See Dot Smile

New Year's Eve: Part 1

There's a plus side to having a high school experience void of passion, spontaneity, and risk taking. It means by the time you're a senior, your overprotective parents have stopped worrying you're going to get yourself OD'd or pregnant or thrown in jail for loitering if they turn their backs for five minutes. And they give you way more leeway than you ever wanted in exchange for being such a model teenager.

Which is why my parents don't bat an eye about leaving me home alone to host my annual New Year's Eve soiree while they visit my brother in New York.

I don't tell my friends the event will be unchaperoned. But somehow, they figure it out.

Joshua shows up alone and gorgeous in a blue Irish sweater his mother gave him for Christmas. It takes every ounce of self-control I can muster not to drag him into my bedroom the instant he crosses my threshold.

Ali is sweet enough to invite herself and her cousins from California, one of whom is the very cousin she was out with when she cheated on Joshua last summer. Nice, Ali. Real nice.

Lilliana is here with her current boyfriend, Dean, a prep-school senior who brought enough beer and cigarettes to satisfy a biker bar on the fourth of July. This means I get to play the strict, nagging mom role, prohibiting the smoking of cigarettes indoors, and making anyone indulging in more than a celebratory champagne toast give me their car keys. I don't want to think about how many people are going to puke in my car later tonight.

Marcus brings his older brother Rich--weird--who is home from college for winter break. This means Tom and Marcus will not be kissing each other at midnight which has Tom on the verge of a breakdown, and it's only 10:30.

Kendall arrives with half a dozen football players, who immediately engage in a death match of beer pong on the pool table, which I have to 'mom' a vinyl tablecloth over to keep them from ruining the felt. Kendall himself is MIA. If I get half a second to look for him, I'll probably find him watching a game in my dad's office. The liquor cabinet is locked in there. Not that I'm worried. Kendall doesn't drink or smoke, for athlete reasons. And because it's not his style.

But I don't have time for anything because the doorbell is ringing, and I can't for the life of me think of who and their mother isn't already here. 

I check my bedraggled self in the small hallway mirror before I open the front door.

It's Bud. I swear I saw him downstairs earlier. Didn't I?

"Happy New Year," he says. "Did I miss all the fun already?"

"No, but if you see any fun, you can send it my way? It's eluding me at the moment."

"Aw, that sucks." He frowns. "I was hoping you were having a good time."

I wave him inside. "I'll get there. There's just a bunch of people here I don't know, and Lilliana's boyfriend brought substances, so now I'm worried about everyone getting home."

He shoots his hand up like an overeager second grader. "I call designated driver!"

I laugh. "I don't think anyone's going to fight you for it. But it's okay. I don't mind driving people home."

"You do enough," he says. "Let me do it. I'm a good driver."

He hasn't taken his coat off, but I can tell he's adorably overdressed underneath it. He's wearing a lavender button-down shirt and dress pants, and his hair is combed. I'd say he has a shot at snappiest dresser, if not for Tom, who looks dashing as hell storming up the stairs toward us in an emotional huff.

"Oh," he says, noticing I'm not alone. "Hi."

"Hey," Bud says. "Everything okay?"

"Dot, do you have a minute to talk?" Tom asks me, as if Bud is the wallpaper.