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I take a drink.

“Two days ago?” Koda says.

“Thursday night she ended it,” Paige says, eyebrows all the way up. “On the phone. So she’s not, like—” She shrugs. “I just wanted her to come out and have a good night. That’s all.”

I put my beer down on the counter. I knew Paige was lying on Tuesday. I knew it while she stood in front of me smiling. What I didn’t know was that she’d use a girl who spent Monday crying in a stairwell as the door-opener, and I’m not sure why that lands the way it does, because it isn’t my business, but I don’t like the girl, Paige.

“Where is she?” Koda asks.

“Front room.”

“Alone?”

Paige smiles nervously. “Trust me. She’s fine.”

Then Koda, being Koda, turns around, cups a hand around his mouth, and yells across the entire kitchen into the front room, “Hey, blondie!”

“Koda,” Paige says, laughing.

He shouts across the house, “Your friend says you wanted to know if Kennebeck was busy. He’s free! Come and get him!”

Half the kitchen turns around. For maybe two seconds, I can hear the music and nothing else, and then the blonde comes around the corner of the doorway with a red cup in one hand and her hair down. She looks at Koda, then Paige, then me, and I watch her face come apart and put itself back together into something a lot worse.

“What did you just say?” she snaps.

“I said—” Koda starts.

She puts up a finger to shut Koda up, and then she turns to her friend. “Paige?”

Paige closes her eyes. “Okay, so I asked him if he was busy this weekend,” she says, all in one breath, “and I maybe said you wanted to know, because I needed an opener, and it worked, and we got invited, and you’re welcome.”

The blonde’s mouth opens, and nothing comes out. I have never seen anybody go that quiet that fast. She looks at Paige with her jaw working and her eyes bright and furious, and I can see her deciding not to do this here, at a party where she doesn’t know anybody.

Then she turns to me. “And you let her.”

I shouldn’t be stunned, but I am.

Her eyes widen at me, impatiently.

I answer, “Yeah.”

Kylie’s head goes back. “You know I fucking hate you, right?” She starts to laugh, high and disbelieving. “And you didn’t say anything? You knew she was lying, and you just stood there.”

“Kylie,” Paige says. “It’s not that big of a deal.”

She ignores her, keeping her gaze on me. “You didn’t think to correct her?”

I shake my head. “It’s not my problem.”

Somebody in the kitchen says oh, quietly, the way people do at a game.

“Kylie,” Paige hisses. Then, to me and Koda, “Sorry. She’s just going through a hard time.”

Kylie laughs. “I don’t give a flying fuck what anyone thinks.”

“Look, Blondie—” Koda begins.

Then Declan Greeley walks over to her and says something I can’t hear. She’s still staring at me, but for one second, she isn’t angry. She’s listening to him. She takes his hand and shakes it, and then he looks over his shoulder at me while she says something to him. Nobody shakes hands at a party.