I watch the scene with lazy eyes from my usual vantage point, the nearest leather armchair to the entranceway. Eleanor Kowalczyk, one of my closest friends, drapes herself over the top of my chair. She dangles a half-smoked joint in front of my face as though I’m a horse she’s enticing with a carrot. I swat at her hand, disguising my rush of irritation with an easy laugh.

“You’re serious about it, then?” Eleanor asks me, nodding at the joint in her hand.

“When have you known me to break a promise?”

On a nearby couch occupied by a handful of guys, a tall boy with thick dark curls climbs onto his knees and holds out a hand to Eleanor. Alfie Paget-Harrington. Alfie clicks at Eleanor, who takes a drag before handing the joint over. He rolls it between his fingers and cocks his head at me. “Luckily,” he says in his slow, deep voice, “the rest of us made no such promises.”

“The rest of you,” I remind him, “had no incentive to.”

“There are no cameras around, Rosie,” Alfie says. “You know everyone in the room.”

I hold his gaze steadily until he relents. “More for me,” he says, bringing the joint to his lips.

“For us,” Eleanor protests, and Alfie cries out as she darts forward to wrestle it from his grasp.

Across the room, Molly glances up at Alfie’s laughter. At first, she looks everywhere but at me. Eventually, however, she cracks and steals a peek, only to find me staring right at her. I raise a single brow the moment our gazes lock. It’s all that’s necessary. Should she continue to snub me now, there won’t be any plausible deniability left for her, and Molly certainly isn’t as confrontational as all that. Even if she is trying to prove a point.

And she is trying to prove a point, I’m quite sure of it, as she hasn’t spoken a word to me since I arrived, other than to greet Eleanor and me as one.

Instead, she’s spent the entire gathering by the side of a girl with long, dark blond hair I can only describe as a peculiarity. She’s wearing an ill-fitting puffer jacket, and jeans that fit her worse still. Her shoes are muddy, her skin is shockingly pale, and she hasn’t unfolded her arms in about half an hour. I should know. I’ve been watching her.

She’s clearly uncomfortable, and unsurprisingly so. She looks so out of place, I could almost believe she stumbled upon the party by accident. I can’t imagine where Molly found her. Or why, for that matter, my best friend is apparently so taken by this awkward stranger that she can’t find a spare minute to introduce her to Eleanor and me.

Even if it’s just to convince anyone watching that everything is fine between us.