Secrets of a Perfect Night (30 page)

“In 1990,” Mindy continued, “our football team took state, and our ski team took first place in the all-around events.”

The cell phone in the inside pocket of Thomas’s jacket chirped, and he reached his hand in and pulled it out. In a low hushed voice, he spoke into the phone. “How are you feeling?…What did he say?…Oh…” There was a pause, then his brows pulled together. “Did you hook it into the serial port like I told you to?…Yeah, that one…Grandmother spilled her Postum in the keyboard? Of course that’s a problem…What? Hold on a minute.” He looked at Brina. “I’m sure I’ll see you before the weekend is over,” he said, and then with his drink in one hand, phone in the other, he walked from the ballroom.

Brina returned her gaze to the stage. The last time she’d been in the ballroom of the Timber Creek Lodge had been the night of the Christmas prom. She’d worn red that night, too. A red satin dress her mother had
made for her from material they’d bought from Judy’s Fabric Land. She’d worn roses in her hair, and her date, Mark Harris, had worn a black tuxedo.

Brina had had a crush on Mark for years, but it hadn’t been until his girlfriend, prom queen and pep club president Holly Buchanan, had dumped him—two weeks before the dance—that he’d taken notice of her and asked her to the prom. They’d dated for a few weeks more, then Holly had snapped her fingers and Mark had gone running back. Brina had been crushed.

As if thinking about him made him appear, Mark Harris stepped in front of her. He looked at her name badge, then smiled. “Munchkin?”

She frowned and he tilted his head back and laughed. He’d always had the straightest white teeth she’d ever seen, and in the past ten years, he hadn’t changed much. His blonde hair had turned light brown and he had a few creases at the corners of his green eyes, and if anything, he’d grown more handsome with age. The green of his tie matched his shirt, tucked into a pair of khaki-colored pants. He wasn’t as muscular as she remembered, but he still looked fairly buff.

Mindy continued to speak, the room applauded something she said, and Mark Harris grabbed Brina’s shoulders and looked deep into her eyes. “God, you look great,” he said through his perfect smile. “I can’t believe I dumped you for Holly. I must have been a moron.”

It was so close to what she’d been thinking about Thomas that she laughed. “You were, but don’t be too hard on yourself. Holly was a walking, talking Malibu
Barbie doll.” She shook her head. “I always thought the two of you would get married.”

“We did. Then we got divorced.” He said it as if it were no big deal, and Brina wondered how many other classmates had married and divorced.

“Are you here alone?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“What luck. Me too.” His smile spread to his eyes. “Come on, let’s go talk to some of the guys. Everyone’s dying to know who you are, but no one guessed right.” He placed a hand in the small of her back and explained. “No one recognized you when you walked in. Then we saw you talking to Thomas Mack and thought you might be his date. You’re not, are you?”

“No.” Brina glanced around the room and spied Thomas in the entrance, talking to a tall blonde woman in a tight black dress. There was no mistaking Holly Buchanan, prom queen. From as far back as Brina could remember, Holly had been blonde and beautiful. She’d never gone through an awkward or ugly stage, and if there was an unwritten rule somewhere that stated beautiful rich girls had to be gracious and kind, Holly had never read it. Or perhaps she had and just didn’t care.

Thomas and Holly stood in profile to the room, and she placed her hand on the arm of his jacket and smiled up at him. Brina wondered what he’d said to make Holly smile. He hadn’t made any effort to make
her
smile. Not even a little. In fact, he’d seemed a bit stiff and uptight. Not at all like the Thomas she remembered.

“I think we’re all supposed to be listening to
Mindy,” she said as Mark directed her to a small group of people to her right. There had been a time when the touch of his hand would have given her heart palpitations. Now he was just someone she used to know, and one of those guys she was eternally grateful she’d never slept with.

“No one listens to Mindy. Not even Brett,” he said as he led her to a group of his friends. In school, they’d been the group of kids with money. The group who’d worn their season ski passes on their ski jackets like status symbols because they could. Brina recognized a few of them; others she hadn’t a clue about until she was reintroduced. Living in such a small town, she’d grown up with them, but they’d never been her friends.

Listening to them now, she discovered that most of the people she’d graduated with still lived in the area. Many of them had married right out of high school or college but had quickly divorced and were now on their second and even third relationships. And as they talked about 1990 as if it were the best year of their lives, Brina glanced beyond them to Thomas.

High school hadn’t been the high point of her life so far, and it hadn’t been the high point of his either. As if he read her thoughts, he looked over the top of Holly’s head and his gaze met hers. He stared at her for several long seconds, his expression unreadable, then a furrow wrinkled his brow and he looked away.

The lights dimmed even further as Mindy finished with her speech, and Brina could no longer see Thomas’s face. He became just an outline in the darkening room.

The band took the stage, thumped and tuned for a moment or two, then started the evening out with a fairly decent rendering of “Turn You Inside Out.” Mark grasped Brina’s hand and led her onto the dance floor. As he took her in his arms and folded her against his chest, he asked, “What are you doing later?”

Her flight had gotten in late, and she hadn’t really thought of anything beyond taking a shower and going to bed. “Going to my room.”

“Some of us are going to my house in a while. You should come with.”

She pulled back and looked up into his face. She thought about it and thought she’d rather sleep than listen to more stories about the time Mark and friends had all skied naked, or the time they’d pranked the Chess Club and hidden all the kings. “I think I’m just going to crash tonight,” she said.

“Okay, then meet us tomorrow. We’ll be on the back side.”

Living so many years in Galliton, she knew he meant that they’d all be skiing the back side of Silver Dollar Mountain. But just because she’d been raised in a resort town didn’t mean she knew how to ski. She didn’t. “I’ll try.”

Mark pulled her closer and she looked beyond him and spotted Thomas through the shadows of shifting bodies.

“Your hair smells nice,” Mark complimented her.

“Thank you.” Thomas held Holly within his embrace, and he moved with a perfect and fluid rhythm she’d never known he possessed. Holly’s arms were wound around his neck, and he held her much
too close. The sight of his hands resting in the small of her back, their bodies touching, bothered Brina more than it should.

Mark talked about the businesses he owned and he complimented Brina repeatedly. He was charming and amiable, but her attention was focused on the couple across the dance floor. Her head was filled with their image and her own riotous thoughts, and she wondered why the sight of Thomas and Holly should eat at her. Why it should burn a hole in her stomach.

The answer came to her as the last strains of a guitar echoed in the ballroom. She felt ownership over Thomas as if he were hers. He’d been her good friend for a lot of years, and even though she’d treated him badly toward the end, she still felt a connection to him. And to be completely honest, she hated the sight of him with Holly. Perhaps because she knew that if Thomas were a bus driver or a mechanic, Holly probably wouldn’t have crossed the room to speak to him, but there was more to it. More she couldn’t explain. More that felt a bit like jealousy. Her feelings didn’t make a lot of sense. They weren’t logical, but that didn’t stop them from twisting her into a confused knot.

She excused herself from Mark and wound her way to the bar. Feeling a little ragged, she wondered if she should order another drink or just go to bed. She did neither. Instead, she ran into her tenth-grade lab partner, Jen Larkin. Jen had packed on about eighty pounds and she still had the most freckles Brina had seen on a person. They chatted for a bit, but the music made conversation near impossible, and mostly the two ended up yelling questions at each other. She lost
sight of Thomas through several songs and couldn’t help but wonder if he’d sneaked off to jump the prom queen.

He hadn’t. He and Holly walked past her and stood in the short line at the bar. Begrudgingly she had to admit that they made a good-looking couple.

From the stage, the band broke into a song Brina recognized from having spent so many years listening to Thomas’s cheap stereo. Before she could talk herself out of it, she walked up to him and said, “They’re playing our song.”

Through the dim shadows provided by the chandelier, he looked into Brina’s eyes for several long moments as if he were trying to figure something out. Just when she thought he might not say anything at all, he did. “Excuse us, Holly,” he said, and took Brina by the elbow. He led her to the middle of the crowded dance floor, then wrapped his warm palm around the back of her left hand. “Since when is ‘Lay Lady Lay’ our song?” he asked as he grasped her waist.

She placed her hand on his shoulder; the smooth fabric of his jacket felt cool to her touch. “Since you used to make me listen to Bob Dylan for hours.”

He glanced over the top of her head. “You hated it.”

“No, I just loved to give you a hard time.” He held her several inches away from him as if he didn’t want her to invade his space. He held her as if he were a dance instructor, moving with perfect impersonal timing. He hadn’t minded Holly invading him, though, and she was surprised at how betrayed she felt by that. Her feelings were so crazy, she wondered if she was losing her mind.

“Thomas?”

“Hmm.”

She looked up into the shadows of his face, into the darkness concealing his eyes and outlining his nose and finely etched mouth. “Are you still mad at me?”

Finally he gazed down at her. “No.”

“Then do you think we can be friends again?”

As if he had to consider that too, several lines of the song passed before he answered, “What do you have in mind?”

She didn’t really know. “Well, what are you doing tomorrow?”

“Skiing.”

She was a little surprised by his answer. “When did you learn?”

“About six years ago.”

At a loss for witty conversation, she asked, “So do you like it?”

His grasp on her waist tightened sightly, and he pulled her a fraction closer. “I have a condo in Aspen,” he answered as if that said it all, and perhaps it did.

His thumb lightly brushed her palm and he folded their hands into his chest. Pleasurable tingles spread up her wrist and arm, as if chased by a breath of warm air. “Are you skiing with Holly?” she asked as if she weren’t dying to know.

“Whoever. Are you going to meet up with Mark Harris and that bunch?”

“No.” She didn’t want to waste time talking about Mark. “Remember the time I saved all of my baby-sitting money so I could buy equipment and join the Ski Club?”

“You broke your leg the first day.”

“Yep. I haven’t tried it since.” She moved her palm across his shoulder, and she touched the collar of his white shirt. Beneath her sensitive fingertips, his flesh had warmed the thick linen. “I thought I might do some shopping and hang out at the lodge.”

His hand slid to the small of her back, and he eased her into the solid wall of his chest. Brina’s breath caught in her throat.

“Sounds boring,” he said against her right temple, but he didn’t offer to keep her company.

“Have you seen all the pregnant women in this room? I’ll find someone to talk to.” Brina turned her face slightly and breathed deep. She filled her lungs with the scent of his cologne and the warmth of his skin. He smelled so good she was tempted to lean forward and bury her nose in his neck. She lifted her index finger and lightly touched his skin above his collar. The warmth of his skin tickled her palm.

She wondered what he would do if she told him how much she’d missed him. That she hadn’t even realized how much she’d missed him until she’d seen him again tonight, and how genuinely happy she was just to see his face again.

She wondered if he felt the same, but she was afraid to ask. She wanted to hear about his life. She didn’t even know where he lived. “What are you doing for the rest of the night?” she asked, thinking that maybe they could find somewhere and catch up on the last ten years.

“I’ve got a few options, but I’m not sure what I’ll do.”

She didn’t want to look pathetic in front of him, so she said, “Yeah, I have a few options, too. Mark invited me to a party at his house.”

The last strains of “Lay Lady Lay” poured from the speakers and Thomas dropped his hands and took a step back.

“Maybe we could go together,” she offered.

“I don’t think so, but thanks.” He looked over Brina’s head to the tall blonde who stood by the bar where he’d left her. “Holly Buchanan is trying to seduce me,” he said. “She’s a yoga instructor and says she studies the Kama Sutra.”

“Are you kidding?”

“No. She mentioned something about showing me a goat position.”

“That’s disturbing.” Surely Thomas realized that if he were still poor, Holly wouldn’t have uttered a word to him, let alone whispered anything as warped as goat positions in his ear. Thomas couldn’t be so stupid as to fall for it. He’d always been to smart. “She’s using you.”

“Uh huh.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I think I’ll let her.”

Three

B
RINA WOKE THE
next morning feeling as tired as when she’d gone to bed. After she’d danced with Thomas, she’d danced with Mark again and had ended up at his house with a bunch of his friends. One thing she’d noticed was that they hadn’t evolved that much. Brina had left the party feeling lucky for her life in Portland. She didn’t have a boyfriend at the moment, but at least she had a bigger pool to choose from.