Page 13 of Enchanted to Meet You

I stood there with my untouched can of whatever it was, feeling something close to invisible, and found myself, against every instinct I had, watching him. By the time he did make his way over to me, weaving through the crowd with two red cups in hand like he’d known exactly where to find me the whole time, I’d had more than enough time to feel out of place in a house I’d already been inside for two hours.

“Hey,” he said, handing me one of the cups without asking if I wanted it.

I sniffed it tentatively. “What is this?”

“Something better than whatever warm nothing you were nursing.” He nodded at the can still in my other hand, and I set it down on the nearest surface, mostly to have somewhere to put my hands other than fidgeting with the hem of my dress again. “You look like you’re waiting for a bus.”

“I don’t know anyone here.”

“You know me.”

“That’s not the same as knowing someone, that’s more like knowing of someone. Against my will.” I glanced around the room, at the volume of strangers laughing and shouting over the music. “How do you know all these people?”

“Some of them go to Crofton with me. Some of them are Justin’s friends. It’s a mixed bag.” He said it like it was the simplest thing in the world, taking a sip of his own drink, glancing around the room with a curious glance as if he was a guest too. Another girl passed close enough to say his name and trail her fingers briefly across his forearm on her way by, and he responded with some easy comment I didn’t catch, not even looking interested, and she laughed like he’d said something amazing.

“Does that happen a lot?” I asked, before I could stop myself.

“Does what happen a lot?”

“That.” I gestured vaguely at the space where the girl had just been. “Girls just touching you. Like that’s a normal thing that’s allowed to happen.”

He looked like the question amused him. “Jealous?”

“Disturbed, actually. On a sociological level.”

“Sure.” He didn’t seem remotely bothered by the accusation, which was more irritating than if he’d denied it. He took another sip of his drink, eyes drifting back out over the crowd, nodding at someone who called his name from near the stairs, and I stood there beside him feeling more and more like a prop he’d picked up on his way past rather than a person he’d actually sought out.

“You could introduce me to people,” I said, mostly to have something to say, to fill the space where I was increasingly aware of how much of a non-entity I felt like standing next to him. “That would help your plan, don’t you think?”

“Don’t worry about the plan, I’ve got it under control.” He said it with the same maddening calm he’d had when explaining his plan upstairs. Then he checked something over my shoulder, and I followed his gaze to see Kelcey appear at the edge of the living room, scanning the crowd with the particular focus of someone looking for a specific person. His jaw tightened, almost imperceptibly, and the easy version of him I’d been watching for the last five minutes turned into something more focused. “Actually—now’s good.”

“Now’s good for what⁠—“

He didn’t answer. His hand found my wrist again, the same grip from two hours ago, and I barely had time to set my cup down on the nearest surface before he was towing me sideways through the crowd, cutting a path with the same unbothered confidence he’d used to navigate the entire party, except now there was an edge to it, a purpose, like whatever social performance he’d just been running had switched, mid-scene, into something else entirely.

“Where are we even going?” I had to half-jog to keep pace, dodging a guy who nearly spilled his drink down my arm, catching a glimpse of Kelcey’s head turning in our direction just as Rhys pulled me down a narrow side hallway I hadn’t noticed on my way in.

“Closet. Two seconds.”

“Excuse me, what?”

He didn’t answer, just steered me down a narrow side hallway I hadn’t even noticed on my way in, past a bathroom with the door shut and a muffled argument happening on the other side of it, to a door at the very end that I would absolutely have mistaken for a linen closet if he hadn’t opened it and pulled me straight inside, shutting it behind us with a soft click that immediately swallowed most of the party noise into a low, muffled hum.

“Okay,” I said, wrenching my wrist free the second there was room to do it, “you cannot just grab a girl and drag her into a closet. That’s the setup to a true crime podcast episode.”

“Relax, I’m not going to murder you in a coat closet.”

“That’s exactly what a murderer would say right before doing it.”

“I don’t even have anywhere to put a body in here. It’s a coat closet. There’s a vacuum.” He gestured, with something close to offense, at the vacuum cleaner wedged into the corner behind him, and the gesture nearly made me laugh, which annoyed me more than the closet itself did.

“I think if anything, that proves you could soak up my blood easier.”

“I’m concerned if you think vacuuming is the ideal way to get rid of a body.”

He leaned back against a shelf stacked with folded blankets, arms crossing over his chest, and in the dim closet light—a single bare bulb overhead, throwing everything into soft yellow shadow—he looked completely unbothered, like this was any other Friday, like he dragged girls into closets to deliver bad news on a regular basis.

“When someone opens that door,” he said, his voice dropping slightly, losing some of its usual smugness and replacing it with something quieter, “I’m going to kiss you.”