they were good at dancing.

Over Jamie’s shoulder she saw Nick and Seb watching, leaning against the balcony rail. Nick was slouching, lazy and graceful and utterly indifferent, but Seb was smiling in their direction. His whole face was lit up in a very particular way. Mae sent him a wink.

Then she turned back to Jamie, waltzing again. He was leaning on her a little too much, his eyes big and his smile the faltering, crooked one that was never as convincing as he liked to believe.

Mae sighed and pressed her forehead briefly against his. So the crush was a bigger deal than she’d hoped.

The second song slowed, and she lifted her arms up, hands linked with Jamie’s, in a small gesture of victory.

“Hey,” she said, forehead still against his. “You ready to go home now?”

Jamie gave a little sigh. “Yeah.”

She led him off the dance floor. He brightened like a small, happy candle when he saw Nick.

The sherry had made him tell Annabel and their aunt Edith he loved them both, and he’d become intensely sad when they did not say it back, Mae recalled with a deep sense of foreboding.

“Hi, Nick!” he said. “Mae and I were dancing. Did you see? Look, here’s Mae!”

“I did see,” said Nick. “Hi, Mae.”

Jamie wobbled, and Nick straightened up from his slouch against the rail, even though her brother kept his balance on his own. Despite the intensely dry tone in which he spoke, Mae thought this might qualify as Nick’s version of being indulgent.

“You said not to have another drink,” Jamie told him. “And do you know what I think? I think you were right.”

“You amaze me,” Nick said. “Come on, you’re going home.”

“We’re going home together,” Mae informed him, shooting Seb an apologetic look and sliding an arm around Jamie’s shoulders to show she wasn’t changing her mind. Jamie leaned against her with a small, contented sound.

“I’ll drive both of you,” Seb offered at once.

Mae nodded at him with gratitude.

“No,” Jamie said sternly. “I’m never getting into your horrible car. I promised myself that, because—it’s horrible, and you’re horrible. So take that!”

Nick snorted. Seb walked on the other side of Jamie as Mae led him gently toward the stairs, even though this made Jamie’s already meandering progress go farther off course as he tried not to even brush against Seb. Nick circled them slightly as they went, like a wolf who’d decided to take up a career of sheepdog without much natural aptitude for it.

“Seriously,” Seb said to Mae. “You wait outside with him, I’ll get the car.”

“Nick is driving us,” Jamie informed him. “Nick has a car. Nick has two cars. Ha!”

Jamie chose that moment to almost fall down the stairs. Mae took his whole weight and grabbed the banister. Seb reached out but Jamie shied away, and Nick gave Jamie a push in the chest that was clearly intended to right him, but that nearly had him toppling over backward.

Balance eventually restored to them all, Jamie gave Nick an approving look.

“You are my friend,” he told him.

“Yeah, I am,” said Nick.

“But these stairs,” Jamie said sadly. “They are not my friends.”

Mae was pretty glad they’d decided to take Nick’s car by the time they were out of the club. He was parked at the other end of the street five minutes away, and even so Jamie had to pause and be sick once.

Luckily, they were near a bin. Mae stood beside it and stroked Jamie’s hair, and after a moment he straightened up, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.

“Does he need water?” asked Seb. “I could go get him some.”

“No, he doesn’t need water,” Jamie snapped. “And he speaks and everything!”

“Frequently,” Nick murmured.

Apparently Nick could not even speak in Seb’s presence without annoying him, because for no reason at all Seb shot him a look that might not have qualified as a death glare, but it certainly counted as a punch-in-the-face glare. Then he looked at Jamie.

“I don’t understand why you always have to be like this!”

“Really?” Jamie said. He straightened up and shook off Mae’s arm. “Try this on for size, Sebastian McFarlane: because you ruined my life. Because I was fine, I got shoved a bit in the lunch line and that was all. I had friends, I was kissing Mark Skinner behind the arts building every other day, and then you came to school and you never let up and nobody would speak to me and you made me miserable for two years, and I can’t forgive you just because you’re trying to play nice now. Just because you have the hots for my sister!”

Seb blinked, then focused, eyes narrowed. “You were kissing Mark Skinner?”

Jamie looked outraged that anyone in the world could so comprehensively miss a point.

“He was going through a phase,” he said at last. “Oh my God, don’t hassle him as well. Nick! You have to protect Mark!”

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