Page 58 of Act Like You Don't Care
“Have you decided where you want to go?” he asked. “Which party, I mean?”
Neither.But I didn’t say it. “Jack’s. Let’s go there.”
The glance he sent my way seemed to see right down to my soul and I wasn’t having any of that tonight, so I turned to stare out the side window and made innocuous small talk all the way to Jack’s house up in the hills. I’d almost convinced myself I didn’t care by the time we got there.
Almost.
My first stop was the bar. I ordered something strong and downed it, then ordered another and did the same. It tasted disgusting and my stomach rebelled, but I needed some insulation against the rest of the night. So, drunk it was.
“You sure you should be starting that hard this early?” Miles asked beside me. He wasn’t drinking. Oh, no, perfect Miles with his perfect life and his education and probably his gorgeous educated girlfriend back at home who was so understanding about his job. I could never share him like that—if we’d actually been dating, I would have wrecked anyone who looked at him twice.
“I’m fine,” I told him. “It’s been a long day.”
“Doing what?” he asked, raising his eyebrows at me.
“You wouldn’t understand,” I snapped and turned away from the bar with another drink. I saw Jack on the other side of the room. He raised his glass to me in salute and, automatically, I raised mine back and then belted half of it down.
The warmth of Miles’s hand in the small of my back penetrated the slowly growing buzz and my own emotional turmoil. “Did you want to go over to say hi?”
Something about that made me furious. He didn’t have the right, I thought, though the rapidly shrinking part of me that was still sober questioned what right I thought he was trying to take over. “I don’t need your permission to talk to my friends,” I snarled at him.
He held his hands up as if to ward off a blow. “Easy there. I was just asking.”
I threw him an angry glance and downed the rest of my drink before turning back to the bar.
“Look,” he said reasonably. “Maybe you should wait a bit to see how those hit you before you get another one?”
I didn’t need to wait—with no food in my stomach, those first three drinks were hitting me hard. It gave me the courage to order a fourth, and then, without even looking at him, I put my hand against his chest and pushed him away from me. His eyes widened, then narrowed again before he turned to the bartender and ordered a drink himself. Something non-alcoholic.
Party pooper.
I took my drink out to circulate through the party, avoiding Miles like the plague. He shadowed me for a while, then slowly began to drift away, making small talk with people in my general vicinity so he could keep an eye on me, I was sure. Keep me from doing anything stupid.
This was exactly the place for one of those hold my beer memes.
I found some young hanger-on, a wanna-be heartthrob with the body and the face, but five minutes' conversation with him proved to me that he was lacking in all the other things you needed to make it in Hollywood. Except for hope. He had plenty of that. And now that my star was rising, he was hopeful he could hook himself onto me, at least for a little while. Until he’d used me for what he could get.
Well, I could use people too. I took him out to the back yard, where the music was pounding and people were dancing under patio lights to music turned up so loud it was barely music anymore. Once there, I danced with whoever would have me, which—as fate would have it—included the heartthrob. And I drank some more, but not as fast. Because I was dancing.
Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Miles. Always Miles, hovering around like an omega couldn’t look after himself.
Yeah, that was the spirit. I didn’t need him. I didn’t need anyone.
Finally, he must have judged the time was right, or maybe he was as tired of watching me grind myself against Mr. Heartthrob as I was of grinding against him. Miles put his drink down and walked out into the throng of dancers until he could get a hand on my arm. “You know, this might not be the night. Maybe we should head out. You’re starting to wobble.”
I jerked my arm away and ducked my head, staring up at him from under the tangled mess of my hair. “I’m perfectly fine. But you can leave.”
He shook his head and grabbed for me again. “You’re drunk.”
“Not yet.” I grinned and danced out of the way. “But I’m going to be.”
“Tam…”
“Fuck. Off. Miles.” I said it loudly, so loud that I saw heads turn to stare at us and I knew the gossip would be spreading already.
His eyes flicked around between the dancers. I glared at him with my hands in fists and my chest heaving like I was some overblown heroine from a Civil War saga. I thought I would break if this went on longer, because I couldn’t bring myself to say those final words that would end everything between us.
Maybe Miles read that in my face, because his went very still as time stretched around me. Then he nodded and waved his hand in a sort of salute before spinning on his heel and tracing his way back to the front door.
