Chapter 83: Watching

POV: Carly

She was leaning against the wall outside the bathroom while Katy fixed her lipstick for the third time, and her eyes would not stay where she put them.

They kept drifting back across the room. To Niko. To Enzo and Mauricio laughing at something. To Aurora standing just a little too close, laughing just a little too loud at whatever Niko had said.

After Enzo's speech she had spent almost half an hour with all of them properly. Katy had joined the chaos eventually, teaming up with Carly against the boys in round after round of beer pong that Niko won with an irritating amount of ease. They had ended up collapsed across the couches afterward, all of them slightly too unsteady to trust their own legs, and Carly had ended up settled against Niko's chest with both his arms around her waist, practically in his lap, his face tucked into her hair murmuring things she was not going to repeat to anyone.

This was not the first time she had seen tipsy Niko. She had missed it a little, if she was honest. He was more affectionate like this. Only slightly more than usual, but enough that she felt it.

Aurora had not missed a single opportunity to roll her eyes at the display.

Niko brushed it off every time with a laugh. Carly, less generously, melted further into him every time Aurora did it. She was aware that was petty. She did it anyway.

She was having a good time. She wanted to be clear with herself about that. She was the most sober person in the group and she was nowhere near annoyed, and if someone had told her two months ago she would end up enjoying an evening surrounded by vampires she would have laughed in their face.

She had assumed, before Niko, that a vampire party meant exactly the things her coven had always told her it meant. Blood and violence dressed up as a good time. Instead it was just teenagers. Drunk, loud, ridiculous teenagers who happened to also occasionally have fangs.

She was glad to be wrong.

Except for the redhead circling the group like she was waiting for an opening.

Aurora had not stopped hovering all night. That haunting little smile stayed fixed on her lips every time Niko said anything at all, like she was collecting his sentences for later use. Carly watched her shoulder Enzo gently out of the way so she could plant herself beside Niko instead, and nobody else seemed to notice or care.

A low sound came out of Carly's throat without her permission.

Stop it. You are not that girl.

She did not want to be that girl. She had never been the jealous type in any of her past relationships. But none of those relationships had been like this one, and she had never had to share space with someone who had history with the person she was falling for. The kind of history that left marks Carly could not see but could absolutely feel.

She trusted Niko.

Her nails dug into her palms anyway, every single time Aurora's hand brushed his arm.

Could she be any more obvious.

"Finally." Katy pushed out of the bathroom, capping her lipstick. "Sorry for the wait. Had to try three different shades because the first one was wrong and you, by the way, are a terrible friend for letting me walk out the door with it earlier."

"Sorry." Carly said, not really listening, eyes still fixed across the room.

It did not take Katy more than two seconds to clock exactly where Carly's attention had gone. She followed the line of sight and landed on the same spot immediately.

She sighed. "Please tell me you haven't been standing here watching them this whole time."

"I don't know what you're talking about." Carly said, blinking too fast.

"You're a terrible liar. We've established this."

Carly exhaled hard and let her back hit the wall. "I'm not jealous."

"Never said you were." Katy said. "But you are absolutely torturing yourself over there. He's your boyfriend. He's the one who invited you. If you want to be near him, go be near him."

"That's the thing, I don't want to hover. I want him to actually have fun with his friends tonight. I just—" Carly stopped.

"You just don't love that one of those friends used to be sleeping with him." Katy finished.

Carly bit down on her bottom lip. She had been doing that more lately. Since Niko had practically combusted over it the first time.

"I'm not jealous." She said again.

Katy laughed and grabbed her by both shoulders, spinning her fully around so she couldn't keep looking.

"Hey—what are you doing?"

"Saving you from yourself." Katy said. "Listen, cupcake, I get it. Romeo and the redheaded menace, it's annoying, I see it. But you need to pull it together. You look incredible tonight and you're standing here wallowing against a wall like it's a funeral. It's bringing down my buzz too, since I came as your plus one."

Carly let out a breath that was half laugh. Katy was not wrong. Niko had given her absolutely no real reason to doubt him tonight. She was building something out of nothing because her brain liked to do that when she felt unsteady.

Katy slung an arm over her shoulders.

"Forget them for a minute. You didn't come here to be his trophy in the corner. You're allowed to actually enjoy yourself too. And my version of enjoying myself generally starts with a significant amount of alcohol."

Carly sniffled out a laugh.

She would never say it directly, but having Katy in her corner like this had become one of the steadiest things in her life lately. Someone to pull her back when her own head got too loud.

"Kat, you know I don't really drink."

"That's problem number one, then." Katy said, already towing her toward the kegs. "If sex isn't on the table tonight, alcohol is your next best stress relief. And it's free. It would be a crime not to participate."