What comes out is “Fuck you.”

He takes it on the chin.

“Yeah,” he says with a mild laugh. “Fuck me.”

He turns to leave.

“Wait,” I say. I grab his arm. Too hard.

When he turns back, he’s wincing.

“Sorry,” I say. “I’m sorry.”

“Yeah,” he says. “Me, too.”

This time when he turns to leave, I let him go.

I look over at the smokers, who don’t bother to pretend like they weren’t listening.

“Fuck him!” one of them says.

“Thanks. Appreciate the support.”

There’s suddenly a warm hand on my bare back, pointy nails traversing my vertebrae.

“That was rough.”

Mia stands behind me, unlit cigarette between her lips. She wears a strapless, skintight crushed velvet dress and a pair of tall leather boots, a chunky gold chain around her neck.

“Zero interest,” she says, lighting her cigarette. “Ouch.”

I don’t know where she came from. I didn’t see her on the deck. She just appeared.

“Don’t worry. You weren’t being loud. I just have big ears.” She pulls back her hair to show me. “Better to hear you with.”

“Sorry,” I say. “That wasn’t about you.”

She exhales a spiral of smoke directly into my face. “I suppose I should be the one apologizing to you. Must have misread the signals. I’m clearly out of his league, so I just figured . . .” She shrugs. Gives a cool little laugh. “I could have sworn I made out with him in high school.”

She looks me over, eyes narrowing.

“Aww, Rory, you’re so sad. I’m not going to let Ian bruise my ego, and you shouldn’t either. Come. Let’s go get drinks.”

She threads her arm through mine and leads me inside to the bar in the dining room. She steps behind it and gets out two Solo cups.

“Vodka? Whiskey?”

“Uh, doesn’t matter,” I say.

Everything moves too fast and too slow. There’s this surrealness, this dreamlike quality pervading the party. No, not dreamlike. It’s nightmarish.

“You’ll never guess who’s here,” Mia says, pouring us cups full of Jack Daniel’s. “Jay Coker. Class Flirt. Remember that time we had a threesome in his basement? On that janky pullout couch? The springs. God, I remember the springs.”

“Yeah,” I say, taking a gulp of whiskey.

I don’t want to talk about this. Not here. Not within earshot of all these people.

“Don’t tell me you’re embarrassed,” she says. “No shame, right? Though, isn’t it annoying how if you fuck someone once, they feel entitled to you forever? Jay propositioned me and then got all huffy when I didn’t immediately strip naked and bend over.”

There’s an uneasiness that I can’t quite gauge, that I don’t think I can credit solely to this conversation or to what just happened with Ian. There’s something else. An ephemeral suspense. A mystery suspicion.

I look beyond Mia, trying to identify the source of my distress. The party unfolds and I experience it all simultaneously. The couple aggressively making out against the wall, the woman examining the run in her stockings, the guy pretending he didn’t just spill beer on the carpet.