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“Aw, come on,” Sarah protested.

“Sure,” I said, and stepped up. I took the cup and Sarah’s eyes widened as I saluted the couch’s worth of seniors with the solo. “Be right back,” I said, and then turned to walk downstairs, listening to some of them laugh.

I shut down my mind to everything else, hoarding my power for later and letting my headache roam free, as I threaded through clusters of people, holding Danny’s cup out in front of me, clearly on a drink run. When I got back to the kitchen Liam was still there, in deep conversation with Amy, a senior girl, and I pulled up short in the kitchen doorway. He saw me looking at the two of them, said something disarming and funny, I could tell by the way she laughed, and then walked past her and toward me with a smile.

“Having a good time?” he asked.

“Yeah. You?” I asked, tilting my head in her direction.

“She’s—I dunno,” he said with a shrug.

“Gorgeous?” I filled in for him.

“Yeah, well—she’s not the only pretty one here tonight.”

My mother had wondered aloud more than once what it would take to make me shut up—well now I knew: Liam Lewis flirting with me.

“Uh,” I stuttered, unsure what to say back, flushed with appreciation built on years of silent pining and flooded with anxiety. “Thanks.”

“You’re welcome,” he said, still polite even halfway to wasted. “I’m glad you changed your mind about coming.”

“Me too.”

He leaned against the wall behind him and I was overly conscious of how close he was. “We need these parties to blow off steam, you know? After the stress of a game—you don’t know what it’s like having a whole crowd shout down at you, rooting for you to win, ready to hate you if you fuck up. It’s crazy.”

“I bet.” Did the roar of the crowd feel like the static in my head?

“But,” he said, his grey-green eyes meeting mine, trying to say something with them I was sure. “It makes it hard to talk to people here, when you want to have real conversations.”

A-ha. I was an expert at translating drunkese. “You can always talk to me if you want, Liam.”

He gave me a slow sad smile. “I feel like you really mean that.”

“I do.”

“It’s just that—ever since Hailey,” he said, looking into his cup and breathing deeply, like he was about to fall into it. “She,” he began, pressing an earnest hand to his chest—and then a crew of juniors stormed through the hall, breaking the moment between us, hollering in the kitchen, and Liam snapped back to host attention, our intimate moment gone.

“Do you need a refill?” he said, looking into my empty cup.

I wanted to stay and hear what he’d been close to saying—but duty called. “Yeah, I do.”

He took my cup and went into the kitchen. I watched him work the keg expertly, returning with it full, getting clapped on the back on his way there and back by friends. “Take it easy, okay? I don’t want any repeats.”

I gave him the world’s most conflicted smile. “Me either.”

I walked back upstairs with a full cup much more slowly. I didn’t want to lose a drop—and I needed to gather my strength. Why oh why was Liam into me? Was I the butt of some universal joke? I’d been hoping for a Cinderella moment my whole life—why did it have to be now, when I couldn’t help but question everything?

And, what was I walking into with Danny? I paused on a landing and let some other kids walk by. I needed to wipe his phone so he couldn’t hurt Lacey again—but touching it probably meant touching him. I looked into the beer I held for answers. If it really was liquid courage, I would’ve definitely taken a sip.

Machine gun sounds burst out again above and I raced up the next five stairs, almost spilling, until I reached the den. ThenI did my best to saunter across the room, standing just out of blocking-the-TV-range and leaned over provocatively to hand Danny’s cup back to him.

“Here you go.”

His eyes flickered over me. “Guess I have to be a man of my word,” he said and patted his lap.

Against all my better judgement, I fell in.

He laughed, adjusting me against him, and I was disturbed by the way that leaning up against him was easy, his chest was wide and warm, and his left arm looped carelessly around me. Everyone cheered as Mason took his car over a sweet leap and then wrecked it into a helicopter hovering above.