Afterparty(63)

Me: Why?

Siobhan: Just do it. Tell DrLaz a friend in need is a friend indeed. Tell him you have to borrow my earrings. Get over here.

Me: Why?

Siobhan: Tell him I’m jumping out the window if you don’t talk me down.

Me: Is something actually wrong?

Siobhan: Get over here Siobhan: I mean it.

My dad is in the living room, reading a journal and drinking brandy. It’s like a scene out of the Analyst’s Home Companion; all we need is a black lab and an artsy mom who makes jewelry or hooks rugs or something. I’m wearing jeans and a pajama top and a Latimer hoodie and Bert and Ernie slippers. I figure, how can anybody dressed like this possibly be up to no good?

I say, “I need to go over to Siobhan’s for a little while.”

He looks at his watch.

I say, “I know, but she sounds upset and it’s not like she calls me over there in the middle of the night all the time.”

“If anything is going on that you can’t handle, you’ll call me. No secrets if it’s dangerous.”

I say, “I know. I will. Thank you.”

“And Ems, midnight.”

“Midnight.”

But as it turns out, there is something over there I can’t handle. Although phoning home isn’t an option.

At first I’m not sure who it is in there with her, submerged to their chins, their heads seeming to bob, disembodied, on the frothy surface of the Jacuzzi, steam rising off the foam, obscuring their faces. I can’t tell if he and Siobhan are wearing anything, but they seem to have achieved a level of coziness that makes you wonder why a third person, such as me, would even be invited.

Siobhan says, “Hey! This is my friend.” She reaches out of the steaming water to throw a bathing suit at me.

The guy says, “Hey, Siobhan’s friend!” He sounds friendly but slightly stoned. I recognize his voice immediately. Then I recognize him. His torso rises from the water, his elbows splayed back over the fieldstone rim of the Jacuzzi.

The profile and the brow. Jesus, the guy from the beach club, still gorgeous in the dark.

It is completely clear he has no idea who I am.

Siobhan says to him, “You’re quite the piece of work, aren’t you?”

He says, “That I am.” He sounds quite taken with this idea.

“How drunk were you at that beach club, anyway?” Siobhan says. “You assaulted this girl outside the ladies’ room. Your tongue has been in this girl’s mouth.”

The profile becomes even more beautiful when all the other details blur into shadow. “Oh. You! Polka dots, right?”

The dress.

I say, “Siobhan—” Because I want him not to remember. I want the whole thing not to have happened. I want to not know him and for him not to know me.

She says, “International Girl of Intrigue, meet Mystery Man.”

“Amélie!” I say. I don’t want the whole idiot episode to come roaring back with me—and a name anyone in L.A. knows as me—in it.

He says, “Amélie? Pretty. I’d ask you if you’re French, but your footwear . . .”

I say, “Seriously, Sib? What are you doing?”

“Oh yeah, Amélie,” she says. “Get in here. Or do you want me to call up you-know-who and make it a foursome?”

“No!”

“You-know-who?” the guy whines. “Don’t you like me?”

I say, “Siobhan, could I talk to you for a minute?”

She reaches behind her and I see her phone, and she’s waving it above the water. “You’re such a buzzkill baby! Don’t you want to have fun? Because I’m phoning! Nope, not yet. Yes, I’m phoning right now. Not yet. Yesssss I am! You weren’t such a buzzkill in the summer, were you? You didn’t care who you kissed!”

“Whom,” I say.

“Fuck you!” Siobhan yells.

“No, she’s right, ‘whom.’&?” Beach Club Boy is at least highly grammatical.

I say, “I’m leaving.”

She says, “No. You’re not. I know, why don’t I call up your * boyfriend and Jean-Luc. Then all five of us can chat about it. But wait, I’ll be the only person in here who hasn’t had a tongue down your throat. I feel so sad and left out.”

The guy says, “You could put your tongue down her throat, Sibby. I don’t mind.”

This is the point when I know—Good Emma, Bad Emma, Emma with any sense knows—it is the moment to walk back into the house, say good-night to Marisol, and go home. Because even if she calls my bluff, Dylan showing up with me on my way out is so much better than Dylan showing up with me sitting in a Jacuzzi with drunk Siobhan and drunker Beach Club Boy, and I still don’t know if they’re wearing anything. She could just be strapless.

It is not the moment to step out of the Bert-and-Ernie slippers and into the too-tight swimsuit. But what if I can placate her? What if I can give just the smallest bit, what if I just sit in the Jacuzzi like we have a hundred times since summer, and she doesn’t call him up, and he doesn’t find out everything about me two hours before Valentine’s Day, and that’s the end of it?

I climb into the water, slowly.

I immerse myself completely. I come up looking at the stars glittering through the blue-black sky and the rusty half-moon, the steam rising all around me off the roiling water, and the gorgeousness of Siobhan and the boy. And then his hand is on my shoulder, only he’s kissing Siobhan, and then he turns to me and I am, I swear, pulling away, I am recoiling, I’m thinking, get up, get out, abort, stop, don’t. I’m climbing out, my shoulders are out of the water, but he kisses me. His lips feel unnaturally cold as my body steeps in the hot water, pummeled by the jets. Cold but compelling.