“I don’t know,” she told Jamie, “Sig’s just a guy. A party’s just a party. It’s not that big of a deal.”
Jamie blinked. Then she frowned. “What the hell?”
“Sig’s not that special.” She shrugged. “So I had to leave early. Oh well.”
She had expected a reaction, perhaps even a dramatic one. Lots of over-the-topno wayanduh-uhandyou’re kidding. She hadn’t expected anger, but that was what she got.
Jamie surged to her feet, balled-up fists slamming down to her sides. Her face screwed up, mouth pinched in a grimace. “What did you do?”
“What?”
“You weren’t sick. You did something to offend him, didn’t you? Did you get all bikery? Did you insult him?”
“Whatare you talking about?”
Color bloomed high on her cheeks. She blinked hard and looked like she might cry. “I knew you would screw this up for us! I knew it!”
Bemused, Cass held out both hands in a bid for peace. “Jamie—”
“When he invited you, you said you would get in good with his friends, and then you’d bring me with you next time. Yousaid. You were going to introduce me to all of them.”
“Jamie, I don’t think they’re the sort of people you want to hang out with.”
“Of course they are!” Jamie burst out. “They have money, and they have influence! If I’m in with them, I can get my work put in a museum show! You don’t even…” She dissolved into an anguished sound and grabbed two fistfuls of her own hair; tugged on it hard. “You don’t get it. Your sister’s rich and famous. You can have anything you want,” she said, bitterly. “People like me have to scrape for everything, and you won’t even help me make connections.”
In a milder echo of last night, Cass felt like the world was tilting around her, all that she’d come to know and rely on in her roommate splintered to bits. “I’m sorry. I’m not trying to hurt you, but I don’t think Sig and his friends are interested in helping anyone.”
Jamie stared at her, disbelieving, breathing harshly through parted lips. Then she spat, “Fuck you, Cass,” snatched up her purse, and stormed out.
Cass sat staring at the open door for a long minute, wishing she was actually shocked. As a general rule, she didn’t tell her classmates that her sister wastheRaven Blake, model-turned-agent/fashion designer and one half of the newly launched Garden Room Club, a safe but chic hotspot for socialite nightlife. People tended to have two reactions to the news: they either hated her on instinct because they were jealous of Raven, or wanted to cozy up to Cass in the hopes of landing a getaway in Monaco. Likewise, she kept her Lean Dogs ties secret. She hadn’t told Jamie about either side of her life for the whole of the first semester, but they’d become good friends. Or so Cass thought. She’d confessed right before they parted for Christmas break, when she got the call that Raven was going into labor. Jamie had hugged her tight and congratulated her on becoming an aunt.
“I’m already an aunt,” Cass had said, laughing.
“Yeah, but it’s different when it’s a sister’s baby.”
It was.
But she couldn’t help but wonder if her friendship with Jamie was irrevocably different now, too. If it was even still a friendship at all.
Cass shook off the worry and tackled her homework. Jamie didn’t return until after lights out. Cass rolled over in bed, intending to ask her if she’d cooled off, but Jamie had her back to the room.
Cass stared up at the ceiling until sleep finally claimed her.
Five
U good?Shep had texted Cass the night before. Just to make sure she wasn’t out getting herself drugged at another shithead kid’s party.
Yeah, she texted back. Then, while he was typing a follow up:Going 2 bed early. Stop being a dad.
That word again. It made his stomach shrivel up unpleasantly. Yes, he looked out for her. Yes, in his three years of doing so he found himself worrying about whether or not she’d eaten, or if she was safe, if she was hanging out with the right sorts of friends. At some point between complaining about his initial security gig and the present, he’d acknowledged that he would take a bullet for her. But he didn’t think of himself as her father figure. That was gross…and he wasn’t ready to articulate just why it was.
Satisfied for the moment that she wasn’t in trouble, he’d set his alarm and gone to bed. Today, he was taking a stab at club business.
Up at seven, he filled his roller bottle with protein powder and headed for the gym. An hour with free weights and a half hour on the treadmill left him pleasantly tired and buzzing with endorphins. He made a round of their dealers, checked in with Mav to let him know everyone was accounted for, on his feet, and doing more selling than using, then he headed to Hauser’s pub for lunch to put an ear to the proverbial ground.
He was in a good mood, demolishing a burger the size of his head, when a near-silent figure slid onto the stool beside him. He didn’t have to turn his head; caught a black baseball cap, black hair hanging out from under it, and a black leather jacket. Katsuya Rydell.
“‘S’up?” Shep greeted between bites. Something clearly was: the thing he liked best about Kat was the way he didn’t feel obliged to act chummy. If he sat next to a Lean Dog on purpose, there was business afoot.
