Friday Fluff: The Party Part One

Remy

Everyone knew Remy Lécuyer was in love with Lucy McCall…except for Lucy McCall. Or, he thought darkly, maybe she knew, but didn’t return his sentiments, and thought the kind thing to do was pretend she didn’t notice that he stared at her too long sometimes, and always found a way to sit next to her.  Because she was nice. She was the kind of genuinely sweet, soft spoken, thoughtful person who mailed handwritten thank you notes, who remembered shopkeeper’s names and thought to ask after their ailing relatives. Who didn’t mind pitching in even when her eyelids were flagging; who tutored children and volunteered at every single club charity event, smiling at everyone she encountered.

Lucy had her mother’s shiny dark hair, and big green eyes.

Every great once in a while, when someone managed to push her too far, a bit of her father’s spooky calm possessed her. If possible, Remy wanted her even more when she got like that – whatever that said about him.

“Dude,” Ash said as he climbed up onto the picnic table to sit beside him. “You’re pathetic.”

“Shut up, asshole.”

“Shut up, uncle.

“Uncle Asshole.”

It was a warm night, comfortable but not balmy, the October air just starting to smell crisp. The drum fires were burning, the grill was smoking, and the party lights blazed. A casual club party, a full family one, kids allowed. It didn’t matter that he was seventeen, Remy was still very much one of the kids.

A pathetically lovestruck one, apparently, because he’d been watching Lucy from across the parking lot for the past half hour like some kind of creep.

Ash made an unhappy sound in his throat. “You disgust me. You’re nine feet tall, and you’ve got that whole…stupid fucking…long hair and being-mysterious thing going on. Do you honestly think that any girl would turn you down?”

Lucy was sitting in a lawn chair next to Millie and Violet, drinking Coke out of the can, even though she wasn’t driving and any of the adults would have let her have a beer or a margarita. She wore jeans and knee-high tan boots, a zip-up hoodie that Remy knew belonged to her dad, the Lean Dogs running black dog stitched onto the chest. Firelight danced in her hair, caught like sparks in its soft brown waves. She was wearing a lip gloss he hadn’t seen on her before, pale pink, shimmering even from a distance.

“I don’t want ‘any girl,’” he said, and Ash groaned. “And I’m pathetic.”

“It runs in the family,” Cal piped up from Remy’s other side. He’d mixed orange soda, Coke, and rum into a red Solo cup, and the sticky-sweet smell alone was enough to make Remy want to gag. And yet Remy was the disgusting one. Uh-huh. Sure.

“What does?”

“Falling in love with just one person.”

This time, Remy and Ash groaned together.

A moment later, Ash said, “He’s kinda right, though.”

“Yeah,” Remy sighed. “Of course he is.”