thanks. I’m not really used to showing my writing to anyone. Anyway, can we please talk about the party? We have to get focused.” She pulled out a notebook she’d slipped into her bag earlier that morning and flipped to a clean page. “Okay, so what have you and Devon done so far?”
Nick shoved his empty plate aside and laced his fingers behind his head. “Well, we’ve decided it should be at the pool.”
“Okay, that’s a start.” Celeste wrote that down in her notebook.
“And remember when we were talking about making
the theme ‘water’? Well, I think we should stick with that. I think that would be awesome, especially since the film has a lot of water motifs.”
“Yeah, I think that would be great. Like, ‘water in the desert’—like an oasis!” Celeste looked up all of a sudden.
“We could do all sorts of oasis stuff—like piles of sand and some palmetto trees in pots.”
Nick leaned forward excitedly. “Yeah, and I know this great band we could get—they might come up here if I asked them—and they’re called Mirage.”
“That’s perfect! And we could have those fluttery transparent banners we talked about before, and
designer water,” Celeste said, scribbling fast.
“Here you are,” a loud voice said above them.
Celeste looked up, startled, as the waitress slapped the check down on the table. She’d been so caught up in the party planning, she’d almost forgotten where they were.
Nick threw down a few bills and extracted himself from the booth, wiping his mouth with a crumpled napkin. He extended a hand to Celeste, who took it, surprised. His palm felt dry and rough, like a paw. She heaved herself out of the booth.
As they zoomed back to town at eighty miles an
hour, Nick suddenly banged the steering wheel with one hand. “I’ve got it!” he said loudly over the wind.
“What?” Celeste yelled through the hair that was pasting itself to her face.
“We need to get inspired. Have you ever seen
Lawrence of Arabia? The desert scenes are just the right kind of atmosphere we need for the party—you know, to go with the ‘water in the desert’ theme. Why don’t we watch it tonight? To really understand our vision.” Nick signaled and pulled in through the gate of Pinyon. The Alfa Romeo purred to a stop.
Celeste looked across at him warily. The breakfast had been really fun, and they’d treated each other almost like humans. So was he returning to the old Nick now that they were back at the resort? The silence must have stretched out a little too long, because Nick threw the car into park and looked out through the windshield.
“Hey,” he said. “Totally business—I swear.” He glanced over at her. “What, are you afraid of the big bad wolf, little girl?” he teased.
Celeste rolled her eyes. “Don’t hold your breath.
You’re going to have to do better than that to scare me.”
She opened the door and then turned back to Nick. “I’m not off until nine. I’ll be at your place at nine thirty, okay?”
“Yeah, see you then.”
Chapter Sixteen
Celeste couldn’t help feeling a little exposed that night as she rang the doorbell of the Saunders guesthouse.
It was weird coming over in jeans and her favorite navy tank top instead of her uniform. She clutched her notebook in one hand and all of a sudden wondered if she should have brought some food or something. A few beers? Then she shook her head. Why was she acting like this was a date? This was about the party.
Nick opened the door. “Hey,” he said.
“Hey,” Celeste replied. They just stood there for a long minute, and then Nick hastily stepped back from the door.
“Sorry!” he said. “Come on in.”
“Thanks.” Celeste stepped over the threshold, glanc -
ing behind her. The last thing she needed was Travis popping out from behind a bush and making this into something it clearly wasn’t. She followed Nick into the guesthouse. Most of the lights were off. “Where are your parents?” she asked, looking around. Nick shrugged.
“There was some big benefit tonight in the city. They took the Mercedes in. I think they’ll be back by morning, but who knows?”
“Couldn’t you go too?” Celeste asked, following
Nick into the den. There were just a couple of lamps glowing dimly. A squishy gray couch piled with pillows faced a plasma TV on the wall.
“Are you kidding?” Nick snorted. “The last thing anyone wants is some teenage kid hanging around, eating all the hors d’oeuvres. I think my parents have taken me to one event my whole life, and that was when my own grandmother was giving it.” He motioned to the couch.
“I thought we could sit in here.”
Celeste flopped down and almost disappeared into the gray cushions. “This is quite a couch. I didn’t know we had this in here.”
“Um, yeah.” He dusted off a cushion and smiled
sheepishly. “Do you want some of this weird European soda my mom’s really into? It’s passion fruit–flavored.”
“That sounds good.”
He was back in two minutes with a tray bearing two glasses and two funky little bottles, a giant bowl of popcorn, and a smaller bowl of M&M’s. He set everything down on the ottoman and plopped down on the sofa.
Celeste grabbed a handful of popcorn and stared at the screen as the opening credits rolled. Nick wasn’t sitting near enough to touch her, but she could feel him next to her anyway, as if her skin had grown a whole set of invisible antennae. She snuck a glance at him. He was stuffing handfuls of popcorn into his mouth and staring at the screen, where a bunch of men in robes were riding across the desert. He seemed totally oblivious to her presence. She stared for a minute at his forearms, which were tanned and covered with hair bleached from the sun, then forced herself to look back at the TV.
“You know that Peter O’Toole almost got trampled by horses during the filming?” he asked, his eyes not leaving the screen.
“Oh yeah?” Celeste
