“You’re going to have to point out which one he is to me at school,” Nick drawled. “Get in the car.”
He pushed Jamie into the backseat, and Mae climbed in after him. She leaned over Jamie and started to wind the window on his side down so he could be sick if he had to be.
She was a bit surprised when Seb climbed into the passenger seat. Nick shrugged, as if he was writing off this whole night to mass human insanity, and started the car.
“Look,” said Seb. “You were always laughing, so I never thought … Look, I’m sorry.”
The car passed under a streetlight that made the window a sudden square of glowing orange. Mae saw Jamie properly for a moment, his head tipped to one side, earring gleaming for a second like a tiny star. He looked tired.
“I know you had your reasons,” he said. “I just don’t think any of them were good ones.”
He sounded bleak and terribly young, and Mae was always on his side before she was on anyone else’s. She put her arm around him and he snuggled into her side, and she was only a little concerned he might be sick on her awesome Mae West shirt.
She had been so stupid, not watching Jamie and not realizing that he was so irritable and unhappy because he liked someone who would never like him back.
She glared at the back of Nick’s head and said, furious and irrational, “You could have danced with him at the club.”
“I could have,” Nick said. “There were kids from school there. He gets hassled enough. Anyway, I don’t really dance for pleasure much.”
“Uh—so you, uh, usually dance professionally, or what?” Seb asked.
“Yeah,” said Nick. “The ballet is my passion.”
They carried on sniping in the front seat, and Mae turned back to Jamie.
“You doing okay?” she murmured.
“Yes,” Jamie said, a bit too earnestly. “I love you, Mae. Your hair is the color of flamingos! And I love Nick as well.” He gazed soulfully in Nick’s direction. “Sometimes when you are not being psychotic, you are quite funny. And you!” He regarded Seb for a long moment. “No, I still don’t like you,” he decided. “Maybe I need another drink.”
“I don’t think so,” Nick said.
He turned the car into their driveway, wheels crunching on the gravel, and Jamie tipped over into Mae’s side, head fitting neatly into the curve of her shoulder.
“Come on,” Mae said to him, and shoved him as gently as she could out of the car. “We’re going to be sneaking around the back now so Annabel doesn’t see us,” she informed Nick and Seb. “Seb, I’m sorry for being the worst date in the history of the universe, but if it’s any consolation, now that Jamie has yelled at you, he’s probably going to stop being mad.”
Seb smiled at her, warm and pleased.
Mae and Jamie ducked under the hanging ivy that almost obscured the back gate. Jamie paused to bat at it like a kitten with a toy, but she dragged him onward and up the patio steps, through the sliding door into their house. Which was completely dark, as all the windows had been, Mae realized, when they drove through the gate.
Sneaking around had been totally pointless. Annabel was not even home.
Mae let out a deep breath, feeling her mouth twist as she did so. It didn’t matter. She was glad that they could get away with as much as they did.
“Don’t be sad, Mae,” Jamie said. “This will be good training for when we are ninjas.”
Mae flipped on the light switch and turned on the tap to get Jamie a pint glass of water. She held it to his lips and watched him drink it down.
“Ninjas often get distracted by plants, do they?” Mae smirked.
Jamie gave her a betrayed look. “Entertained, are we? Go ahead, laugh at my pain. I see how it is. I am your enterpainment.”
She guided him up the stairs with a hand on his back and went into his bedroom with him, because she didn’t want to leave him alone when he was still so drunk. Jamie almost tripped over the pillow Nick had left on the floor, but she righted him and dumped him on his bed.
Jamie settled himself, lying on his front on his tangled blue bedsheets, his glass of water held before him in both hands. Mae sat cross-legged on the floor in front of him.
“I know why you got drunk,” she said, soft. “I know why you’re so unhappy.”
She was ready to tell him that Nick was a demon, that he was a monster, that he wasn’t worth a moment of the pain Jamie was feeling.
Jamie leaned his face into his arm and said, muffled against his skin, “You must think I’m such a fool.”
“No,” she said, and reached for him. Her fingers closed around his thin arm, and he was shaking a little. “Oh, Jamie. I understand.”
“It’s just he’s so … ,” Jamie began, and he stopped. “It isn’t that he’s nice to me. It’s that—he just—he always fights for the people who are his, and he tries so
“I know,” she said, her voice sinking. She didn’t want it to sink, she wanted to be strong and able to carry herself and Jamie through this, through anything.
The low lights refracted in her vision, spilling blurred yellow lines across the dimness. Jamie’s fair hair, which never looked lighter than it did in shadow, became a wavering silver crown held between his arms.
