He gives Dominic and my mother stiff handshakes, but when Alexis runs over he grins and crouches down to hug her. “Hey, shrimp.”
“Yeah, I'm a shrimp.” Shrimp but not goldfish. I make a note. “When do I come home?” she asks him.
Dominic swallows and plasters on a smile. “You go back to Mommy's on Friday, sweetie.”
“Oh good.”
“You ready to go?” Lucas says, ostensibly to me, but I don't think he's actually looked at me since he got here.
“Sure. Bye.”
“Have fun, kiddo,” Dominic says. My mom kisses my cheek. Alexis ignores me.
“How do you get her to like you?” I ask Lucas on the way to his Jeep.
“What?”
“Alexis.”
“Oh. I don't know. I let her play Grand Theft Auto.”
“I don't have Grand Theft Auto.”
“Well, what do you have.”
“Legos.”
“So let her play with those.”
“Won't she swallow them?”
“Dude, she's five.”
Clearly this is supposed to mean something. “Oh right, yeah, of course,” I say.
His car smells like Axe deodorant and french fries. It makes a coughing noise as it starts up.
“So where are we going?” I ask. If this were a movie, I bet we'd be going to Dairy Queen. Everyone always hangs out at Dairy Queen in movies. I subtly look for a Dairy Queen wrapper in the mess on his floor. It would be nice to have a sign that this was going to be like a movie.
“Party.”
“Oh.” That kind of movie.
He looks at me. “What, that a problem?”
“No, that's fine.”
“You're not going to tell me you've never been to a party or something, are you?”
“What the hell?”
He laughs a little and flicks on his turn signal. “Good.”
He puts on a CD of a band that I actually like, which surprises me, and then I feel kind of bad for being surprised. We're quiet for a while, then he says, “So your mom..”
“Yeah? She and Dominic are getting married.”
“She's what, Puerto Rican?”
“Cuban, mostly.”
“Cool.”
“Yeah, pretty cool.”
“So that would make you...”
He's pausing like he actually expects me to fill in the blank. Okay. “That would make me Cuban, mostly.”
“Huh. You don't look Cuban.”
Aaand we're done here.
Parties back home were usually at Aanya's house, because she had a ton of extended family in the area and one of them was always sick or having a baby or getting a divorce or getting engaged and her parents would go stay with them and Aanya would have her house to herself. When my mother would leave to see Dominic and I'd be alone, a lot of times Aanya would come and stay with me and we'd have a few people over, but my apartment wasn't nearly big enough for an Aanya-style event. The house that Lucas and I pull up in front of definitely is. He drives right up to the house, despite the parking lot of cars already piled into the driveway, as if he thinks a spot will appear that nobody else saw. When he finally resorts to parking further down the road, he drives so slowly and reluctantly that I could probably crawl faster. It's like he thinks every inch further away marks a little less of him that's part of this party's in-crowd. But maybe I'm reading into it. It's not like I got an A in Psych. (I did.)
“Whose party is this?” I ask, once we've finally begun the hike to the door.
“Her name's Mara, she's a junior. Rich, really wants to be popular this year, I guess. She made sure everyone knew about this.”
I can hear the music as we start up the driveway. “Party like this should help.”
He knocks once and then opens the door and holds it open for me. “No, she's ugly. People are just here to get drunk.”
Great. I'm either going to be driving home with a drunk underclassman or trying to explain to my mother and Dominic why I took a cab home. Then I realize I don't even know my new address, and I turn to Lucas to ask him and he's gone.
Awesome.
I slap on my social smile, make like I'm nodding at someone I recognize when I see people looking at me trying to figure out who I am, and try to round out my awkwardness to the point where it looks like dance moves. Maybe there's someone here who will approach the new girl and make sarcastic conversation. I've sort of been hoping that my new life here will be filled with rapid-fire, reference-filled conversation. If Aaron Sorkin is here that would be pretty ideal.
There are maybe sixty people here, none of whom appear to be Aaron Sorkin. They're crowded mostly by the stairs, though it doesn't look like anyone's actually going up, and by a table full of bottles and red cups and shot glasses in the kitchen. I see Lucas a few times chasing after some girl, but at some point his shirt comes off and he starts bro-dancing with some other guys whose shirts have come off and I figure I should take advantage of the fact that people here probably don't know I'm with him.
There are three couches arranged in a semi-circle around the living room but they're a hot commodity, mostly for people making out. But finally one guy makes the mistake of leaving to get a drink and ha ha, mine. I sit next to two girls with hair straightened so perfectly it looks Photoshopped.
Lucas plops down next to me on the armrest of the couch. He's trashed. His shirt is still off. “Ugh,” he goes. “Look who just walked in.”
I look, as if I think I'm going to recognize someone, and of course I don't.
