He Shoots, She scores

Chapter Eight: Weston | A Twist of Events

I thought I'd seen Gracie mad before. But it's nothing compared to this.

She's marching up to me, face and neck tomato red with a scowl twisted like a pretzel. I put a temporary pause in my game of beer pong to analyze what's about to come. From her reaction alone I can tell I'm about to get an ear full.

"Are you kidding me?!" her shrill voice squeaks out.

I cross my arms and lean against the table. "Something wrong?" Apparently, that was the wrong thing to say. Her face miraculously gets even redder. Gracie grabs my arm and drags me to a back corner, where some guy is chugging from a keg on top of our kitchen counter. Somebody else knocks over our coffee machine.

"Nobody told me you were throwing a party!" she yells.

"Huh. I could've sworn I sent RJ or Eli to warn you." My fist is concealing a grin.

"I'm sure you did" she sneers. Gracie is glaring at something over my shoulder. Tracking her line of vision, I see somebody helping themselves to our fridge. They're stuffing a whole bunch of Gracie's leftover cupcakes into their mouth. She looks like she wants to punch something. "Put that down!" she shouts to them.

"Hey, you had to have seen this coming. The ad that RJ put on Craigslist must've said something about us being a party household."

"This isn't a party! This is an abomination! Somebody is pissing on the fern right now!" she snaps, her voice barely heard over the cheers erupting around us.

For the first time ever at a party, I'm 100% sober, solely for the purpose of getting her live reaction to this scene. And man, is it worth it. Normally I allow myself a few beers to take over my thoughts so I can just let loose for the night. Have fun with a couple girls, play some beer pong, exchange some numbers...but this, seeing Gracie all riled up and speechless, easily tops all of that. "Well, you better get used to it. Me and the guys throw parties like this all the time. All. The. Time." My cheeks hurt from smiling so much.

She's squinting at me like she's figuring out whether to slap me or not. "You're lying" she says.

"Stay until next week and find out."

Somebody dances their way between us. Gracie nearly trips when they shove into her shoulder. She glares in their direction before turning it towards me. "I have a test coming up soon! I need to study!" she screams over the music.

"Try the bathroom! It might be quieter there!" I yell back.

"UGH! You're such a JERK!" She pries past me, quickly getting lost in the crowd. I happily re-join the game, satisfied that Ms. Gracie Lavergne will be out of my hair in no time. In fact, I'll bet she's packing up her bags right now. Someone taps me on the shoulder and I instantly scowl, thinking it's that redhead who's been on my ass all night, but I relax when I see it's RJ. "Dude!" he yells. "Two girls and one guy just gave me their number!"

"A guy?" I frown. "But you're straight."

"I know! Isn't it awesome? I got like both teams vouching for me!" RJ does his signature drunk laugh, booming and infectious, that I can't help but join. His laugh suddenly cuts short. "Aw, man. Who invited the Grinch?"

"What?" I turn around and sure enough, none other than awful John Evans is here. No better way to ruin a party than to have the coach's son in on the fun. "What's he doing here?"

"Well he is on the team. And this is a party to celebrate our recent win." As we speak, John is talking and laughing with some girl.

"He's probably here doing some investigation work for his dad" I scoff. "I'll bet he's making a mental checklist of all the rules we're currently breaking. Drinking. Partying. I wouldn't be surprised if Coach decides to suspend me next time I see him."