One Night That Changes Everything (6 page)

“Derrick is the guy I was dancing with,” Clarice says. “He totally got me into the VIP room, and he invited me over to his place after this.”

“You’re going to his
house
?” Is she crazy? Everyone knows you never, ever go to some strange guy’s house. You inevitably end up maimed, murdered, or raped. At the very least, you end up drunk and making a sex tape that you totally regret once the guy leaks it on his blog.

“Not his house,” she says, and I relax. “His apartment.” Oh, Jesus. In the background, I can hear talking and laughing and the sound of voices and music.

“Um, Clarice? Don’t you think that’s a little dangerous?” I ask delicately. I know Clarice is from the South and all, and she gets totally shocked when people actually (gasp) lock their car doors, but this is taking it a little too far.

“No,” she says. “I mean, it’s not like I’m going alone. Butch and Kim are going to be there too.”

“Who are Butch and Kim?” I ask.

“Derrick’s friends,” she says, sighing. Oh. Right. I guess that does help a little, since I don’t think it would take three people to kill Clarice if that was Derrick’s plan. She’s pretty small. Of course, they could be some kind of murdering cult. And they could definitely try to convince her to be in a foursome sex video. “Do you want me to leave the VIP and come back down?” she asks.

I’m about to tell her yes, that I really want her to come and meet me, but then someone tugs on the back of my hair, and I turn around. Cooper. He is now standing right behind me, crowding my space.

“No,” I say, anger rising up inside of me. “I got it.” I flip my phone shut and whirl around. “What are you doing here?” I ask. Cooper looks taken aback.

“Following you,” he says. “Obviously.”

“Well, yeah,” I say. “I mean,
why
did you follow me?”

“Because I’m supposed to be tailing you and making sure that you do everything we tell you.”

“Why?” I narrow my eyes and hope I look menacing. Of course, it’s very hard to look menacing when I’m completely
scared shitless. And when college kids keep walking between us on their way into the Spotted Frog.

“Look,” Cooper says. He moves closer to me so that people can get by. Which means he’s very, very close. Closer than he’s been since our breakup. I take a deep breath and try to stop myself from freaking out. “I want to help you.”

“You want to help me? Have you completely and totally lost it?”

“Eliza, I know you’re mad, but you don’t get it. I didn’t want to ever hurt you; I’m going to help you. They don’t—”

“Oh, I get it all right,” I say.

I push past him and into the Spotted Frog, then march over to a little table in the corner and sit down. The Frog’s one of those places that’s frequented by hipsters, mostly college kids who have turned their backs on the bar scene in favor of sipping organic teas and planting vegetable gardens and working on reducing their carbon footprints. The drinks are completely overpriced, and the people who work there can be a little annoying, with their whole “I’m so over you and everything else” attitudes, but somehow the vibe in there is warm and inviting.

Well. At least it is when you’re there of your own accord and not because some psycho, dumb, secret, macho club at your school has basically blackmailed you into going there.

Cooper walks in behind me, and so I quickly take the extra chair at my table and shove it under the table next to me, where a girl with braids is sipping a chai tea and talking to her friend about her yoga class.

Cooper walks over and calmly removes the chair, puts it back at my table, and then sits down. Ugh. How annoying.

I pull out my phone and text Marissa. “
WHERE. ARE. YOU
??”

Cooper gets up and disappears for a second, then returns with two coffees.

“I got yours with cinnamon hazelnut syrup,” he says.

I shoot him a glare, but take a sip of the warm liquid. It’s so hot I almost burn my tongue, but it’s good going down, comforting and sweet. “I’m not sure what I should thank you for first,” I say. “Remembering how I take my coffee or turning me in to the dean because of what I wrote about you on Lanesboro Losers.” I think that’s a super-biting and witty remark that should totally put him in his place, but Cooper seems unfazed.

“I didn’t turn you in,” Cooper says. “That was the 318s.” As he takes a sip of his coffee, one shirtsleeve slips down and I can see he’s wearing the watch I bought him. Seriously! That is so screwed up. He should have to give me back all the presents I gave him while we were together.

“Give that back to me,” I say, holding my hand out.

“Give what back to you?” Cooper asks. He sets his coffee cup down on the table.

“The watch I gave you.”

“This?” Cooper holds up his wrist.

“Is that the watch I gave you?”

“Yes.”

“Then yes.”

“No,” he says. “I love this watch.”

“When people break up,” I say, “they give back each other’s stuff.”

“This isn’t each other’s stuff,” he says. “This was a gift.”

“A gift given under false pretenses.” I hold my hand out. “Give it back.”

“No,” he says. “I don’t want to. The person who gets dumped gets to keep the gifts that were given to him.”

“I didn’t dump you,” I say.

“Yes, you did,” he says. “You left me that night.”

“After I found a list that basically showed you were dating me as a joke? Yes, of course I left.”

“That wasn’t my list,” he says. “It was the 318s’ list.”

“Isn’t that kind of one and the same?” I ask. “Like, aren’t you guys all supposed to be together, you know, brotherhood and one for all and all of that?” I roll my eyes so he can see just how stupid and ridiculous I think the whole thing is.

“I guess,” he says. He pushes his cup back and forth between his fingers, sliding it on the table. Then he looks up at me, and he’s looking right at me, and it’s too intense and so I look away.

“Whatever,” I say. “You can keep the dumb watch.” I look down at the table and hope he couldn’t hear the catch in my voice because, suddenly, I feel like I want to cry.

“Thanks,” he says quietly. And then he doesn’t say anything else.

“So what now?” I ask, blinking back the tears and forcing myself to look at him. “Am I supposed to strip down and
flash everyone here or something?” I rack my brain for what I would have written in my notebook about the Spotted Frog, but I’m coming up blank. I haven’t been here enough for it to really deserve a place in my notebook.

“What did that guy say?” Cooper asks suddenly, ignoring my comment about the flashing. And about what I’m supposed to do next.

“What guy?” I ask, confused.

“The one you were dancing with at Cure.”

“You mean like what did we talk about when we were dancing?”

“No,” Cooper says. “What did he say when you asked him to dance?”

“Um, he said, ‘Sure.’” Cooper looks taken aback. “You don’t have to look so shocked, Cooper, not everyone judges people on how much skin they’re showing or how good they look in a bikini.”

“I don’t judge people on those things.”

“Is that why you’re hooking up with Isabella Royce?”

“Isabella Royce?” Cooper sits up straight. “Who told you I was hooking up with Isabella Royce?”

But before I can answer him, one of the hipster, “I’m so totally over it” workers, a guy with five earrings in each ear, is up on the stage that covers half of the café in the back.

“Hello,” he says into the microphone that’s set up. He taps on it and then says, “Testing, one two three” and somehow he’s able to make it seem totally ironic.

“We’re going to get started,” he says. “So please pick your song and sign up over there.” He points over to the corner, where a middle-aged woman is setting up what looks like a karaoke folder.

“Great,” I say. “Now not only do I have to sit here and wait for some kind of direction, but now I’m going to have to listen to crazy people sing karaoke.” The weird thing is, I don’t mind listening to karaoke. I mean, what’s not to like? People making total asses of themselves? Fun! It’s just so annoying that I have to do it now, here, with Cooper.

Plus the Spotted Frog does karaoke as part of their “performance” series, where they have a different kind of entertainment every night. Usually they do poetry readings or have little indie bands play music in the corner, but once a month they do karaoke. People pretty much sing only indie music or girl rock, and the Spotted Frog tries to pretend it’s all retro. So not as fun as the normal kind of karaoke.

Then Cooper gets this look on his face, the same look Clarice and Marissa got earlier, one of those “how do I tell her this?” kind of looks.

“What?” I ask. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

“Um, you know you’re supposed to do karaoke, right?”

My heart sinks as I realize one of the things I wrote about in my purple notebook is how I wish I could get up and sing karaoke. Shit, shit, shit. Why did I write that? Why, why, why? I have no aspirations to be a singer. At all. In fact, I’m a horrible singer. Which I guess is why I always thought it
would be cool to sing karaoke. I mean, it takes a lot of self-confidence to get up and do something that you know you’re not good at. And that’s the thing about karaoke—it almost doesn’t really matter how good a singer you are—people care more about how much you get into it. If you get up there and act like you’re really excited and think you’re a rock star, people love it.

“I am?” I croak out.

“Yeah,” Cooper says.

“Here?”
I look around at the crowd. This is definitely not the kind of place that loves hearing the latest Britney Spears song belted out at the top of someone’s lungs. This place would scoff at such a thing. This place wants you to sing Ani DiFranco and Tori Amos and bands people have never, ever heard of and never will again once they leave here.

Right now, for example, two girls are over at the folder, pouring through the songs, and I totally just heard one of them say, “Ooh, Fiona Apple, that is so nineties perfect.”

“So did you get his number?” Cooper’s asking.

“Whose number?” I ask.

“The guy you were dancing with,” he says.

“Rich?”

“Oh, you know his name now?” Cooper narrows his eyes and takes another sip of his coffee.

“Why wouldn’t I know his name?” I ask.

“He just didn’t seem like the kind of guy who would take the time to ask you your name, if you know what I mean.”

“Cooper, we were dancing. Of course he asked me my name.”

Cooper snorts again and takes another sip of his coffee.

“Not everyone,” I say, “is a sex-crazed maniac.” Not that Cooper’s sex-crazed. Although I wouldn’t necessarily say he
isn’t
sex-crazed either. I’d put his sex-crazedness at a normal level. Of course, that could just be for me. His sex-crazedness level for Isabella Royce could be through the roof.

“I’m not a sex-crazed maniac.” Cooper looks shocked and offended.

“No one said you were,” I say, wrapping my hands around my cup of coffee and enjoying his obvious discomfort. “I was just saying that Rich isn’t.” Which isn’t exactly true. Okay, it’s not even close to true. Rich was sex-crazed enough to take a girl home from the club with him and then never call her again. Is this enough to make someone a maniac? I’m not sure. Either way, Cooper totally doesn’t need to know about the girl at the club or the fact that Rich was dancing with me only to get away from her.

“You said, ‘Not everyone is a sex-crazed maniac’ which implies that I am,” Cooper says. “Which I’m not.”

“If you say so,” I say, and shrug. “But it sounds to me like maybe you have a guilty conscience.”

“I don’t have a—” Cooper clears his throat and leans across the table. “Is this about that night in the pool?”

Oh. That night in the pool. I’d totally forgotten about that. One night, when Cooper’s parents were out, he invited me
over for dinner. We grilled hamburgers on the deck and ate them on paper plates, and then we went swimming and we started making out, and Cooper was totally pushing it, trying to get it past third-base territory, but I wouldn’t let him.

“Why do you care anyway?” I say. “That’s ancient history.”

“I don’t,” he says. His phone starts vibrating, and he picks it up and checks his texts. “They want to know if you’re karaokeing.”

“Can’t you …” I try to act like I don’t care and avert my eyes. “Can’t you just tell them that I am? That I did?”

“Eliza,” he says. “I can’t.” I see pity in his eyes, which really, really pisses me off. Actually, I’m mostly mad at myself, for even suggesting to Cooper that he help me. So before I can stop myself, I’m getting up and walking over to the corner, where the woman is setting up the karaoke machine.

“Do you have any Britney Spears?” I ask.

9:01 p.m.

This is horrible. This is beyond horrible. I mean, talk about rubbing salt in my wounds. Is it not enough that I’ve been dumped and left brokenhearted? Now I have to be completely humiliated as well? Just because I wrote something totally dumb on a ridiculous website?

The woman behind the karaoke table has a British accent and crazy curly gray hair, and she’s looking at me nervously, like she can’t figure me out. Which makes sense. I mean, everyone else in here is wearing hemp, and I’m wearing platform heels with studs on them. “I think I left all the Britney back at the office, love.” She starts flipping through the binder that lists all the songs, like maybe some rogue Britney might have slipped in there somewhere. “Um, will Christina Aguilera do?” she asks hopefully.

“I guess so,” I say glumly. But then I remember all those people who try out for
American Idol
and sing a Christina Aguilera song and end up booted, and everyone in the audience shakes their head sadly and thinks, “Oh my God, what a fool. Why would anyone choose Christina? That is such a mistake.”

“Actually, uh, no,” I say. “Do you have anything else?”

“I think I have an old Justin Timberlake song in here somewhere.” She pulls out a disc and holds it up. “It’s a compilation.” She smiles at me proudly.

“Great,” I say. I write my name down on the list and then turn my back on Cooper and sit down at a table in the corner. I never should have asked him if he would lie for me. I mean, yes, he
is
a liar, but his lying is obviously exclusive to me, and to think otherwise shows a certain level of insanity on my part.