Tempted (4 page)

For reasons he couldn’t totally calculate, Brandon really wanted it to work out—to
keep
working out—with Sage. Maybe it was the surprise of the relationship, and possibly it had to do with his first steps in moving on from Callie, but he felt an extra zip in his step when he thought of Sage, and when he kissed her, his heart thudded in his ears. She was pretty—much prettier than he’d realized until the first time she’d let him kiss her, and he saw her long, pale lashes up close, and the tiny specks of brown in her aqua eyes.

“Dude, you didn’t tell me you were coming as a waiter.”

Brandon turned coolly, like Daniel Craig might when confronted by a particularly bothersome enemy, to find Heath and Kara dressed in almost identical caped outfits. Batman and Batgirl? Or was it Batwoman? Kara did look kind of hot in a black vinyl bodysuit, the yellow figure of a bat extending across her curvy chest. She even had on knee-high yellow boots, yellow gloves that stretched to her elbows, and a yellow satin pair of wings that hooked to her wrists. Heath’s suit was similar—with a black cape and without the boots or boobs—and his tight-fitting black suit had some kind of built-in muscles. A sleek mask covered the top half of his head, bat ears pointed toward the ceiling.

“It’s Bond.” Brandon shot Heath a cool stare, annoyed about the waiter crack but grateful for the chance to use the line. “James Bond.”

“Riiiight. That must make
you”
—Heath flung an arm out toward Sage, his black cape fluttering dramatically—”Pussy Galore.”

Sage tossed her blond ponytail and gave Heath a mock-stern glare, hand planted firmly on her arched hip. “Vesper Lynd. And don’t you forget it.”

Kara’s face dissolved into a grin. “You just wanted to say that word.”

“It’s one of my favorites.” Heath held out the familiar silver flask with a pony etched onto the face that he constantly replenished from the bottle of Skyy vodka duct-taped to the underside of his bed. “Cheers, everyone.”

At the sight of Heath’s flask, Sage quickly drained her cup and held it out. “Hit me.”

Heath poured a healthy dose of vodka into her cup, and Brandon tried not to be annoyed. He had a flask himself—it seemed a Bondian thing to carry—filled with Absolut, but he’d been waiting for the right moment to offer it up to Sage.

“Cool costumes,” Sage said as she walked in a circle around Heath and Kara. She touched her fingers against Kara’s cape.

“Gracias,” Kara answered, looking a little tipsy. “Some chick asked me if I was someone from Harry Potter. Can you believe that? What kind of morons go to this school, anyway?”

Heath planted a wet kiss on her cheek. “All kinds, sweetie,” he said. Kara giggled.

Brandon rolled his eyes and glanced at Sage, hoping she’d snicker along with him. Heath Ferro calling someone “sweetie”? But Sage was just smiling approvingly at the amorous couple. Sage was impressed? With
Heath?
The thought made Brandon want to puke, but he couldn’t help reaching for Sage’s hand and pulling her closer to him, feeling the instinctual need to keep up with his roommate. A new song came on, and suddenly, the mirrored balls on the ceiling sprang spinning to life, sending tiny flecks of light rotating around the room.

Heath handed the flask to Brandon. “Thanks,” Brandon muttered, just as Heath said, “Hold this.”

Brandon rolled his eyes and drained half of it into his cup out of spite while Heath reached into a hidden pocket on his costume for his iPhone. “Stand together, girls,” he instructed as he held up the iPhone to take a picture. “Uh-oh,” Heath said dramatically, pushing his black pointed eye mask up onto his forehead. “I guess I didn’t erase those pics after all.”

Kara’s eyes grew wide and she sidled up close to Heath. “You’re a dirty little liar,” she said playfully.

“Let us see,” Sage said curiously. Brandon ran his hands through his hair in annoyance. Why was Sage so interested in Heath and Kara’s escapades? Someone disguised as what looked like a giant roll of toilet paper ran past them, leaving a trail of Charmin in his wake.

But Brandon couldn’t help glancing over as Heath scrolled through a series of pictures of him and Kara on top of the old Waverly observatory, the rickety structure located at the very north end of campus. At the beginning of each year, Dean Marymount sent out a campuswide memo reminding students, that anyone found climbing the observatory—an old, crumbling brick building allegedly in the process of being restored—would immediately be expelled. And every year, several (often drunk) Owls attempted to climb it and spray-paint their names, or names of their current loved ones, on it.

The pictures of Heath and Kara, though, showed the two of them, legs dangling over the edge of the narrow walkway around the tower. They looked kind of… sweet. Kara, pointing up at the sky, and the two of them with the sliver of a moon in the background.

Sage absentmindedly fingered her diamond pendant necklace. “That is
so
romantic.”

“I was a little terrified,” Kara confided to Sage. She stroked Heath’s forearm. “I was sure we were going to fall off and, you know, break our legs.”

“And get expelled,” Brandon couldn’t help adding, glancing over Heath’s shoulder as the large pull-down movie screen filled with the opening scene of
Scream,
with Drew Barrymore running around in a wig.

“It must’ve been a rush,” Sage said, taking another gulp of her drink. Her collarbone, dusted lightly with a shimmery powder, glinted in the light. Brandon ran his fingers up her bare arm, hoping to entice her over to the dance floor, where they could be alone for a while.

“I said something about wanting a great view for the comet last night, and Heath convinced me that would be the best place to see it.” Kara squeezed Heath softly on one of his fake muscles. “Even though we had to climb all these deadly stairs.”

Brandon patted his pocket, searching for the tiny silver pen that doubled as a squirt gun. It was the closest thing to a Bond gadget he’d been able to find online, after deciding the cigarette lighter/flare gun would probably get him in some trouble. But now it seemed incredibly lame—Heath Ferro was risking expulsion to go stargazing with his girlfriend, and the best Brandon could do was a squirt gun?

Heath shrugged. “I always wanted to do it under the stars. But there wasn’t really enough room for that.” A horrified look crossed Kara’s face, but she quickly recovered and playfully slapped Heath on the chest.

“Oh, remember this one?” He cupped his hand around the screen and showed it to Kara, who immediately blushed.

“Delete it.” Kara grabbed for the phone, but Heath moved it beyond her reach.

“For you, I will,” Heath announced gallantly. He tucked the phone somewhere beneath his bat-cape. “Later.”

“Want some more punch?” Brandon asked Sage, immediately regretting the subservient tone in his voice.

Sage shook her head. “I think it’s making me sick.” Her skin did look a little pale.

“Better grab some fresh air,” Brandon said quickly, grabbing Sage’s wrist before she could resist and dragging her in the direction of the lobby without so much as a goodbye to Heath and Kara.

“You just wanted to get me alone, didn’t you?” Sage wrapped her arm through Brandon’s as they stepped into the lobby. Her aqua eyes gazed up at his impishly.

Brandon tugged gently on her ponytail, pulling her in closer. He tried to come up with some witty, Bond-worthy remark, but before he could say a thing, Sage stepped up on her tiptoes and pressed her lips to his for a long, crushing kiss that made Brandon wonder why he was wasting any time thinking about his inner dorkdom, being upstaged by Heath Ferro, or anything other than the beautiful girl in front of him.

Jenny and Brett stepped through the wide-arched entranceway to the Prescott ballroom. The warm air inside the room breezed across Jenny’s bare shoulders, and her stomach churned briefly as she felt eyes turn toward her.

“This looks amazing,” Jenny whispered. Strings of clear white Christmas lights were draped around the room, and gauzy cobwebs hung from the chandeliers, giving the whole room a
Phantom of the Opera
feel. She’d seen the show on Broadway three times, and had always been sort of in love with the mysterious, masked phantom. The stage at the far end of the ballroom was covered now by a drop-down movie screen that reminded Jenny of the Cinephiles party at the Miller farm, when
It Happened One Night
had been projected onto the side of the barn. The night Julian first kissed her. She chased the thought from her mind, instead running her eyes over the throngs of Waverly students in all states of dress-up. Many of whom, Jenny noticed suddenly, seemed to be staring at her.

She glanced over at Brett, who looked totally hip in a purple American Apparel minidress and a lime green scarf tied glamorously around her neck—she was Daphne from
Scooby-Doo.
“Are you sure I look okay?” Jenny whispered, glancing down to make sure she didn’t have toilet paper stuck to the bottom of one of her flat gold lace-up sandals. “Everyone’s staring.”

“That’s a good thing.” Brett twirled a lock of her bright red hair around a purple-polished finger. Jenny had accompanied her last weekend on a trek to Bergdorf’s for a re-dye. They’d gone shopping on the Upper East Side and eaten lunch at a hole-in-the-wall Thai place with Jenny’s father, Rufus, who’d been so completely enamored with Brett, he’d promised to e-mail her his secret recipe for his famous sunflower-seed-and-caramel brownies.

“I guess so.” Jenny spotted a cute guy wearing a pair of striped pajamas and a satin sleeping mask pushed up on his forehead staring intently at her. Her heartbeat quickened—could he be her secret admirer? But then he turned away, scribbling something on one of the voting cards that had been handed out by the door.

Jenny and Brett had spent two hours getting ready in Dumbarton 303—Callie was prepping in Tinsley and Brett’s room—and Brett had done such an impressive job with Jenny’s makeup, she barely recognized herself in the mirror. Her normally innocent-looking brown eyes were lined heavily with gold, and dark turquoise Urban Decay eye shadow covered her lids, sweeping up at the corners of her eyes. They’d pulled Jenny’s long curls into a messy updo and, with the help of some safety pins, turned a five-dollar fake-gold-and-sapphire necklace into a convincing-looking hairpiece. Her lips, normally only glossed, were covered in Benefit’s Ms. Behavin’, a luscious deep red. She’d even lightly brushed some gold shimmer across her cheekbones and collarbone, which made her skin absolutely glow against the white silk of her one-shouldered gown. With Rifat’s faux-gold snake bracelet wound around her bare left arm, she actually felt kind of sun-kissed and Egyptian.

“Your Marc Antony has to be here, right?” Brett bumped her hip into Jenny’s as they strode into the dimly lit ballroom. At least Brett had knee-high lavender go-go boots to keep her warm on the way over—in her completely weather-inappropriate sandals, Jenny had practically frozen to death, the cold, wet grass tickling her bare skin on their trek across the quad.

“Speaking of.” Jenny pushed the one stray curl that refused to stay in place behind her ear. She glanced at the long line in the beverage corner. “Where’s your, uh, Scooby?”

Across the room, she spotted Callie in a baby blue princess gown, a glass of orange punch in one hand. Jenny wasn’t even mad at Callie anymore—but she just couldn’t even imagine being friends with anyone who would actually try to get her blamed for arson and kicked out of school.

“Nonexistent.” A gloomy look briefly crossed Brett’s face, and Jenny could tell she was thinking of Jeremiah again.

“You look great, Jenny! I’m totally voting for you!” a masked girl with a fan of peacock feathers taped to her back squealed before disappearing into the crowd of students at the sound system, waiting to make requests.

“Who
was
that?” Jenny asked, feeling dazed.

“I think it was that Emmy girl.” Brett shrugged. “Listen, I think I’m going to go say hi to Callie.” She touched the tiny gold heart locket around her neck. “I know she’s been pretty miserable about the whole Easy thing.”

“Oh, yeah. Of course.” Jenny bit her lip. She knew Brett had been trying to patch things up with Callie, and of course she had every right to—but it was still an awkward situation.

“I’ll be right back.” Brett squeezed Jenny’s bare arm.

Jenny watched Brett disappear into the crowd. “I need a Scooby Snack!” a handsome guy dressed as a
Sopranos
-like gangster in a slouchy black suit and greased-back hair shouted approvingly in Brett’s direction, and Jenny giggled.

Across the room, she spotted Brandon Buchanan and Sage Francis, looking like they’d stepped off the red carpet, and decided to head their way. Jenny stepped around a gaggle of beefy football guys dressed as Waverly cheerleaders who shook their pom-poms at her and hooted in appreciation, and past a couple of mummies who looked like they’d been toilet-papered making out on the dance floor. A few freshmen dressed as Trekkies all made fainting gestures as Jenny sashayed by them. (She really, really hoped one of them wasn’t her secret admirer.)

“Hey, Jenny. You want to dance?” Jenny whirled around to see Spider-Man holding out his hand. She paused for a moment, and he pulled off his Spider-Man mask to reveal Ryan Reynolds, staring at her neckline.

“Maybe later.” Jenny shook her head regally. “I’m not really in dancing mode yet.”

Ryan nodded and rubbed his lips. “Well, uh … anytime you are, just say the word.” He pulled his mask back on and pretended to shoot spiderwebbing across the room.

A small smile played on Jenny’s lips as she walked away, and she couldn’t help wondering where Tinsley was and what
she
was wearing. Sage and Brandon had started slow dancing, and it looked like they were whispering in each other’s ears, so Jenny turned instead toward the beverages.