“I like how fresh you are,” he laughed.
Both Delilah and I were invited to Mason’s eighteenth birthday party, which was being held at a swanky hotel in Yorkville at the end of the month, complete with a DJ, sushi bar, and a 120-person-long guest list. Delilah had made sure that practically all the girls in our grade knew we were going, and we had been given the appropriate level of awed respect.
The night of the party, we got ready at Delilah’s—curling our hair with hot rollers and dabbing on mascara and lip gloss—but when I put on my dress, a slinky red floor-length gown Delilah said showed off my “killer body,” she let out a horrified, “No way! You cannot wear those!”
“What are you talking about?” I looked down at my gold ballet flats, confused.
“Those granny panties! Have I taught you nothing? Don’t you have a thong?”
I looked at her incredulously. “Not on me!”
“You’re hopeless,” she sighed, and flung the skimpiest pair of red underwear I had ever seen at me.
“I don’t think my mom would be happy about these,” I said, holding them up.
“Well, she wouldn’t be happy about that panty line, either, believe me,” said Delilah.
I shimmied out of my underwear and slipped on the thong.
“Much better!” Delilah said and gave my butt a squeeze. “Mason won’t be able to keep his hands off this.” The thought made me jittery.
Delilah’s parents drove us to the hotel, slipped Delilah a fifty for a cab ride home, and left us at the coat check to mingle.
“I didn’t think there’d be so many grown-ups here,” I whispered to Delilah, looking around the ballroom—more than half the guests were middle-aged or older.
“My uncle is kind of a big deal on Bay Street. Something to do with the stock market,” she hissed back.
We danced together with some of the older girls while the boys watched from slipcovered chairs. At eight p.m., Mason’s dad, a tall, soft-looking white-haired man, who Delilah said was “almost done with wife number two,” gave a toast to his son, and then, to gasps from the crowd, threw him a set of keys. We all shuffled outside, huddling against the cold, where Mason’s new Audi was parked at the entrance. “I’ll take it home for you tonight,” his dad told him with a wink and slipped him a flask. In less than twenty minutes, the remaining adults had all snuck away.
When the telltale pan flute of a Celine Dion ballad warbled over the speakers, Mason pointed at me, then himself with a smile. I walked over and he put his hands around my waist while I rested mine on the shoulders of his black suit jacket. We swayed back and forth, shuffling around in a circle, and Mason leaned down, pressing his mouth up to my ear.
“You look beautiful tonight, Percy.” I looked up at his eyes, which were blue but a darker, muddier blue than Sam’s, and he pulled me flush against his body so that my cheek rested at the top of his chest. “I can’t stop thinking of you,” he whispered.
After the song finished, he pulled me out to the hallway, where Delilah, Patel, three other boys, and an older girl joined us. One of the guys, who introduced himself as Daniels, flashed us a bottle of what he said was vodka from under his suit jacket.
“Shall we relocate the festivities?” he said, wiggling his eyebrows and putting his arm around the girl, who was called Ashleigh.
The boys all had rooms upstairs, and we congregated in the living area of Mason and Patel’s suite. Daniels sat in an armchair with Ashleigh on his lap, Delilah and Patel took the sofa, and the two guys sat on the floor, leaving a chair for Mason and me. I perched on the side, but Mason pulled me onto his lap and put an arm around me, resting it on my hip. Daniels passed each of us a glass of vodka and ice. It smelled like nail polish remover and burned my lips even before I took a tiny sip.
“Don’t drink it if you don’t like it,” Mason whispered in my ear so no one could hear, and I smiled gratefully at him, then poured mine into his glass. “Works for me.” He smiled back. His thumb moved back and forth on my hip while the group talked about his new car and hockey season. It was pretty tame, considering we were a group of unsupervised teens with a bottle of alcohol, and I noticed that, other than Daniels, who was kneading Ashleigh’s butt like pizza dough, no one had a refill. By eleven, the others left for their rooms, and Delilah and I stood to get our coats on.
“Before you leave, Percy, there’s something I want to show you,” Mason said, running his hands through his hair and sounding a little nervous.