Page 102 of High Season
Blake mentioned the bonfire one afternoon when Evelyn and Harrison were out of the house. He had thrown a window open, but the smell of their bodies still filled the air. Body spray and sweat, the plastic of the condom. A new fragrance that Hannah was already beginning to associate with sex. With him.
“It’s the party of the whole summer,” he said. “For real. It’s always crazy.”
His eyes were bright, still full of that post-orgasm high. One hand trailed across the contours of Hannah’s body as if he couldn’t get enough of her. She shivered as he brushed the inward curve of her waist.
“What about your mum’s birthday?” Hannah said. “I thought that was supposed to be the party of the summer?”
Blake’s hand lifted away and dropped onto the covers. He rolled over, reached for his boxer shorts, the light falling out of his eyes.
“My mum’s birthday party is bullshit,” he said. “Always is. People she barely knows, coming to tell her how great she is, how she doesn’t look a day over thirty. It’s boring.”
Hannah sat up, pulling the sheets over her bare chest. It still feltlike a kind of sacrilege, being naked on a bed that belonged to Evelyn Drayton. Linens that probably cost more than Hannah earned all summer.
“Really?” she said. “I always thought it looked kind of fun.”
She didn’t tell Blake that for years she had dreamed of being invited to one of Evelyn Drayton’s parties. She thought of the previous summer, when she had been asked to step in when one of the hired waitresses had fallen ill. She had worn a white shirt and too-short skirt, and stood in the hallway holding a gilt tray of champagne and small, damp canapés that had been left out slightly too long, smiling apologetically when people complained about the heat. She had felt so out of place, her palms clammy, the room heaving with bodies, people who seemed to wear satin without worrying about sweat stains, who talked over one another in increasingly loud and high-pitched tones until their voices drowned out the strains of the string quartet. She had moved around the room with her eyes lowered, exactly as she had been told to do. Giving the impression that she was hardly there at all.
At one point, Blake had taken a drink from her tray and she had tried to catch his eye, waited for him to recognize her. He had, after all, known her almost their entire lives. His gaze had skittered from the glass back to the person he was talking to. He hadn’t even looked at her properly. She had been invisible.
Ever since their first kiss, she had imagined how different things might be this year. She had dared to dream that the two of them might attend Evelyn’s party as a couple. Hannah in a dress that she would have to convince her mum to drive her into the city to buy. Something long and fitted; something that would turn her body—too tall, too rectangular—into something curved and beautiful. Blake would have his arm around her, his hand against the base of her spine. A waitress, maybe some girl that Hannah went to school with, would offer them a tray of champagne, and there’d be a flash of envy in her eyes when Hannah accepted a glass.
Hannah imagined herself on the inside at last. Part of a world she had skirted the edges of for years, serving its drinks, tutoring its children, clearing up their mess at the end of each high season, the litteredbeaches, the empty houses. She would belong there, finally, because Blake chose her.
“Don’t tell me that you want to go to my mum’s stupid party?” Blake said.
There was a taunt in his voice that hadn’t been there before.
“God, no,” Hannah said quickly. “You’re right. It’s probably lame.”
He was distracted, searching for his T-shirt.
“The bonfire sounds cool though,” she said.
He shrugged. His brightness from a few minutes ago dulled, reconfigured into casualness. In some ways, he reminded Hannah of Nina. His moods were so changeable. It was so easy to make him happy; so easy to send him spinning away from her.
She thought again of the night she met Blake’s dad. A week ago, but also another lifetime. A week ago, but also this second. For the last few days, Hannah had found the memory hovering around the edges of her body. The sensation of Blake pushing up inside her, the way she had felt inanimate. Not quite human.
She has tried repeatedly to transform the image in her mind into something more palatable. Told herself that they werebothcaught up in the emotion of the night, all the nerves and the rage and the hurt turning into that moment on the clifftop. That maybe she had enjoyed it, too. That maybe she had wanted him just as badly as he seemed to want her.
Still, just the thought of it sent a drum of adrenaline through her, a tightening in the center of her chest that felt almost like panic.
“Oh, you know,” he said. “It’s pretty cool.”
“Maybe I could stop by?” Hannah ventured.
She didn’t dare ask if she could attend as his girlfriend. She was afraid to address what this thing—delicate and undefined between them—really was.
Blake pulled his T-shirt on over his head.
“You probably wouldn’t like it,” he said. “It’d just be loads of people you wouldn’t know.”
“I wouldn’t mind.”
“I would.”
He rolled over to her, lifted a strand of her hair between two of his fingers.
“I like it better when it’s just us,” he said. “I don’t want to share you with anyone. Not yet.”
