, and she followed me inside. "This is Nick and Michael," I said, handing her my beer. "And this is Emily. I'll be back in a sec, okay?"

She nodded, looking a bit nervous. "Do you play?" Michael asked her, gesturing at the table.

"Kind of," she said.

He walked over to the wall, pulling off a stick for her. "Yeah, right," he said. "You say that, and then you'll beat me in ten seconds."

"She does have that pool-shark look to her," Nick said. Emily laughed, shaking her head. "It's always the quiet ones."

"Just go easy on me," Michael said to her. "That's all I ask."

By the time I came out of the bathroom two minutes later, Emily was holding her own. She was also in full-on flirt mode with Michael, who seemed more than happy to reciprocate. Which left me with Nick, who sat down beside me on the nearby couch and announced he had something to say.

"You know," he said as he took a sip of his beer, "since school is over now and all, I just think you should know that I'm aware of how you feel about me."