“It's almost midnight,” he says.
“Yeah, but we know where we're going.”
“When will you be back?” he says.
“I don't know.”
“Are they going to be drinking there?” He sounds so strange, like he's read a script of things fathers—stepfathers--of teenagers are supposed to say, and he barely has his lines memorized.
He sounds stupid and I don't like it.
“If we drink we'll stay over,” I say. “We're not going to drive if we've been drinking, we're not stupid.”
“It doesn't matter if you're driving. You're sixteen.”
“Technically I'm seventeen,” Aanya says. “Does that mean I can drink?” She's being playful. She thinks this is no big deal. She's probably been having conversations like this with her father before she knew what alcohol was.
Meanwhile here I am looking at this man who thinks he's allowed to interrogate me, to set rules for me, and it's not that I don't think he's supposed to.
It's that I have no idea whether or not he's supposed to. And I'm not exactly going to tell him to go get my mom and let her settle this, because I don't think she's going to come down on my side in the underage drinking issue.
I wasn't even planning on drinking, this is so stupid.
He sighs. “Who's your friend?”
“Kevin,” I say. “You don't know him.” He doesn't know any of my friends, especially not the ones in Miami, the ones I grew up with. I'm making a point here; there are people in this equation who have known me since I was little and he is not one of them.
“You're going to sleep over at a boy's house?” he says.
“I didn't say we were going to sleep over. I said if we were drinking, we would.”
“I don't know, Taylor.”
I pull on my jacket. “Well I do.”
“Taylor.”
“What are you gonna do, put me in time out?”
He stares at me for a few seconds, then sighs, holds up his hands in surrender, and goes back to the kitchen.
“Jeez, Tay,” Aanya says. “You guys are already acting like a family.”
I'm embarrassed and angry and sorry all at the same time. “Let's just get out of here.”
There's this boy Patrick at the party that, if this were a sitcom, would totally be the one I'd end up with, because we had a will they or won't they thing going on all through freshman and sophomore year. Because this isn't a sitcom, I've barely thought about him in the past four months.
“He wants you baaaad,” Aanya sing-songs in my ear, when he gets up to change the music after I complain—I was kidding—about the song that was playing. It's not even his house, and he's messing with the music for me. He might as well pull out an engagement ring.
“Not single,” I remind her.
“I thought it was some open relationship thing!”
“Yeah, about that...”
But she's distracted by Jake coming over and kissing her neck and tugging her over to dance to the new song I'm somewhat responsible for, and I'm left to make more small talk with Patrick.
It's really hard not to flirt with boys. I'm honestly not sure I know how to talk to them without flirting, and I don't actually think it's because guys take everything as an invitation to think about you naked (not that they don't) but because this is just how I've always been told to act. Be nice, smile, laugh at his stupid jokes. It's polite. I'd do it to girls, too. I do do it for girls. But when it's a girl no one comes over and sings at me about how thank God I'm in an open relationship.
Sweet little Taylor in an open relationship. Patrick here would probably be shocked. Or I could just try to explain the concept of polyamory as pedantically as possible and let him pass out from a combination of boredom and pot smoke that's making the air in here heavy.
Turns out that's what gets me out of here; Aanya says it's bugging her asthma, so we go and sit outside on Jake's car while Jake's in there helping take care of a girlfriend of some friend of Kevin's who drank too much.
“Why is it always the people at parties who nobody knows who get too drunk?” Aanya “It's never the host's best friend.”
“Because people drink more when they're uncomfortable, and people are uncomfortable when they don't know anyone.”
“Now you've just made it depressing, Tay.” She stretches her arms over her head and lies back on the windshield. “Jake's a saint for helping her.”
“Yeah, he's a good guy.”
She kicks me lightly. “So tell me how things are with Theeeeeo,” she says.
“They're good. This semester's not going to great because we're both really busy with college stuff.”
“We're still going to U Miami, right?” She holds out her pinky to me.
I link it with mine. “Yep.”
“Are you guys going to stay together?” she says. “After graduation.”
“Planning on it, yeah.”
“Why didn't he come down with youuu,” she says. “Not fair.”
“He's in New England with his family. Lots of snow.”
“Snow. Eh. All right.”
“Pretty much.” I lie down next to her. “You're gonna have to drive up and meet him. And see my house.”
“I've seen your house! I helped you move in!”
“Yeah, but now it's actually my house. And you could see my school and stuff.” I'm getting all exited. “And meet Josey. And Elisha and Mike, I guess.”
“Who's Josey?”
Who's Josey. “My friend.”
“You better not like her more than me,”
“I don't,” I say.
Maybe the way I mentioned Josey conveyed more than I thought, or maybe Aanya's just lucky, but she says, “So I thought you and Theo were in some open relationship thing?”
“Yeah?” I say, hopefully conveying absolutely nothing, this time.
She doesn't
