Page 100 of Saint Céline
“You use that often?”
“Only when it’s true.”
“That must be so exhausting for you.”
He smiled and leaned beside me against the railing, close enough that his sleeve brushed mine.
“You going to Bellamont University?”
“Yes, starting this Fall.”
“Good.”
“Good?”
“It means I’ll see you around.”
I should have found Katherine. I knew that even then. She liked him. She had said it without saying it, and I had understood. That should have been enough to make him forbidden, not morally perhaps, but emotionally, within whatever private system Katherine and I had built between us.
But Thad was looking at me as if I were the only girl on the terrace. Not Katherine’s cousin. Not the scholarship girl hidden inside designer hand-me-downs. Not someone being held up academically by the girl sitting ten feet away. Just me. Or the version of me he believed he saw.
I wanted that too much.
“You’re very confident,” I said.
“I get told that a lot.”
“That wasn’t a compliment.”
“It sounded like one from you.”
I smiled despite myself.
He moved closer, but not enough to trap me.
I looked toward the outdoor sofa. Katherine was watching us. Even across the terrace, even through gold light and laughter and moving bodies, I saw her face clearly.
For one second, guilt moved through me so sharply I almost stepped away.
Then someone inside called my name, and Thad touched my wrist lightly, and the guilt became quieter beneath the rush of being wanted.
He kissed me near the railing with the party glowing behind us and the whole future opening falsely at my feet. His mouth came down warm and sure, the kind of kiss I had tasted from boys my own age, but never like this. Those had been quick and clumsy, all nerves and half-finished pressure.
Thad was older, confident, and he kissed like he already knew exactly how a girl would melt under him. His tongue slid against mine, slow and deep, and his hands moved without hesitation. One palm cupped my breast through the thin silk of my dress, thumb brushing the nipple until it tightened. The other hand slid lower, gripping my ass hard enough that I felt every finger press into the fabric and pull me flush against him. Heat rushed through me fast and sharp. He tasted faintly like champagne.
When I opened my eyes, Katherine was gone.
I found her upstairs, twenty minutes later, in one of Camila’s guest bathrooms, sitting on the closed toilet seat with her champagne glass untouched in both hands.
“Katherine.”
She did not look up.
I closed the door behind me. The music downstairs blurred into a dull pulse through the walls.
“I’m so sorry.”
“No, you’re not,Céline.”
