I nod. I think of him as part tiger. He's languid to the point of appearing almost lazy, and yellow or green, those eyes are framed by ridiculous lashes, set in a strong face with prominent cheekbones, full lips, and a sensuous smile.
I hear his chuckle, low and warmer than a gulp of bourbon, and I swear my knees shake under my slip like a debutant on her first night out.
"Elizabeth DeVille, I think you have your first boy crush."
She says boy crush because Suri has a long standing joke-suspicion that I’m g*y.
"He's not my crush," I whisper, tight-jawed. I can feel sweat prickling underneath my arms, and the truth is, I'm starting to get a little upset as I worry Hunter will somehow know.
"Suuure he's not. Save it for the funnies, girlie-o." Suri winks, and her boyfriend Adam Hamilton is there, smiling at us both and holding two wine flutes. He hands one to me and presses the other into Suri's dainty hand. Looking from Suri to me, he frowns, his eyebrows crinkling.
"What is it?" Suri giggles. Suri is always giggling. If she were a party drink, she'd be champagne for sure.
"There's something here," he says, pointing accusingly from Suri to me. "You're doing one of those girl things where you talk about someone and they don't even know it." He shakes his head. "It's not fair."
"Well it wasn't about you," Suri says, propping one hand on the hip of her burgundy, silk sheath Valentino gown. She slides her eyes to me, and Adam grins his dimpled grin. "Oh, I see. Miss Elizabeth."
"No, not Miss Elizabeth." I scowl, because I resent the simpering nickname.
"She has a hot crush," Suri murmurs, barely containing another trademark giggle behind her wine flute.
"I do not." My face is flaming. I seriously consider smacking Suri, except I know that would draw even more attention, and I am not a fan of attention.
"Bet my crush is even hotter," Adam says, taking Suri's hand. He brushes her brown curls out of her face and nods to the doors behind us, most of which have been propped open, letting in the nippy November air. "Want to dance?"
I roll my eyes at their cheesiness, but truthfully I'm glad Adam got the heat off me.
"Why of course, my love." Suri curtsies, and I have the wherewithal to flush on her behalf. Someone from Suri’s family should act a lot more cool in public. Suri's like an oblivious nine-year-old.
I, on the other hand, am absolutely conscious of the eyes pulled to my orbit as Suri and Adam pass through the doors behind me, leaving me alone with my half-empty wine flute. I hate moments like these, where I know what everyone is thinking: Look at Elizabeth DeVille, left alone by the only friend she has. With a mother like hers and hardly any money left, it’s a wonder she has even one.
Mentally shoving off their judgment, I lift the tail of my green dress in my right hand and gently pick my way through the crowded room, toward a slender hallway just beyond a staircase. I can't resist a glance over my shoulder as I go; I'm looking for Hunter, but he's nowhere in sight.
Out to my left, beyond a wine-gurgling fountain and across a vast oriental rug, I spot my friend Cross Carlson with his arms around the red-haired Cole sisters: identical, with matching D-cup racks. He winks, and I give him a genuine smile, hoping the black-haired, blue-eyed devil in the bespoke tux is actually Cross. I really can't see. I curse the loss of my contact, and my own vanity. I have a pair of glasses in my clutch, but I'm too vain to wear them with my emerald satin, mermaid-cut Vera Wang.
Not that it would change my aesthetics much. With or without glasses, I'm still a fat girl. Not a lot fat. Just regular, eats-too-much-good-food fat. The kind of fat that curls the waist of my blue jeans down and creates an unattractive line of back fat between my pants and my top, just over the butt, when I sit cross-legged, hunched over one of my textbooks.
Since finishing undergrad—since my mom threw my dad out before having her third nervous breakdown in as many years, and dad went running to another family, complete with two new daughters—I've gained probably fifteen or twenty pounds, and the thing about the new me is, I don't care. I like Phish Food ice cream. I like beer, wine, and whiskey. I like Dove dark chocolate even better than the fancy imported stuff, and my mystery novel fetish is such that the time I don't spend studying for a PhD in Ethics is devoted to figuring out whodunnit.
With the exception of Hunter West, who's been my own personal p**n since that fateful night Mom's Porsche broke down, I don't find that many men attractive. Maybe I am a lesbian, but I don't think so. I’ve never had the hots for another woman. I think most guys are just boring.
I clutch the tail of my dress a little more tightly as I glide down the hallway just off the great room. The wall on my right has turned from stone to glass, and I realize I'm approaching the atrium: a glass-walled garden in the middle of the octagonal house. Through the glass wall on my right, I see a swatch of starry sky, and I remember three nights ago, at Mom’s house. Cross and I went to the front lawn to watch a meteor shower, and I think he wanted to kiss me.
He's always been like that when he drinks. Needy. Turned on. Most girls love it, but Cross is one of my oldest friends. I know how closed he is to everyone, how shallow he keeps things, especially with girls he likes, and I can't risk that happening with me. I need our long, deep talks, just about as much as I need his unwavering friendship. Besides, if we hooked up and it went wrong, Cross wouldn't have anywhere to live.
I let my mind linger on Cross's troubles only for a moment before I hurry past the atrium, knowing everyone standing in the glass-framed garden is probably making out or gossiping in cliques. I don't need their eyes on me.
My destination, a replica of an old-fashioned powder room, should be just past a serving closet up here on my left. I look at the rug as I walk; it's red, ornate, and old, and it covers most of the hardwood in this hall. My lack of sight in my left eye makes my right eye jump around, taking in the Sanskrit wall-hangings and the glittering, crystal light fixtures on the ceiling—and all the space in-between. I want to be sure I don't run into any company.
Cross texted the directions to the powder room earlier today when I asked for an escape place if I found myself alone. Mom built room on rqst, 4 his women, Cross told me, adding a winking smilie at the end. Cross's mom, Derinda, is a well-known Hollywood architect, and this octagonal mansion in the spot where the original estate burned is one of her most recent creations.
The 'smthng brass' Cross had told me would mark the powder room is a brass tiger's head door-knocker mounted on the sleek wood, and I smile when I see it. My hand is on the doorknob when I hear a moan. A woman's moan, followed by a man's moan.